Sir Peter Hirsch is a materials scientist whose research uses Transmision Electron Microscopy to observe defects in crystals called dislocations. He is Emeritus Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. A former Fellow of Christ’s, he has been an Honorary Fellow of the College since 1978.
Sir Peter studied Natural Sciences at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and then joined the Department of Crystallography at the Cavendish Laboratory to pursue research on X-ray diffraction from cold worked metals, leading to his PhD on ‘An x-ray micro-beam technique’ which was conferred in 1951.
In the early-mid-1950s, he was working on the application of Transmision Electron Microscopy to metals, co-authoring a study of the structure of cold work gold by electron diffraction which was published in 1955. He became Assistant Director of Research in Physics at Cambridge in 1957 and University Lecturer in Physics from 1958. In 1960 he was elected to a Fellowship at Christ’s, and in 1964 the University promoted him to a Readership in Physics.
In 1966 Sir Peter resigned his roles at Cambridge to become the Isaac Wolfson Professor of Metallurgy in the University of Oxford, remaining in that role, held alongside a Fellowship at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, until retiring in 1992, when he was granted emeritus status. From 1988 to 1996 he was founder Chairman of Isis Innovation, the technology transfer company of the University of Oxford.
His research has led to many awards, prizes and medals, including the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal in 1973 and Royal Medal in 1977, and for outstanding achievements in solid state physics he received the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Lomonosov Gold Medal in 2005. He was knighted in 1975. He has several honorary doctorates, and in Cambridge he was made an Honorary Fellow of Christ’s College in 1978 and St Catharine’s in 1982, which was also the year he became Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority until 1984.
Sir Peter has been a member of the advisory board to several companies and is a member or fellow of learned societies in the UK and countries including France, Belgium, Spain, Russia, the United States, Japan, India, China, and Russia.