Michael Mark Woolfson (9 January 1927 – 23 December 2019) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

physicist and planetary scientist. His research interests were in the fields of

x-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to Diffraction, diffract in specific directions. By measuring th ...

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

, colour vision and the formation of

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s and

planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...

Academia

He was educated at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship ...

and received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

UMIST The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for Research univer ...

, where he was supervised by Henry Lipson. He was a research assistant at UMIST 1950-52 and at

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, 1952–54. He was an ICI Fellow, University of Cambridge, 1954–55. At UMIST he was a lecturer, 1955–61, and a Reader, 1961–65. Between 1959–60, he went on sabbatical working as a consultant at IBM, White Plains. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics, 1965-94

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

and head of the Department of Physics, 1982–87. He served as the first provost of Goodricke College between 1968 and 1972. He was

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

DIAMOND Light Source

In November 1991, the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) set up a panel, which was chaired by Woolfson, to review synchrotron facilities in the UK. In April 1993, the “Woolfson Report” was published. Amongst the recommendations made in the report was the setting up of a new medium energy X-ray source to replace the existing Synchrotron Radiation Source, which was then located at Daresbury in Cheshire, UK. This new source was called the

Diamond Light Source Diamond Light Source (or Diamond) is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Its purpose is to produce synchrotron light, intense beams of light whose spec ...

and, after some debate, it was decided to locate this source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire, UK

Honours

He became an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College in 1999. He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1984 and was also a fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charitable organisation, charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, planetary science, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its ...

and the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

. He was president and Honorary Vice-President of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. He was awarded the Royal Society

Hughes Medal The Hughes Medal is a silver-gilt medal awarded by the Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. T ...

in 1986, the Patterson Award from the American Crystallographic Association in 1990, the Gregori Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1992,the

Dorothy Hodgkin Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for ...

Prize by the British Crystallographic Association in 1997 and the Ewald Prize by the

International Union of Crystallography The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) is an organisation devoted to the international promotion and coordination of the science of crystallography. The IUCr is a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Objectives T ...

in 2002.

Publications

He published papers and books on the subjects of x-ray crystallography, materials science, planet formation, mathematics, imaging, time, probability&statistics, colour vision and astrophysics. Woolfson was active in research and scientific writing for nearly 70 years; his first paper was published in 1951 and his last book on stars M M Woolfson, About Stars, World Scientific Publishing Company, July 2019 was published in July 2019, a few months before he died.

References

*Michael M. Woolfson, (2012). ''Everyday Probability and Statistics, Health, Elections, Gambling and War, 2nd Edition'', Imperial College Press. *Michael M. Woolfson and Fan Hai-Fu, (2005). ''Physical and Non-Physical Methods of Solving Crystal Structures'', Cambridge University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Woolfson, Michael 1927 births Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society Fellows of the Royal Society 2019 deaths People from Hackney Central Academics of the University of York British planetary scientists Presidents of the British Crystallographic Association Jewish British scientists 20th-century British physicists 20th-century British Jews