Hazel Rossotti (1 February 1930 – 24 December 2023) was a British chemist and science writer.
Early life and education
Rossotti (née Marsh) left Millfield School in 1948 and completed her undergraduate and PhD at the University of Oxford. Her research considered the stability of metal-ion complexes, and she worked under the supervision of Robert Williams. In 1952 she married fellow chemist Francis J.C. Rossotti, a fellow graduate student, at St Peter-in-the-East, now part of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Rossotti held a long-standing passion for photography, and became known as an accomplished photographer. She specialised in black and white portraits, often of scientists and other colleagues. In 1974, Rossotti nominated French artist and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson for an honorary doctorate at the University of Oxford. To mark this award, Cartier-Bresson gifted Rossotti a silver gelatine print of a 1938 photograph of 'Sunday on the Banks of the River Seine'. This print is now held in the Bodleian libraries. In 1997, Rossotti designed and made the stained glass panels in the library building, Hartland house.
Books
Rossotti published numerous science books, on diverse topics from chemistry to colour, fire and Greece. Oliver Sacks remarked that Rossotti was a born teacher and writer, 'incapable of writing a dull word'.
↑Griffin, Penny (30 June 1986). St Hugh?s: One Hundred Years of Women?s Education in Oxford. Griffin, Penny. London. p.240. ISBN9781349077250. OCLC1004389700.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑Rossotti, Hazel (2 September 2010). "Some relationships among the stabilities of metal complexes". Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas. 75 (7): 763–768. doi:10.1002/recl.19560750707. ISSN0165-0513.
↑Brewer, Leo (18 May 1962). "The Determination of Stability Constants and Other Equilibrium Constants in Solution. Francis J. C. Rossotti and Hazel Rossotti. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961. xiv + 425 pp. $12.50". Science. 136 (3516): 643–644. doi:10.1126/science.136.3516.643. ISSN0036-8075. S2CID95255460.
↑Rossotti, Hazel (1998). Diverse atoms: profiles of the chemical elements. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0198558156. OCLC37254363.
↑Marcet, Jane Haldimand (2006). Chemistry in the schoolroom, 1806: selections from Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on chemistry. Rossotti, Hazel. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse. ISBN978-1425905347. OCLC70139772.