John Simons (chemist)

In 2002 he received an honorary doctorate (DSc) from the University of Birmingham. In 2005, a special edition of the journal Molecular Physics was published to honour Simons' seventieth birthday, the previous year.

Simons was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1979, and served as honorary secretary and president of the society's Faraday Division (1993–95). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, and served on the society's Council (1999–2000). He gave the Royal Society's Humphry Davy Lecture (2001) and received the society's Davy Medal in 2007. Other awards include the Royal Society of Chemistry's Tilden Prize (1982–3), Chemical Dynamics Award (1993), Polanyi Medal (1996), Spiers Memorial Award (1999) and Liversidge Award (2007). He held a visiting Miller Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley.

Simons first worked at the University of Birmingham, successively holding positions as an ICI Fellow (1960), lecturer (1961–67), reader (from 1975) and professor of photochemistry from 1979. In 1981 he became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Nottingham. In 1993 he was appointed Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and fellow of Exeter College. He retired in 1999.

Simons studied at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1955. His PhD is from Cambridge, under the supervision of Ronald George Wreyford Norrish.

John Philip Simons FRS FRSC (born 20 April 1934) is a British physical chemist known for his research in photochemistry and photophysics, molecular reaction dynamics and the spectroscopy of biological molecules. He was professor of physical chemistry at the University of Nottingham (1981–93) and Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford (1993–99).