Professor Richard Nelmes was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours. Richard leads groups from the University of Edinburgh based full time at both ISIS and the SRS. Over the past decade he and his colleagues have developed many new techniques and facilities for studying crystal structures and transitions at very high pressures, using diffraction methods with neutron and synchrotron beams. They have a particular interest in simple molecular materials including ice and ammonia (knowledge about these at very high pressures is of great importance to the modelling of the outer planets and their satellites - such as Saturn's moon, Titan) and in semiconductors and elemental metals.
In a collaboration with the University of Paris VI, more than an order of magnitude increase has been achieved in the pressure range accessible for neutron diffraction since 1990, breaking through the limits of the previous 20 years. And a series of research grants from EPSRC has funded the construction and development of a dedicated high-pressure station at ISIS, making it the leading facility for high-pressure neutron diffraction. In the early 90s the Edinburgh team at the SRS developed the use of the image-plate detector for high-pressure X-ray powder diffraction - first pioneered in Japan - and devised the techniques now used worldwide for detailed structural studies at very high pressures on synchrotron sources.
Most recently, Richard has led a successful £7 m bid to the Joint Infrastructure Fund to set up a Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) based in Edinburgh. This will provide the extensive laboratory-based facilities needed to make the most of the opportunities provided by modern neutron and synchrotron sources, and will be particularly effective when diamond is in operation. CSEC will bring together neutron and synchrotron facility users in five departments in Edinburgh to tackle a wide range of extreme conditions science including research into novel materials made at high pressures and temperatures, the use of pressure to tune and optimise applied electronic properties, materials and processes for extreme conditions engineering, Earth and planetary science, high-pressure biology, and fundamental condensed-matter physics. This unique partnership between a university-based Centre and the central facilities should make the UK a world leader in the field.
Editor's Note: This article was reprinted from the CLRC Labnews for January 2001, where is was accompanied by a photograph CLRC ref no. 96RC3863. It remains their copyright. Please apply to Press and Public Relations at CLRC if you want a copy.