The Journey Begins

Emeritus Professor of Physics at University of Nottingham, England. I graduated with a first in Physics in 1952 and began my life in science in the laboratories of ICI in Manchester, working successively on mass spectrometry, electron spin resonance and high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance, NMR. In 1959, I moved to the University of Bangor as a lecturer and from there to Nottingham as a senior lecturer in 1963, becoming Reader later and Professor in 1975. I retired in 1996. My research was aimed at exploring quantum tunnelling in molecules, and especially in methyl groups, and in using it to explore the transition between quantum and classical motion. Between 1968 and 1984, I devised several ways of measuring the quantum tunnelling frequencies by various magnetic resonance techniqes and so opened the new field of molecular tunnelling spectroscopy. In 1968, I extended the methods to neutron scattering and began a long and fruitful cooperation with ILL. During my career I wrote about 130 papers and had about 35 PhD students. I taught both special and general relativity over many years. It was only after my retirement and after the dawn of my interest in George Berkeley that I began to think deeply about things and ask questions. View all posts by Stan Clough