A. Lindsay Greer

Professor Emeritus of Materials Science, University of Cambridge

Seeing ‘through a glass, darkly’: benefits from glasses that are metallic

As normally encountered, metals and alloys are crystalline, i.e. with regularly repeating planes of atoms.  But, with careful processing, metals and alloys can preserve the structure (not the fluidity) of the liquid state, forming ‘glasses’, analogous in structure to window glass, though of quite different chemistry.  Almost exactly 50 years ago, I joined the growing effort researching these new ‘metallic glasses’.  This lecture presents some of the insights gained within my research group and with international colleagues.  We will meet: record-breaking materials properties; a vast range of applications – from springs to computer memory; and impact – from national energy strategy to personal jewellery.  Everyone in the audience, blissfully unaware, is likely to own several metallic-glass components – just where, this talk will reveal!  I will also highlight some links with entirely different glasses and some scientific conundrums …

Lindsay’s research is on the kinetics of microstructural change.  He has focused on analysing the crystallization of liquids and glasses, covering length-scales and cooling rates each spanning more than ten orders of magnitude.  He has published more than 500 scientific papers, and is the author (with K. F. Kelton) of Nucleation in Condensed Matter: Applications in Materials and Biology (2010).  He has delivered the Van Horn Distinguished Lectures (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH, 2010) and the Edward DeMille Campbell Memorial Lecture (ASM International, 2016).  His awards include the Honda Kotaro Medal (2004) of Tohoku University (Japan), the Griffith Medal (2009) of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining, and the Bruce Chalmers Award (2012) of TMS (USA).

Lindsay received his MA and PhD degrees from Cambridge, and holds Honorary Doctorates from AGH University of Science & Technology, Cracow (Poland) and University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’, Sofia (Bulgaria).  He was an Assistant Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard, and has held visiting positions at the CEA & INP Grenoble, Washington University (St Louis MO), and the Universities of Vienna and Turin.  He is a Foreign PI of the Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan).  At Cambridge, he served as Head of the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy (2006‒2013) and Head of the School of the Physical Sciences (2016‒2019).