Portrait of Geoffrey Wilkinson

Birthday profile

Geoffrey Wilkinson

Geoffrey Wilkinson, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1996)

Born
July 14, 1921
Died
September 26, 1996
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1921

About Geoffrey Wilkinson

Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson FRS was a Nobel laureate English chemist who pioneered inorganic chemistry and homogeneous transition metal catalysis. Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson FRS (14 July 1921 – 26 September 1996) was a Nobel laureate English chemist who pioneered inorganic chemistry and homogeneous transition metal catalysis. Wilkinson is well known for his popularisation of the use of Wilkinson's catalyst RhCl(PPh3)3 in catalytic hydrogenation, and for the discovery of the structure of ferrocene. He then became a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began to return to his first interest as a student – transition metal complexes of ligands such as carbon monoxide and olefins.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Geoffrey Wilkinson was born

Geoffrey Wilkinson was born in 1921. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1921

  • #1 song"My Man" – Fanny Brice
  • Top movieThe Kid (Charlie Chaplin)
  • Best-selling bookMain Street – Sinclair Lewis

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJack Dempsey vs Georges Carpentier — first million-dollar gate
  • Top headlineWarren G. Harding inaugurated as 29th President
  • Technology milestoneAlbert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics
  • Defining fadOuija boards
  • Notable inventionLie detector (polygraph)
  • World population1.88 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWarren G. Harding
  • Sports championNew York Giants (World Series)
  • U.S. population108.5M

1921 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Geoffrey Wilkinson's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19212026
Gas$0.26$3.45/gal
Average home$5,500$435,000
Average income$3,010$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population108.5M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.