From the ILL Newsletter - An award-winning chemist in neutron scattering

This year, the Wolfson Foundation of the Royal Society gave several grants to help set up computing systems to handle large data volumes. Judith Howard, professor of chemistry at the University Durham, one of the recipients received £100,000. "Lord Wolfson is really amazing", Judith remembers her invitation to the celebration of the grant allocation, "I thanked him for the grant and he replied that he has to thank all these bright people who make such a good use of the money".Her idea was to refurbish a couple of labs of the chemistry department in order to create a bioinformatics centre. "Fume cupboards will be pulled out and air-conditioning will be installed for new computers.This grant will mainly be used to get the infrastructure and only about 20% will go into hardware," Judith explains. With her enthusiasm, she will also find the additional money required for manpower.

At present, Judith Howard has a five-year sabbatical from teaching duties. Her outstanding research work was rewarded by the EPSRC senior fellowship award allowing her to leave teaching and most of administration for a few years to be productive in research. Judith knows what she wants to do during the next years, "I am looking forward not only to having the ideas, but really having the chance to do it, too".

Why did she go into science? She admits that she was actually better on paper in the arts and for her excellent school marks in arts, at the age of 15, she received a prize of her choice - a chemistry book. This extended her interest in chemistry. It is fascinating to follow her description which is underlined by her expression. She is an elegantly dressed lady, but the lively, effervescent girl is still there.

First Judith read physics and maths and then honours chemistry in Bristol. "There was this red head sitting in my class", Alan Leadbetter says, "I remember her well because this was my first year of teaching". After graduating in Bristol in 1966, Judith went to Oxford to work with Dorothy Hodgkin who remained a life-long friend and mentor. Originally, Judith's work was concerned with the study of insulin. But finally, she spent most of her time at Harwell where she got involved in the construction of a low-temperature device working with Terry Willis. This is also where she met first Sax Mason, who became later her main collaborator at the ILL.

In 1969, Judith returned to Bristol and started to study organometallicLehmann at a conference in Denmark, that neutrons came back into her studies upon Mogens' encouragement. A year later she did her first neutron experiment at the ILL. Since then she has remained in close contact with the ILL: she has held ILL studentships, trainees from her lab come out regularly, and she became involved in the ILL's review committees.

Despite her extensive travelling, because she is invited to talks and is on many committees, Judith is known for taking care of people. She has an open ear for her students if they have any problems. And she will take the time to introduce a new student to neutron scattering herself. In addition to her dedicated work, for years she travelled daily between Bristol and Swindon (90 miles) where her husband works. Now, their homes are even further apart.

In 1991, she moved to Durham, where she was then the only female chemistry professor in Britain. At this time, she began the study of organic non-linear optical materials (see also ILL annual report 1996, p.14), again rather complex materials. These systems show charge-transfer effects which are of interest for optical computing. Hydrogen bonding plays an important role in these interactions, and thus neutrons are an important tool for these investigations. These measurements produce large data-sets which have to be analysed to get the crystallographic information. Because of this, computing became more and more important over the years.

Judith Howard chairing the ILL's single-crystal review in spring 1998, with Clive Wilkinson, centre, and Mogens Lehmann


Photograph reproduced by kind permission of 'ILL News for reactor users' June 1999

Judith is involved in many scientific collaborations, to name a few: instrumental development for cooling devices near helium-temperature, crystal growing, computer simulation. "We are working now over 20 years together", Sax Mason says, "but I worry about her, Judith takes on too many things". Sax is not the only one who remarks this. Alan Leadbetter confirms, "she is crazy, she does too many things - but she does them all well".

This year, Judith won the award for structural chemistry of the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain. This award honours her pioneering work of x-ray and neutron diffraction for locating hydrogen atoms in the presence of heavy metals. It is recognised that she established the structures of a number of key transition-metal hydrides, whereby the development of low-temperature devices played a key role in her achievements: it allowed her to study unstable compounds and monitor phase changes. In addition, Judith plays a major role in the national and international structural-chemistry community.

At present, she struggles through the organisation of the international crystallography conference (IUCr) which will be held in Glasgow this summer. But after this she should be able to enjoy her 'free time' of her fellowship.

Editor's Note: This article was reprinted from the 'ILL News for reactor users' no.31 June 1999. I am grateful to the editor for permission to reprint it here. She is Dr. Herma Buttner, Scientific Coordination Officer at the Institut Laue-Langevin, Avenue des Martyrs, BP 156, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France etl: +33 76 20 71 79 email: [email protected]