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Condensed Matter Physics Group

History

1957 - 1969: The early years

1957

Eric Mendoza appointed from Bristol.
Low temperature work started.


1958

Henry Hall arrived from Mond Lab, Cambridge.
Start of work on 3He.


1959

Arrival of David Bunbury and Alan Boyle. Later Malcolm McCausland arrived.
The then Head of Department Sam Devons suggested using the newly discovered Mossbauer effect to measure gravitational red shift. This lead to a programme of research on hyperfine fields in (mainly magnetically ordered) solids.


1961

Henry Hall was appointed to a chair.


1962

Eric Mendoza started work towards a helium-3 dilution refrigerator.


1964

Alan Boyle returned to Australia.


1965

HEH produced the first successful dilution refrigerator simultaneously with Neganov at Dubna.


1966

Jeff Ross joined the Mossbauer effect work. David Sandiford began work on type II superconductors.
Peter Lucas and Andrew Tyler completed PhDs on liquid helium and then joined the staff.


1969

John Hook joined and started work on the proximity effect in superconductors.

1970 - 1979

1974

HEH and JRH started experiments on the recently discovered superfluid 3He using CMN demagnetisation. PGJL and AT worked on critical phenomena in 3He-4He mixtures and thermal diffusion near the lambda point.


1975

Nuclear refrigeration started at Manchester.


1977

PGJL and AT worked on thermal convection in 3He-4He mixtures.

1980 - 1989

1985

Work on neutron scattering began.


1986

PGJL built a rotating cryostat for convection studies in 4He.

1990 - 1999

1992

HEH and JRH construct a rotating cryostat for millikelvin work.


1995

Henry Hall, David Bunbury, Malcolm McCausland and Jeff Ross retire.
Work on hyperfine fields in magnetically ordered solids cease owing to retirement.


1996

John Hook was made professor.
PGJL visualised the first convection patterns in 4He.


1998

Andrei Golov appointed to strengthen low temperature work.

2000 to present

2000

Andre Geim and Irina Grigoreiva appointed.
Work on mesoscopic physics began.


2001

John Hook died.


2002

Sasha Grigorenko appointed.

Thanks to Henry Hall, Peter Lucas, Peter Mitchell and Andrei Golov for the above infomation.

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