Paul Attfield

Paul Attfield
File:Professor Paul Attfield FRS.jpg Paul Attfield in 2015
Born	John Paul Attfield (1962-07-27) 27 July 1962 Birmingham
Fields	Magnetism Superconductivity High Pressure Synthesis Materials Chemistry
Institutions	University of Edinburgh University of Cambridge
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Thesis	The structural and magnetic properties of some transition metal compounds (1987)
Doctoral advisor	Anthony Cheetham
Doctoral students	Sandra Carlsson Wei-tin Chen George Penny
Notable awards	FRS (2014) FRSC (2005) FRSE (2006)
Website www.chem.ed.ac.uk/staff/academic-staff/professor-j-paul-attfield

(John) Paul Attfield (born 1962) FRS is a Professor of Materials Science in the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC).

Education

Attfield was educated at the University of Oxford where he was a member of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry followed by a DPhil in 1987 for his work on chemical crystallography supervised by Anthony Cheetham.

Career

Following his DPhil, Attfield was a Lecturer, and later a Reader at the University of Cambridge from 1991 to 2003.

Research

Attfield's research focuses on synthesis, structural studies, and property measurements for electronic materials such as transition metal oxides. This research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He has also made significant contributions to the study of the Verwey transition in magnetite, solving its charge ordering properties.

Awards and honours

Attfield won the Meldola Medal and Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1991; the Corday-Morgan Medal of the RSC in 1998; and the Peter Day Award in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His nomination reads:

Paul Attfield has made distinctive contributions to the experimental understanding of structure in the solid-state, in particular pioneering the use of resonant X-ray scattering to study cation and valence ordering effects and characterizing charge-order in strongly correlated systems such as magnetite. He introduced the cation-size variance as a concept to rationalize and predict disorder effects, with a substantial impact on the study and preparation of technologically important materials. He has synthesized and characterized new materials with novel electronic properties, including high-Tc superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, and negative thermal expansion, including new developments in high pressure synthesis.