Bernal Lecture 2025: The Harvest of an eclectic Mind: Alan Mackay and the Rewriting of the Book of Crystallography
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Joining Bernal’s laboratory some 75 years ago, Alan Mackay delighted in challenging scientific orthodoxy. Inspired by Bernal, he expanded the scope of crystallography to embrace the whole science of structures. Ignoring the crystallographic ban on 5-fold symmetry led to not only the Mackay icosahedron that other fields have exploited productively, but also to what many consider his crowning achievement – predicting the existence of quasicrystals, the preparation of which earned others a Nobel Prize.
This year's Bernal Lecture sets Alan’s scientific achievements, and other products of his fertile mind, within the unusual intellectual environment of Bernal’s laboratory, one which unfortunately could not be reproduced today.
Agenda:
16:00: Lecture and Q&A (doors to open at 3.30pm)
17:00: Drinks Reception
19:00: Event close
The event is free to attend but places are limited and booking is essential.
Contact name: External Relations Events
Speakers-
Professor John Finney
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Professor Finney received his first degree in Natural Sciences (with an emphasis on Physics) from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1964. He then completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the University of Leicester. From 1965 to 1968, he worked as a Research Assistant to Professor J.D. Bernal in the Crystallography Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he also earned a PhD for his research on models of simple liquids.
He remained at Birkbeck as a Lecturer, later becoming a Reader (1977–1986), before being awarded a personal chair in 1986. In 1988, he moved on secondment to the ISIS Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, where, as Division Head and subsequently Chief Scientist, he was responsible for developing the scientific programme on the then-new pulsed spallation neutron source.
In 1993, he joined UCL as Quain Professor of Physics, where he established a new team in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. From 1993 to 1996, he also served as Science Coordinator for the European Spallation Source Project.
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