Peter Day Award 2011 Winner

Awarded for leading the development of new directions in solid state chemistry and materials research under high pressure conditions.

About the Winner

Paul F McMillan is Sir William Ramsay Professor of Chemistry at University College London. He graduated with a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Edinburgh University in 1977 and obtained his Ph.D. degree at Arizona State University (1981). He remained at ASU becoming full Professor in 1992, and Director of the Centre for Solid State Science in 1997. 

In 2000 he moved to London to occupy a new Chair in Solid State Chemistry at UCL and the Royal Institution. In London, he has established laboratories for solid state chemistry and materials research under high pressure-high temperature conditions, along with work on nanomaterials and amorphous materials including the unusual phenomenon of polyamorphism. The high pressure work is now extending into biophysics and biology. 

He received a Wolfson-Royal Society Research Merit Award (2001-2006) and was awarded an EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship (2006-2011). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and received the RSC award for Solid State Chemistry in 2003.