26 May 2026
The University of Reading community is sad to have learned of the death of its former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and prominent Chemistry academic, Professor Henry Montague (‘Monty’) Frey at the age of 97.
Professor Frey was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry at Reading in 1966. He was a leading expert in chemical kinetics, specialising in gas kinetics and photochemistry, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1970.
A graduate of Balliol College Oxford, he was awarded the Gibbs Prize in Chemistry. He then studied for his PhD in Oxford with an ICI research fellowship to work with the renowned physical chemist Sir Cyril N. Hinshelwood.A Commonwealth Fund Fellowship (now the Harkness Fund) took him to the University of California, Berkeley, to work with Melvin Calvin and then at Harvard with George Kistiakowsky. He returned to the UK as a lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Southampton (1957-1966).
He was an active researcher for six decades, leading and contributing to more than 250 published papers, from his time as a doctoral student at Oxford up until the 2010s, long after his formal retirement, many with former colleague Professor Robin Walsh. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Reading in 1994
He was very involved with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He published more than 120 papers inRSC journals, and he was awarded the 1964 Corday-Morgan Prize, the Reaction Kinetics Medal (sponsored by Shell) in 1988, and the Award for Service (now known as the Award for Exceptional Service) in 2013.
The citation for the Reaction Kinetics award reads, “Distinguished for pioneering work on the reactions of methylene radicals, particularly in interpreting their reactions and other related processes though the theory of unimolecular reactions.In recent years he has combined classical and modern techniques to study the gas phase reactions of a range of silicon and carbon containing radicals.”
To quote from a reference in support of his nomination for the Kinetics award, “Frey has had an uncanny knack for studying important systems before their importance was widely recognised”.
An example of this was the singlet – triplet energy separation in methylene: for a long time the magnitude of the energy separation between the lowest states of methylene had been controversial. This in fact became a frenzied (and not entirely friendly) field of activity between 1970 and 1982, but the vital argument was Frey's recognition in 1972 of the relationship between the reactivity of the two states and their energy separation. His value for the latter, although now greatly refined by spectroscopic techniques, is universally accepted by experimentalists and theoreticians alike.
He was a member of the RSC Board of Trustees, Chair of the Member Grants committee, and Awards Committee and he was President and then Vice-President of the Faraday Division Council.
He played a leading role in research publications for the Royal Society of Chemistry, a committee member and as Chairman of the publications committee. He was involved with the formation of the European journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP), starting with the negotiations for the initial merger of Faraday Transactions and Berichte der Bunsen-Gesellschaft. He was also involved in the building of Thomas Graham House, the new RSC headquarters in Cambridge.
At Reading, he served as Head of Chemistry from 1974 to1982 (and was chair of Committee of the Heads of Chemistry Departments U.K.) Dean of the Faculty of Science (1975-78) and then as Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including a brief spell as Acting Vice-Chancellor before Professor Roger Williams took up the post in 1993.
This experience in management gave him a great insight into decision making processes. He was always very concerned to see good financial management, and disliked wasteful duplication of resources. An example of his foresight was as chair of the Computer Policy Committee he funded the initial fibre optical cable campus network, at a time when distributed computing was only just becoming important. He oversaw extensive building programmes in the University and subsequently at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
Professor Frey also served as Director of the former University of Reading Science and Technology Centre from 1992-94, and continued as Emeritus Professor at Reading after his retirement.
His passion for science was maintained into his later life, when he campaigned for government investment into chemistry laboratories.
Although few formal records of Professor Frey’s employment at Reading remain, there is evidence of the energy he put into engaging the public with his research in the University’s archives. The University Special Collections records copies of posters advertising public lectures he presented at the Whiteknights campus in the 1970s and 80s, on measuring the speed of chemical reactions.
His skills as an administrator were recognised after his formal retirement from the University when he became non-executive member and then vice-chair of the Board of the Royal Berkshire Hospital (1996-2000).
His wide knowledge of the UK academic system was important in his roles with the research councils (Science and Engineering Research Council, which would become the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) as a member and chair of several grant and fellowship panels.
Former colleagues and students of Professor Frey’s remember him fondly, describing him as a ’great intellect’ and his tutorials as ‘unforgettable’. His lecturing style was highly interactive, with students being expected to answer questions in front of the whole class.
He was a great mentor to younger colleagues and delighted in their successes. His wit and wisdom made him great company, and he continued to be very active until just a few weeks before his death, coming into the Department for a coffee and chat with and about former colleagues, students and friends.
Image captions and credits from top of page: 1. Professor Monty Frey, (1929-2026), 2. Monty celebrating his 97th birthday in February 2026 (photo credit: Daphna Skotnicki), 3. Poster announcing Professor Frey's public lecture on Tachykinetics in October 1988
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