Born in Oxfordshire, England in 1968, Anthony England, a citizen of both the UK and Ireland, attended the University of East Anglia, picking up a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1990.  A degree which involved an exchange year at the University of Massachusetts in 1988-9.   

After completing the undergraduate programme England returned to the United States to study for a Ph.D. in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  This he received in 1995, working in the field of organometallic chemistry, in the research group of Professor Stephen L. Buchwald.  During the Ph.D. programme, England also spent a period conducting collaborative research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, working alongside LANL Laboratory Fellow Dr. Carol J.Burns. 

On departing the US, England went on to work in Nagoya, Japan in the field of homogeneous catalysis with 2001 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Professor Ryoji Noyori and his JST ERATO Noyori Molecular Catalysis Project.  Work carried out during this time has ultimately led to several highly successful catalyst systems being brought to market for use by chemical and pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers worldwide.

In recent years, England’s role has combined both scientific research and project management.  While at the RijksUniversiteit Groningen in the north of The Netherlands, he was responsible for the design and realization of the Dutch Polymer Solar Energy Initiative’s €1M state-of-the-art Solar Cell Device Fabrication Facility, had fingers in many research pies pertaining to new solar energy materials, and directed the projects of junior colleagues. 

Away from the lab, he has served as a peer-reviewer of manuscripts for respected periodicals, and is a long-term member of the American Chemical Society.  He is also the co-author of not as many scientific publications as he would have liked. 

Having travelled independently since the age of eighteen, England has spent time in over forty countries, in all parts of the globe, including a total of more than seven months in some of the most impoverished regions of Asia, Africa and South America.