| Citation | Terry Quinn is a world authority in the science of measurement. His original work was done at the NPL, but since 1977 he has worked at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, at Sèvres. He has made outstanding contributions to radiometry, thermometry, the measurement of mass, and the measurement of the gravitational constant and other fundamental constants. He was the first to develop the experimental technique of cryogenic radiometry, thus reducing the uncertainty in radiometric measurement by two orders of magnitude. Cryogenic radiometry is now the universal reference for all radiometric measurements. He is the leading expert on thermometry, particularly through pyrometry and acoustic thermometry, and has written the definitive monograph on this subject. He was the first to develop the flexure strip balance, which now allows comparison of 1 kg masses to a few parts in 1012, and he is currently working on a new experimental determination of Newton's gravitational constant. Since 1988, when he became the first Director of the BIPM from the UK, he has become a champion of accurate and reliable measurement, and has significantly increased the impact of metrology in international affairs. It is due to Quinn that these ideas were brought into measurements in chemistry, and he is the driving force behind a new international agreement on measurement standards linking all the industrialized nations of the world. |