Martin Wood Complex, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU
Prof John Gregg, Department of Physics, University of Oxford
Maud Schmitt
Brebis Bleaney is perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work on Electron Spin Resonance: but towards the close of his scientific career he performed some very elegant and less documented work at lower frequencies. This lecture will revisit the beauty of some of those experiments and the lively contributions of his various colleagues and collaborators; and it will recall the Clarendon Laboratory of the day, whose facilities and capabilities were shaped and tuned by BB in his time as Dr. Lee's Professor. In the latter part of the lecture, we shall observe that, like the world of haute couture, basic physics has fashion cycles and we will discuss some aspects of the magnetism of that era that are making a contemporary comeback.
About the speaker: As a graduate student, John Gregg had the great good fortune to be introduced to nuclear magnetism by two unparalleled teachers, Brebis Bleaney and Anatole Abragam, and to be schooled in radio frequency techniques by his "common law supervisor" Neville Robinson. His subsequent career has been in thin film and microwave magnetics with a particular emphasis on Spintronics and the study of microwave magnons. He enjoys both basic research and the challenge of making useful real world devices; but he also relishes the privilege of teaching some of the world's smartest young people as a tutor in Oxford Physics. His current obsession is the potential of Magnonic Computing to offer a fast low-power alternative to silicon technology