World-leading scientists, Nobel Prize-winner in Wellington

Some of the world’s leading physicists and chemists are in Wellington next week for a conference to discuss exciting advances in their fields.

The conference—AMN-5, which runs from 7 to 11 February—is hosted by the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a national Centre of Research Excellence, based at Victoria University.

Keynote speakers include:

• Nobel Prize-winner Sir Anthony Leggett, who won the prize in 2003 for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids

• Sir Richard Friend, Professor of Physics at Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, which has produced 29 Nobel Prize winners. Sir Richard’s Professorship is a position previously held by New Zealander Lord Ernest Rutherford

• Neil Ashcroft, a New Zealander who graduated from Victoria University with a Master of Science, is the Horace White Professor of Physics at Cornell University and has made many important contributions to the theory of superconductivity.

Professor Richard Blaikie, Director of the MacDiarmid Institute, says that it was exciting to have so such superb scientists in the country.

“Engineers and scientists will converge on Wellington from all over the world to find out what we’re up to and to talk about future opportunities.

“It’s an incredibly stimulating conference and some of the leading figures are right here from our own country. The last two winners of the Prime Minister’s Science Prize—Professor Sir Paul Callaghan’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging team and Industrial Research Limited’s Dr Jeff Tallon and Dr Bob Buckley—lead research in these fields.”

The AMN conferences, which began in 2003 (also in Wellington), are the largest gatherings of international material physicists, chemists and engineers to assemble in New Zealand.

Fittingly, 2011 also marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity, and 25 years since high temperature superconductivity was first observed.

ENDS

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