Gerhard Materlik | |
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Gerhard Theodor Materlik CBE FRS (born 16 January 1945) is a German physicist and science manager. He has made significant contributions to X-ray physics, notably improvements in the real-world application of synchrotron radiation. [2] He is a Professor of Facilities Science at the University College London since 2013. [1] [3]
Materlik completed his undergraduate education in physics in Münster and Munich in 1970. He earned his doctorate from the University of Dortmund in 1975. [1] After postdoctoral appointments at Cornell University (1975–1977) and Bell Laboratories, he took a job at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg.
From 2001–2013, Materlik was Chief Executive of the Diamond Light Source, the United Kingdom's synchrotron facility. He was the leader of the team that constructed the accelerators, which speed up electrons to near the speed of light, and also the instrumentation installed to apply this radiation in experiments covering a spectral range from infrared radiation up to X-rays.
His discoveries have become widely used experimental methods. He has published more than 200 papers. He assisted in the development of synchrotron sources worldwide. [2]
In 2007, Materlik was awarded a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2011. [2] His certificate of election reads:
Gerhard Materlik has made important discoveries in the science and application of Synchroton Radiation and is the leader of the team that constructed and now operates the world leading Diamond Light Source facility. He has contributed to the many fields in the application of synchrotron x-rays (SXR) most of which are now widely used experimental methods with SXR. He has made notable contributions to the improvement of SXR sources, notably the soft X-ray FEL, FLASH at DESY, the newly commissioned hard X-ray FEL, LCLS at SLAC and the hard X-ray FEL, E-XFEL, currently been built at DESY. [4]
In 2014 he was awarded the Glazebrook Medal by the Institute of Physics for his leadership in establishing a world-leading laboratory at the Diamond Light Source. [5] [6]
DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure, dynamics and function of matter, and conducts a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary scientific research in four main areas: particle and high energy physics; photon science; astroparticle physics; and the development, construction and operation of particle accelerators. Its name refers to its first project, an electron synchrotron. DESY is publicly financed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal States of Hamburg and Brandenburg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
A synchrotron light source is a source of electromagnetic radiation (EM) usually produced by a storage ring, for scientific and technical purposes. First observed in synchrotrons, synchrotron light is now produced by storage rings and other specialized particle accelerators, typically accelerating electrons. Once the high-energy electron beam has been generated, it is directed into auxiliary components such as bending magnets and insertion devices in storage rings and free electron lasers. These supply the strong magnetic fields perpendicular to the beam that are needed to convert high energy electrons into photons.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
A free-electron laser (FEL) is a light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An FEL functions and behaves in many ways like a laser, but instead of using stimulated emission from atomic or molecular excitations, it employs relativistic electrons as a gain medium. Radiation is generated by a bunch of electrons passing through a magnetic structure. In an FEL, this radiation is further amplified as the radiation re-interacts with the electron bunch such that the electrons start to emit coherently, thus allowing an exponential increase in overall radiation intensity.
The Positron–Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator (PETRA) is one of the particle accelerators at the German national laboratory DESY in Hamburg, Germany. At the time of its construction, it was the biggest storage ring of its kind and still is DESY's second largest synchrotron after HERA. PETRA's original purpose was research in elementary particle physics. From 1978 to 1986, it was used to study electron–positron collisions with the four experiments JADE, MARK-J, PLUTO and TASSO. The discovery of the gluon, the carrier particle of the strong nuclear force, by the TASSO collaboration in 1979 is counted as one of the biggest successes. PETRA was able to accelerate electrons and positrons to 19 GeV.
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's Australian Synchrotron is a 3 GeV national synchrotron radiation facility located in Clayton, in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, which opened in 2007.
An X-ray microscope uses electromagnetic radiation in the soft X-ray band to produce images of very small objects.
FLASH, acronym of Free Electron LASer in Hamburg, is a superconducting particle accelerator-based soft X-ray free-electron laser located at the German national laboratory DESY in Hamburg, Germany. It can generate very powerful, ultrashort pulses (~10−14 s) of coherent radiation in the energy range from 10 eV (electronvolt) to 300 eV. It started operation for external users in the year 2005 and is used for surface, molecular and atomic physics experiments. Intended applications are also the imaging of single biological complex molecules with time resolution.
Swapan Chattopadhyay CorrFRSE is an Indian American physicist. Chattopadhyay completed his PhD from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1982.
The Berliner Elektronenspeicherring-Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung m. b. H., abbreviated BESSY, is a research establishment in the Adlershof district of Berlin. Founded on 5 March 1979, it currently operates one of Germany's 3rd generation synchrotron radiation facilities, BESSY II. Originally part of the Leibniz Association, BESSY now belongs to the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams.
Kenneth Charles Holmes FRS was a British molecular biologist.
Claudio Pellegrini is an Italian/American physicist known for his pioneering work on X-ray free electron lasers and collective effects in relativistic particle beams.
Robin Marshall is an Emeritus professor of Physics & Biology in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He currently lives in the village of Castillon-du-Gard in the region of Occitanie, where he writes and paints.
Diffraction-limited storage rings (DLSR), or ultra-low emittance storage rings, are synchrotron light sources where the emittance of the electron-beam in the storage ring is smaller or comparable to the emittance of the x-ray photon beam they produce at the end of their insertion devices. These facilities operate in the soft to hard x-ray range (100eV—100keV) with extremely high brilliance (in the order of 1021—1022 photons/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW)
The High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) is a diffraction-limited storage ring synchrotron light source producing hard x-ray radiations for scientific applications that will be built in the Huairou District in suburban Beijing, with estimated completion in 2025.
Avraham (Avi) Gover is an Israeli professor of Electrical Engineering in the Physical Electronics Department of the Engineering Faculty at Tel Aviv University, specializing in Quantum Electronics and FEL Physics. Gover is also the head of the Israeli Center for Radiation Sources and Applications in Ariel. In 2005, he was awarded the international FEL prize "in recognition for his outstanding contributions to Free Electron Laser science and technology".
Saša Bajt is a Slovenian scientist and group leader at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, where she develops multi-layer mirrors for X-ray application such as Laue lenses. . She is a regular collaborator of the European XFEL.
Henry N. Chapman FRS is a British physicist and the founding director of the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY). He has made numerous contributions to the field of x-ray coherent diffraction imaging and is a pioneer of the diffraction before destruction technique that allows to analyze biological samples with intense, ultrafast x-ray light, such as Photosystem II, a key macromolecule in photosynthesis.
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