Subject: Fwd: Development of Far Infrared Spectroscopy.
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 07:27:19 EDT
OK , many thanks! I think that “Crystal Spheres” will be steadily read for years to come on the _www.aias.us_ (http://www.aias.us) site and is an excellent scientific biography for which I am indebted.
Dear Myron, Please find below the latest page of Crystal Spheres.  Development of Far Infrared Spectroscopy.      While doing his Ph D, Myron spent time at the National Physical Laboratory extending the far infra red spectrum of one of the first synthesized liquid crystals, para methoxybenzylidene para n butyl aniline (MBBA), to about 5 wavenumbers (150 GHz).  He carried out this work with Jim Birch on a phase modulated wire grid interferometer at the British National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex. This was in the division started by Alastair Gebbie, then run by George Chantry with John Chamberlain (the driving force behind the pioneering design of the far infra red spectrometer). They were very happy with the perfect overlap Myron had obtained with the Aberystwyth based interferometer in room 262, whose range was 10 to 300 wavenumbers. The NPL work was at time being regularly reported in Nature and other journals, and they also did airborne far infra red work of the atmosphere. They used a Rollin liquid helium cooled detector, whereas at Aberystwyth a Golay pneumatic detector was used.  They also did work on far infra red astronomy with Prof. Martin and Dr. Pupplett at Queen Mary College in the Strand.  Myron was subsequently sponsored for the Harrison and Meldola Medals by the National Physical Laboratory, and Chantry reached a high rank in the diplomatic service.      Myron went on to win a Science Research Council (SRC) post doctoral fellowship that allowed him to work at Oxford University under Prof. Sir John Rowlinson, FRS.  Myron produced one review article in joint authorship with Rowlinson at Oxford and was given the freedom to publish papers independently.  The most significant outcome of Myron’s work at Oxford was computer simulation, with a programme written by Singer and Tildesley, which Myron exploited on his return to Aberystwyth via a link to the University of Manchester’s UMRCC computer.  While at Oxford, Myron also came to appreciate the memory function theory of Mori, which he developed for the far infra red.  Papers of this era on the Omnia Opera of www.aias.us report this work. Myron also worked at this time with Graham Davies at the then British Post Office Research Laboratories at Dollis Hill in North London.  Graham is now head of engineering in the University of Birmingham.  In 1975 Myron was elected Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College on Rowlinson’s recommendation.  It is a Graduate College on the Cherwell built in 1965 with a pleasant library in which Myron frequently studied.  Fortunately, Rowlinson allowed Myron to take the new far infra red interferometer provided by a SRC grant back to EDCL, thus giving state of the art equipment for the research to be continued back in Aberystwyth.       Myron’s return to Aberystwyth was facilitated by a British Ramsay Memorial Fellowship award in 1976 as British Ramsay Fellow of University College London. The award commemorates William Ramsay’s 1904 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering the ‘inert gaseous elements of the air’. This was Britain’s first Nobel Prize for Chemistry.      Myron’s first contact with Trinity College Dublin came when Bill Coffey phoned to point out that the Mori three variable theory Myron had applied to the far infra red was mathematically the same as a two dimensional itinerant oscillator theory which Coffey and Calderwood had developed. Myron was soon given the opportunity to meet his counterparts in Ireland when EDCL’s Professor Mansel Davies asked him to deputize for him at a conference in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). The DIAS is a modern building whose first Director was Erwin Schrödinger, one of the world’s greatest physicists and contemporary of Einstein. During the conference Myron met Bill Coffey, and they walked back to Trinity College for lunch in the Senior Common Room.  TCD has a large outside wall which opens out into quadrangles and an expanse of green.  It is similar to a large Cambridge or Oxford College with the exterior wall sheltering it from the noise of the Dublin traffic.  TCD was founded by Elizabeth 1st Tudor and was the College of Hamilton, Fitzgerald, Walton and other able scientists.  Myron tested the theories produced by Coffey and his colleagues against a telling combination of far infra red and microwave data as soon as he returned to Aberystwyth.  This led to a long term Celtic alliance between the workers and the papers of this era record this collaborative research work.  Coffey is now a professor and fellow of TCD..  The work with Coffey developed into Myron’s first monograph, “Molecular Dynamics”, number 108 on the Omnia Opera and the TCD group also contributed as well as they could to Project Delta of EMLG.      On the literary side the Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett also attended TCD, as did the poet Anthony Cronin and many others..  Oscar Wilde was born in number 18, occupied by the Department before it moved into the printing house.  James Joyce was student at University College Dublin. Kerry