Colin Webb (physicist)

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Colin Edward Webb
Born (1937-12-09) 9 December 1937 (age 86)
CitizenshipBritish
Alma mater University of Nottingham
Oriel College, Oxford
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Institutions Clarendon Laboratory
University of Oxford
Doctoral students Patrick Gill [1]
Website www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-colin-webb

Colin Edward Webb MBE FRS FInstP [2] (born 9 December 1937) is a British physicist and former professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in lasers.

Contents

Education

Webb was educated at the University of Nottingham (BSc) and Oriel College, Oxford (DPhil).

Career

After working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Webb returned to Oxford as a research fellow in physics at the Clarendon Laboratory in 1968, and was appointed to a university lectureship in 1971, becoming reader in 1990 and professor in 1992. He served as head of Atomic and Laser Physics from 1995 to 1999, and became an emeritus professor in 2002. Jesus College, Oxford appointed him to a Fellowship in 1973; he became a senior research fellow in 1988 and an emeritus fellow in 2005. Webb has supervised more than 35 DPhil students. [3] In 1977, he founded Oxford Lasers a company that began as a manufacturer of high-power copper lasers and that today focuses on high-speed imaging and laser micro-machining technology. [3]

Research

Webb is considered a pioneer in British laser research and has made significant contributions in the areas of hollow cathode metal-vapor lasers, [4] [5] copper vapor lasers, [6] high-power copper vapor laser-pumped dye lasers, [6] and excimer lasers. [7] His work on hollow-cathode metal-vapor lasers led to the discovery of numerous new laser transition in the visible spectrum. [4] [8]

His publications include (as editor in chief) Handbook of Laser Technology and Applications (2003) as well as various papers on lasers and laser mechanisms in academic journals [9] and specialized books. [6] He has also co-authored a textbook in laser physics in 2010, with Simon Hooker of Oxford. [10]

Awards and honours

Webb was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2000. He was awarded the Duddell Medal and Prize (now called the Gabor Medal and Prize) in 1985 by the Institute of Physics and delivered the Paterson Lecture of the Royal Society in 1999. [9] He won the Richard Glazebrook Medal and Prize in 2001.

He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America [ citation needed ] and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1991 [2] He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

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References

  1. Gill, Patrick (1975). Charge Transfer as a Laser Excitation Mechanism (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC   916148756. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2016-05-17.
  2. 1 2 "Professor Colin Webb MBE FRS". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived September 25, 2015)
  3. 1 2 "Professor Colin Webb".
  4. 1 2 Piper, J.A.; Collins, G.J.; Webb, C.E. (1972). "CW laser oscillation in singly ionized iodine". Applied Physics Letters. 21 (5): 203–205. Bibcode:1972ApPhL..21..203P. doi:10.1063/1.1654344.
  5. Gill, P; Webb, C E (1977). "Electron energy distributions in the negative glow and their relevance to hollow cathode lasers". Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. 10 (3): 299–301. Bibcode:1977JPhD...10..299G. doi:10.1088/0022-3727/10/3/010. S2CID   250755096.
  6. 1 2 3 C. E. Webb, High-power dye lasers pumped by copper vapor lasers, in High Power Dye Lasers, F. J. Duarte (Ed.) (Springer, Berlin, 1991) Chapter 5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. Caro, R G; Gower, M C; Webb, C E (1982). "A simple tunable KrF laser system with narrow bandwidth and diffraction-limited divergence". Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. 15 (5): 767–773. Bibcode:1982JPhD...15..767C. doi:10.1088/0022-3727/15/5/007. S2CID   250810983.
  8. Piper, J.A.; Webb, C.E. (1973). "A hollow cathode device for CW helium-metal vapour laser systems". Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. 6 (4): 400–407. Bibcode:1973JPhD....6..400P. doi:10.1088/0022-3727/6/4/306. S2CID   250809897.
  9. 1 2 "WEBB, Prof Colin Edward" . Who's Who . Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. S. Hooker and C. E. Webb, Laser Physics, (Oxford University Press, 2010)