MacDiarmid an inspiration to young scientists

massey-university

Thu Feb 08 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

MacDiarmid an inspiration to young scientists

Thursday, 8 February 2007, 3:43 pm
Press Release: Massey University

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Professor Alan MacDiarmid and students

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Massey scientist Professor Ashton Partridge has paid tribute to Nobel Laureate Professor Alan MacDiarmid who died today. Professor Partridge, director of the University’s Nanomaterials Research Centre in Palmerston North, says Professor MacDiarmid inspired a generation of scientists behind some of the most exciting advances in nanotechnology and maintained a close relationship with the University from his home in Pennsylvania, US. “He advocated strongly for emerging researchers, and continued to teach firstyear students throughout his career – he loved to teach and was very down to earth,” Professor Partridge says. Professor MacDiarmid launched the Nanomaterials Research Centre in 2001, lecturing to a capacity crowd, and meeting with staff and students. He also demonstrated his well-known sense of humour by inviting the audience to hold his

Nobel medal so they could say they were holders of the Nobel Medal. Professor MacDiarmid – known as the ‘father’ of conducting polymers – maintained strong links to Massey while at the University of Pennsylvania. The Nanomaterials Research Centre was founded with his collaboration and at the time he praised Massey for the foresight to establish a research centre that would place it as the cutting edge of nanotechnology (the study of materials at one step above the molecular level).

ENDS

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