John Charles Howorth Spence

ForMemRS Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

HonFRMS The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) is a learned society for the promotion of microscopy. It was founded in 1839 as the Microscopical Society of London making it the oldest organisation of its kind in the world. In 1866, the Society gained it ...

(21 April 1946 – 28 June 2021) was Richard Snell

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

and Director of Science at the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

BioXFEL Science and Technology Center.

Education

Spence was educated at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

where he was awarded a

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 ...

in 1973 for work on double

plasmon In physics, a plasmon is a quantum of plasma oscillation. Just as light (an optical oscillation) consists of photons, the plasma oscillation consists of plasmons. The plasmon can be considered as a quasiparticle since it arises from the quant ...

studies of metals under the supervision of

Alan Spargo Alan may refer to: People *Alan (surname), an English and Kurdish surname *Alan (given name), an English given name **List of people with given name Alan ''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.'' *Al ...

. He conducted postdoctoral research at

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

under Sir Peter Hirsch,

David Cockayne David John Hugh Cockayne FRS FInstP (19 March 1942 – 22 December 2010) was Professor in the physical examination of materials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow at Linacre College from 2000 t ...

and

Michael Whelan Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is an Americans, American artist of imaginative Realism (arts), realism. For more than 30 years, he worked as an illustrator, specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art. Since the mid-1990s, he has ...

, and then at

under John M. Cowley, working alongside

Sumio Iijima is a Japanese physicist and inventor, often cited for his discovery of carbon nanotubes. Although carbon nanotubes had been observed prior to his "invention", Iijima's 1991 paper generated unprecedented interest in the carbon nanostructures an ...

Ondrej Krivanek Ondrej L. Krivanek (born Ondřej Ladislav Křivánek; August 1, 1950) is a Czech-British physicist resident in the United States, and a leading developer of electron-optical instrumentation. He won the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience in 2020 for his ...

and David J. Smith. Later, he established his own group at

Awards and honours

Spence was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2015. His nomination reads: In 2017 he was made an

Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) is a learned society for the promotion of microscopy. It was founded in 1839 as the Microscopical Society of London making it the oldest organisation of its kind in the world. In 1866, the Society gained it ...

(HonFRMS) for his contributions to microscopy. Spence was a (corresponding) Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and the author of the book "Lightspeed" (OUP 2019) on the history of attempts to measure the speed of light leading to Einstein's theories. For 2021 he was awarded the

Gregori Aminoff Prize The Gregori Aminoff Prize is an international prize awarded since 1979 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the field of crystallography, rewarding "a documented, individual contribution in the field of crystallography, including areas concer ...

. He died in 2021.

Bibliography

Monograph and handbook

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Nonfiction

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References