Alex Hannon

Alex Hannon is an instrument scientist on the GEM (General Materials) neutron diffractometer at the ISIS pulsed neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK. Alex runs the scientific programme using GEM to investigate the structure of disordered materials, including both glasses and crystalline materials. He was awarded a first class degree in physics by Oxford University, and then a PhD in physics by Reading University. His PhD was supervised by Adrian Wright, from whom he learnt the power of neutron scattering to probe the structure of glass at the atomic level. A notable early success was the use of neutron scattering methods to quantify the presence of boroxol rings in the structure of boron oxide glass. When first at ISIS, he worked on the Polaris beamline, developing polarised neutron techniques, and then moved to work on the Liquids and Amorphous Diffractometer, LAD, the predecessor to GEM. The main focus of Alex’s research has been to advance understanding of how the atoms bond together in the structure of glasses, and he has co-authored more than 250 papers in scientific journals. A notable recent development has been the invention of a method for the measurement of neutron scattering length, using total neutron scattering. Alex is currently chair of the Basic Science & Technology and Programme Committees of the Society of Glass Technology.