| Authorised form of name | Woolfson; Michael Mark (1927 - 2019) |
| Dates | 1927 - 2019 |
| Nationality | British |
| Date of birth | 09/01/1927 |
| Date of death | 23/12/2019 |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Research field | Planetary science |
| X-ray crystallography |
| Biophysics |
| Activity | Education:
University of Oxford, MA in physics (1947); University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, PhD
Career:
Research assistant, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (1950-1952); Research assistant, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (1952-1954); ICI Fellow, University of Cambridge (1954-1955); University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, lecturer (1955-1961), reader (1961-1965); Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of York (1965-1997)
Memberships:
RAS; Institute of Physics
|
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 15/03/1984 |
| Age at election | 57 |
| RSActivity | Medals and prizes:
Hughes Medal 1986 |
| OtherInfo | Michael Woolfson was a leading X-ray crystallographer. He made great progress towards a general solution of the problem of determining crystal structures, and was responsible for the use of direct methods that enabled structures to be deduced directly from the diffraction data. His devices, such as the computer package MULTAN, were responsible for about half of the structures determined around the world in the 1980s. His parallel work on the origin of the Solar System renewed interest in the capture theory, which had been thought to be obsolete, and he contributed numerous stimulating ideas to the general study of the origin and dynamical evolution of the Solar System. He was Chairman of the Royal Society’s Subcommittee on Planetary Sciences.
Professor Michael Woolfson FRS died on 23 December 2019. |
| Source | Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Woolfson |
| Code | NA3884 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/1984/39 | Woolfson, Michael Mark: certificate of election to the Royal Society | 1982 |
| IM/GA/SGRS/8375 | Woolfson, Michael Mark | 1985 |