The A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize was awarded annually from 1965 to 2021 by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in commemoration of Alan Arnold Griffith. [1]
The award was established by the Materials Science Club of Great Britain in 1965, two years after its formation in 1963. Modern materials science as an integrated discipline (as distinct from single-material studies such as metallurgy) was in its infancy, and the Materials Science Club was a 'gathering place' for this new field of applied science. In 1985 it was merged into the Institute of Metals, which in turn became part of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. [2]
The A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize was given in recognition of distinguished work that has made or is making a notable contribution to any branch of materials science. The prize value was £300.
Julia Elizabeth King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, is a British engineer and a crossbench member of the House of Lords, where she chairs the Select Committee on Science and Technology. She is the incumbent chair of the Carbon Trust and the Henry Royce Institute, and was the vice-chancellor of Aston University from 2006 to 2016.
Sir Peter John Gregson, FREng was a British research engineer and Chair of the Henry Royce Institute. He was previously the Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University from 2013-2021 and President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast from 2004. Prior to that he was deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton from 2000-2004.
Sir Richard Henry Friend is a British physicist who was the Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge from 1995 until 2020 and is Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. Friend's research concerns the physics and engineering of carbon-based semiconductors. He also serves as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore.
Alan Arnold Griffith, was an English engineer and the son of Victorian science fiction writer George Griffith. Among many other contributions, he is best known for his work on stress and fracture in metals that is now known as metal fatigue, as well as being one of the first to develop a strong theoretical basis for the jet engine. Griffith's advanced axial-flow turbojet engine designs were integral in the creation of Britain's first operational axial-flow turbojet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2, which first ran successfully in 1941. Griffith, however, had little direct involvement in actually producing the engine, after he moved in 1939 from leading the engine department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment to start work at Rolls-Royce.
The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) is a British engineering institution with activities including that promotes the development of materials science.
Sir Frederick Charles Frank, OBE, FRS was a British theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work on crystal dislocations, including the idea of the Frank–Read source of dislocations. He also proposed the cyclol reaction in the mid-1930s, and made many other contributions to solid-state physics, geophysics, and the theory of liquid crystals.
John "Shôn" Eirwyn Ffowcs Williams (1935–2020) was Emeritus Rank Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a former Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1996–2002). He may be best known for his contributions to aeroacoustics, in particular for his work on Concorde. Together with one of his students, David Hawkings, he introduced the far-field integration method in computational aeroacoustics based on Lighthill's acoustic analogy, known as the Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings analogy.
The Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy (DMSM) is a large research and teaching division of the University of Cambridge. Since 2013 it has been located in West Cambridge, having previously occupied several buildings on the New Museums Site in the centre of Cambridge.
Derek John Fray is a British material scientist, and professor at the University of Cambridge.
Alan G. Thomas (1927-2019) was an international authority on the mechanics of rubbery materials, in particular their fracture mechanics properties. Along with Ronald S. Rivlin, he published the Rupture of Rubber series of articles, beginning in 1953. He was the first to apply Griffith's energy release rate criterion to the analysis of rubber's strength and fatigue behavior.
Dame Molly Morag Stevens is Professor of Biomedical Materials and regenerative medicine and Research Director for Biomedical Materials Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.
Paul O'Brien was professor of Inorganic Materials at the University of Manchester. where he served as head of the School of Chemistry from 2004 to 2009 and head of the School of Materials from 2011 to 2015. He died on 16 October 2018 at the age of 64.
Nicola Maria Pugno is an Italian scientist, mechanical engineer, astrophysicist, with phds in fracture mechanics and biology. He is a full professor of solid and structural mechanics at the University of Trento and of materials science at the Queen Mary University of London.
Thomas Benjamin Britton is a materials scientist, engineer and Associate Professor at The University of British Columbia. His research interests are in micromechanics, deformation, strain and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). In 2014 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), a society of which he then became a Fellow in 2016.
Allan Matthews (1952) is professor of surface engineering and tribology at the University of Manchester and director of the Digitalised Surfaces Manufacturing Network.
Professor David Knowles FREng FIMMM is Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Bristol and Chief Executive of the UK's Henry Royce Institute for advanced materials research. From 2016 to 2019, he was the co-director of the South West Nuclear Hub, and Atkins Fellow. His work focusses primarily on understanding and modelling the degradation mechanisms in metallic materials and their interrelation with the structural integrity of rotating and static equipment in the energy sector.
Fionn Patrick Edward Dunne is a Professor of Materials Science at Imperial College London and holds the Chair in Micromechanics and the Royal Academy of Engineering/Rolls-Royce Research Chair. Professor Dunne specialises in computational crystal plasticity and microstructure-sensitive nucleation and growth of short fatigue cracks in engineering materials, mainly Nickel, Titanium and Zirconium alloys.
David Dye is a Professor of Metallurgy at Imperial College London. Dye specialises in fatigue and micromechanics of aerospace and nuclear materials, mainly Ni/Co superalloys, titanium, TWIP steel, and Zirconium alloys.
Professor Andy Long FREng is the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Northumbria University, the fifth person to hold this role in the institution’s history.
James Busfield is a Queen Mary University of London professor, and head of the United Kingdom's largest research group in the area of Soft Matter.