The beginning of retirement marks a point to look both back and forward. It also provides time to construct a website to share insights and viewpoints gained in over forty years as a scientist.
My three years (1980-83) in Cambridge in the research group of Sir John Meurig Thomas† ('JMT'), Subramaniam Ramdas† ('Ram'), Bill Jones and Gordon Parkinson ultimately gave me the confidence to embark on a research career. As JMT was predominantly occupied with zeolites at that time, Bill was leading the "organic solid state" group, of which I was a member. Having read Chemical Physics in Bristol, my capabilities in synthetic chemistry were very limited. Accordingly I was assigned to Ram, the whizz in the group on computer modelling, to model photoreactive organic molecular crystals. Later on, amid concerns that I was spending too much time on the computer, I carried out experimental TEM work with Gordon on an old Siemens microscope with in situ UV irradiation.
These were formative years. I left Cambridge with a love of crystallography and computing that has sustained me throughout. Two years later, I landed a "New Blood" Lectureship in Electroceramics at the University of Leeds. Dr. Tony Moulson† had founded a research group on perovskite ferroelectrics, and I worked my way into this field through interactions with group-members. Although I enjoyed a modicum of success, as reflected by my promotion to a Senior Lectureship in 1996, I was never entirely happy. At the subject-level, Ceramics is far more concerned with microstructure than with crystal structure. On the career-side, the "publish or perish" mentality, the pressure to obtain grant-funding and the reality of supervising research students signalled to me the need for a change.
This came along in 1997, as I joined the company Watts Blake Bearne (WBB) in South Devon as Principal Scientist. JMT had recommended me to the CEO, Dr. Graham Lawson†, as someone capable of rationalising ball clay selections. This move was also in line with my growing interest in Mineralogy. Following initial progress, I had to grapple scientifically with the problem that the minerals in ball clays, on account of the high concentration of significantly sub-micron particle-sizes, are "amorphous to X-rays". Consequently powder X-ray diffraction is a poor quantitative characteristic technique for ball clays. This problem was finally resolved experimentally by surface area analysis and backed up theoretically by use of the Debye Scattering Equation. As part of a series of re-structurings that ultimately led to the takeover of WBB by Sibelco, I moved to Germany in 2001, and remained with the company until the autumn of 2005.
My stationing in the Westerwald allowed me to occupy a flat in Höhr-Grenzhausen, from where I could motor down to Koblenz in the evenings, in order to sing in three different choirs, the Bach-Chor, the Chor des Musikinstituts and the Evangelische Singgemeinde. Apart from the regeneration afforded by my smothering in music, I got to know fellow bass Peter Fischer† in the Bach-Chor, who was a professor in retirement from the Fachhochschule Koblenz in Höhr-Grenzhausen. Peter introduced me to the Dean there, Frieder Heyder†, who took me on as a Lehrbeauftragter für Funktionskeramik. I was therefore "on the map" as a Ceramics specialist and a strong candidate when a professorship became vacant there at the end of 2005.
The professorship at the Fachhochschule, later Hochschule Koblenz from March 2006 onwards gave me both structure and flexibility. Structure was provided by fulfilling the 18SWS Lehrdeputat (18 hours' teaching per week) and administrative tasks. The remaining time could be filled flexibly by pursuing research interests.