Peter Bernhard Hirsch

Happy birthday to Peter Bernhard Hirsch! Hirsch was born on 16 January 1925. He is a leading figure in materials science who made fundamental contributions to the application of transmission electron microscopy to metals. Hirsch went to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and in 1946 joined the Crystallography Department of the Cavendish to work for a PhD on work hardening in metals under Lawrence Bragg. In the mid-1950s he pioneered the application of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to metals, and developed in detail the theory needed to interpret such images. In 1965, with Howie, Whelan, Pashley and Nicholson, he published the seminal text Electron microscopy of thin crystals. The following year he moved to Oxford to take up the Isaac Wolfson Chair in Metallurgy, succeeding William Hume-Rothery. He held this post until his retirement in 1992, building up the Department of Metallurgy (now the Department of Materials) into a world-renowned centre. Among many other honours, he was awarded the 1983 Wolf Foundation Prize in physics. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1963, and knighted in 1975. He is a fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Date in History: 16 January 1925