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 led by Sir John Meurig Thomas† ('JMT'), with Dr. Subramaniam Ramdas† ('Ram'), Dr. Bill Jones and Dr. Gordon Parkinson as specialists, 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, 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 by interacting with his research students. I stayed in this field through to a promotion to a Senior Lectureship in 1996, but began then to look for a change away from academic life.
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 largely "amorphous" to powder X-ray diffraction. The selection problem was finally resolved measurements of specific surface area coupled with chemical analysis. As part of a series of re-structurings leading to the takeover of WBB by Sibelco, I moved to Germany in 2001, and remained with the company until the autumn of 2005.
In Germany I was able to resume music as a hobby by singing in the Bach-Chor and the Chor des Musikinstituts in Koblenz. A contact made in the Bach-Chor kindly introduced me to his colleagues in the Faculty of Ceramics of the Fachhochschule Koblenz in Höhr-Grenzhausen, and we agreed that I should give one lecture a week there as a Lehrbeauftragter für Funktionskeramik. I was therefore already known when a professorship became vacant there at the end of 2005.
The ensuing professorship at the Fachhochschule, later Hochschule Koblenz provided a structured professional life by my conducting 18 hours' teaching per week and some administrative tasks. The remaining time could be filled flexibly by pursuing research interests.