a story lives forever
Register
Sign in
Form submission failed!

Stay signed in

Recover your password?
Register
Form submission failed!

Web of Stories Ltd would like to keep you informed about our products and services.

Please tick here if you would like us to keep you informed about our products and services.

I have read and accepted the Terms & Conditions.

Please note: Your email and any private information provided at registration will not be passed on to other individuals or organisations without your specific approval.

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

NEXT STORY

Being a family man

RELATED STORIES

'If you want to learn a subject, write a book on it'
Norman Greenwood Scientist
Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

So I thought it was now… let me calculate, it was 15 or so years getting on that way, certainly more than a decade, from… yes, it must have been 15 years since I left Australia, and my Masters work on copper oxide was, in a way, a dim memory. I hadn’t been keeping up with that sort of literature, so I thought I’d better find out what the current scenes in solid state nonstoichiometry were, and whether Mössbauer could solve any of these problems.

And remembering an old adage which JS Anderson told me as a graduate student, ‘Norman, if you want to learn a subject, write a book on it’. Well, I’d just done that with Mössbauer Spectroscopy, I suppose, and I thought if I’m going to find out what is current in the solid state field, I’d better write a book on it. And the way to do that was to take sabbatical leave and go to a university in America and see what would come of that. So I did. I went to Michigan State University, and I wrote a book called Ionic Crystals, Lattice Defects, and Nonstoichiometry.

Norman Greenwood (1925-2012) was born in Australia and graduated from Melbourne University before going to Cambridge. His wide-ranging research in inorganic and structural chemistry made major advances in the chemistry of boron hydrides and other main-group element compounds. He also pioneered the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy to problems in chemistry. He was a prolific writer and inspirational lecturer on chemical and educational themes, and held numerous visiting professorships throughout the world.

Listeners: Brian Johnson

Professor Brian FG Johnson FRS, FRSE, FRS Chem, FAcad Eu, FAS. Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Edinburgh 1991-1995, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Cambridge 1995-2005, Master Fitzwilliam College Cambridge 1999-2005. Research interests include studies of transition metal carbonyls, organometallic chemistry, nano- particles and homogeneous catalysis. Professor Johnson is the author of over 1000 research articles and papers.

Tags: Australia, Mössbauer Spectroscopy, USA, Michigan State University, Ionic Crystals, Lattice Defects, and Nonstoichiometry, Bell Labs, Bell Laboratories, JS Anderson

Duration: 2 minutes, 19 seconds

Date story recorded: May 2011

Date story went live: 25 November 2011