Peter Pusey

Peter Pusey
Born	Peter Nicholas Pusey (1942-12-30) 30 December 1942 (age 81)[2]
Alma mater	University of Cambridge Pittsburgh University (PhD)[1]
Awards	FRS (1996) Rhodia Prize (2005)[1]
Scientific career
Fields	Condensed matter physics
Institutions	IBM Research Royal Signals and Radar Establishment[1] University of Edinburgh

Peter Nicholas Pusey (born 30 December 1942) FRSE FRS is a British physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh.^[3][4]

Research

Pusey is a pioneer of dynamic light scattering (DLS) and is known for elucidating the structure and dynamics of concentrated colloidal suspensions. He contributed to the development, underlying theory and applications of DLS. He was among the first to apply photon correlation techniques and, with colleagues, developed the now standard method of cumulant analysis for particle sizing.^[5] His theory, with William van Megen, of DLS by non-ergodic media resolved long-standing difficulties, allowing DLS studies of amorphous solid-like systems such as polymer gels and glassy colloidal suspensions.

With his work on the Brownian motions of strongly interacting particles, Pusey was one of the first to apply microscopic approaches to colloidal suspensions. His research exploited analogies and differences between concentrated suspensions of hard-sphere colloids and atomic materials, to investigate such fundamental phenomena as crystallisation, the glass transition and the formation of ordered binary superlattices.

With Eric Jakeman, Pusey also introduced K-distributions; these have proved powerful in describing the statistical properties of, for example, microwaves scattered by the sea surface and laser light propagating through the atmosphere.^[3]

Awards and honours

Pusey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1996^[3] and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the same year.^[6] In 2005, he was awarded the Rhodia Prize by the European Colloid and Interface Society for his Outstanding contributions in the experimental study of dynamically arrested (glassy) particulate matter, especially in relation to hard sphere fluids with added polymer.^[1]

References

1. Rhodia Prize, ECIS, retrieved 2016-03-12.
2. "PUSEY, Prof. Peter Nicholas". Who's Who. Vol. 2016 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. "Peter Pusey". London: Royal Society. One or more of the preceding sentences may incorporate text from the royalsociety.org website where "all text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." "Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on February 20, 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
4. People directory, University of Edinburgh, retrieved 2016-03-12.
5. Mailer, Alastair G.; Clegg, Paul S.; Pusey, Peter N. (2015). "Particle sizing by dynamic light scattering: non-linear cumulant analysis". Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 27 (14): 145102. arXiv:1504.06502. Bibcode:2015JPCM...27n5102M. doi:10.1088/0953-8984/27/14/145102. PMID 25788443. S2CID 206044416. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
6. "Professor Peter Nicholas Pusey FRS FRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". The Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2018-02-09.