Marshall Stoneham PhD CPhys FInstP FRS

Tel 020 7679 1377

Fax 020 7679 1360

Email ucapams@ucl.ac.uk

Position: Emeritus Professor

London Centre for Nanotechnology, and Department of Physics and Astronomy (Area: F - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics)

Office location: 60 Charlotte Street (temporary office while the London Centre for Nanotechnology building is being completed)

I’m Emeritus Professor, having retired at the end of September 2005 as Massey Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. I also direct the Centre for Materials Research, an inter-Departmental network, including most areas of the physical sciences and engineering (Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry. Geology, Biochemical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering), from Departments like Archaeology with special interests, and from an increasing number of biological and medical units.

My own background is theoretical physics. and especially solid state theory. For most of my career I was at Harwell, then the major research laboratory of the Atomic Energy Authority. When I first went there, there was a very large basic research programme, with a difference - the basic research also provided routes to answers to pressing practical questions. My own work involved the behaviour ofdefects in solids, and led to some of the first self-consistent calculations of defect excited states, to some of the earliest work in which both the electronic structure problem and the positions of the ions near the defect were solved as a consistent problem, and to a quantitative quantum theory of the diffusion of hydrogen in metals. The work on defects led to some books (Theory of Defects in Solids, Oxford University Press 1975, 1985, 1996 on WWW, and issued as an Oxford Classic in 2001; Russian edition 1978; Defects and Defect Processes in Non-Metallic Solids [with William Hayes], Wiley 1985, reissued Dover Books 2004, Materials Modification by Electronic Excitation [with Noriaki Itoh], Cambridge University Press 2001). In 1974, I became Group Leader, Solid State and Quantum Physics Group. The Group had interests from lasers to non-destructive inspection (which led to a book in 1987 [with Maurice Silk and Andrew Temple on Reliability of Non-Destructive Inspection Institute of Physics Publishing).

I was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989. In that year, I was elected a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, where I had been a Wolfson Industrial Fellow since 1985; I also became Head of Materials Physics and Metallurgy Division, Harwell. This Division had over 200 staff, with interests from boron neutron capture therapy as a possible cancer treatment, to transmutation doping ofsemiconducror silicon, neura

net methods, anti nuclear reactor safety. In 1990 I became Director of Research for AEA Industrial Technology and, soon after. Chief Scientist of AEA Technology, with responsibilities for science at all AEA laboratories, from Dounreay in the far north of Scotland to Winfrith, near the south coast. I continued this role, part time, for a couple of years after moving to UCL in 1995. My links with the UKAEA fusion programme have continued. The review of the European programme in 2000, for which I was the UK representative, was a critical factor leading to the present “fast track” plans for fusion technology. I am a member of the Fusion Board that advises the Culham programme for EPSRC, and my own research interests include the special challenges of fusion materials.

Outside UCL, I’m Editor in Chief of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, one of the leading journals in its field. I have been a Vice President of the Institute of Physics, when I chaired the Board of Institute of Physics Publishing (IoPP), the commercial publishing company and source of the major part of the IoP’s funds for supporting physics, physicists, and physics-related activities. IoPP has won two Queen’s Awards for Exports. I wrote the Foresight Report on Predictive Materials modelling for DTI/OST. I’ve been a member of the EPSRC College since its inception. My wife (also a physicist) and I have founded Oxford Authentication Ltd, a small firm for the scientific authentication of art ceramics (think of Chinese ceramic horses, or bronzes with ceramic cores, or porcelains). I also get a lot of pleasure from music. I play the French horn, and I am the co-author of two books (The Wind Ensemble Sourcebook, which won the Oldman Prize of the International Association of Music Librarians as the best reference work of 1997, and The Wind Ensemble Catalog [yes, it has a American publisher]).

My main research interests are in theoretical solid state physics and materials science. Areas have included (a) the electronic structure of defects and defect processes, especially those involving excited states and polaron behaviour, (b) properties of surfaces and interfaces, especially the metal/oxide interface, and silicon oxidation, one of the central processes in present and future microelectronics, (c) understanding scanning probe microscopy properly (STM, AFM), and (d) diamond and diamond films. However, my major project at present is in quantum information technology: I have a large Basic Technologies grant and the ambition to create solid-state quantum gates that are silicon compatible and could operate at room temperature. The project has strong links with my earlier studies of defects and quantum behaviour. I am also interested in “physics in action” - how basic science helps technology, and how technology drives new science, e.g., in electrical breakdown, or the role of depleted uranium. I have several projects growing from links between the medical research community at UCL and the physical sciences community - a very fruitful area. One project relates to my long-established interest in mesoscopic modelling: successful minimal invasive dentistry can be achieved only when proper account is taken of dental microstructure. Another project asks just how molecules reaching receptors actuate the response; there are serious problems with the usual “lock and key” description (I favour what might be called a “swipe card” model: there are some shape factors, but these do not contain the critical information). A current project asks especially about how we discriminate between different scents, and whether left-handed and right-handed versions of chiral molecules should smell the same or not.