John Venables: Electron Microscopy and Surface Physics
Introduction
Sussex Physics was a wonderful place to get a first "proper job". After a PhD in Cambridge and a 3-year post-doc period in Illinois, it was great to have an exciting new job to return to a beautiful part of the UK. And, although we were passionate about our Science and research in particular, Sussex was a place where many other activities, especially of an interdisciplinary nature, were encouraged.
I wish to pay tribute to Ken Smith, our foundation Professor of Experimental Physics. It was Ken who appointed me to start at Sussex to start in the Autumn term of 1994. I had known Ken in Cambridge, where I demonstrated (assisted) in his Part II Physics Laboratory as a graduate student. Work on Electron Microscopy was very strong in Peter Hirsch's Metal Physics group [1], and so I was able to get a post-doc position in the USA at a great University, and then join Sussex at a formative stage.
This page is about the Electron Microscopy and Surface Physics research group at Sussex. We were not isolated in our interests, but had overlaps to the group on Particle-Solid interactions and also to other efforts in Condensed Matter Physics, Low Temperature Physics and Materials Science. Michael Thompson and Robert Cahn were both appointed to Professorships in 1965. These appontments greatly increased the possibilities for collaboration, both in research and in graduate level and in specialist undergraduate teaching across departmental lines.
But there is space here for elaboration and differentiation, as is required of academics: no-one can be succesful as a clone of anyone else, and that is an amazing privilege of the profession. Sussex literally gave me, and by extension all of us, a chance to do my "own thing", and I feel very grateful to have been able to take that, and build on it in my/our own way. The "our" is important of course, since without collaborators, technical help, students and especially graduate students, one can do very little in experimental physics or any other experimental science. I have been particularly fortunate in all these aspects.
One of the great possibilities offered by this Wiki form of history, is that all of these collaborators can contribute whatever they want or have time for. I am still very much in contact with one of my two first graduate students, George J. Thomas, and the other David J. Ball, can be found via a simple Google searches. Both have had distinguished careers in the US National Laboratory system, and as a Professor of Risk Management respectively. My long-term technician, Chris Harland, who subequently got a PhD himself, and after spells in Industry, became Reader in Electronics at Sussex. I look forward to possibly remaking contact with several others via this celebration of Sussex@50. If any of you wish to elaborate on my account here, that will be wonderful.
References
1. Members of the Metal Physics group were much in demand worldwide at the time, and produced the "Bible", Electron Microscopy of Thin Crystals (Butterworths, London, 1965) following a succesful summer school in July 1963. The authors, P. B. Hirsch FRS, A. Howie, R.B Nicholson, D.W. Pashley and M.J. Whelan, all be came very well known for a whole "School" of Electron Microscopy that spread round the world, with groups in Oxford (led by Professor Sir Peter Hirsch and Professor Mike Whelan, FRS), Cambridge (led by Professor Archie Howie, CBE, FRS), Imperial College (Professor Don Pashley, FRS). Sir Robin Nicholson <span style="text-decoration: underline;" />FRS, FREng was Chief Scientific Advisor, Cabinet Office from 1983-1985 during a long career in Industry and Academia.