![[picture]](images/Alan.jpg)
It is the intention, in these newsletters, to focus on various members of staff. It seems appropriate to start with Professor Alan Windle, who took over as Head of Department in January, from Professor Colin Humphreys. Although Alan is now well known for his work in polymers, he graduated with an Engineering degree in Metallurgy from Imperial College, London. He then studied for his PhD in Cambridge, working on the hydrogen embrittlement of nickel under Gerry Smith. His interest in polymers was sparked by spending 8 months in the Physics Department at Bristol, working with Andrew Keller. After another spell at Imperial, he moved back to Cambridge in 1975, where he built up the Polymer Group, concentrating initially on the structure of non-crystalline polymers. Computer modelling, particularly of diffraction patterns, has been an important theme in Alan's work over the past 25 years. (Yes, there was a computer around in those days! - just one for the whole University). The emphasis on modelling research in the polymer group is now moving from the molecular to the microstructural scale, and is a component of the rapidly growing co-ordinated programme into materials modelling in the Department.
Alan Windle was elected to the Chair of Materials Science at Cambridge in 1992. He is a fellow of Trinity College and played a central role in the formation of the Melville Laboratory, an interdepartmental laboratory devoted to polymer synthesis and one focus for polymer research throughout the University. He holds the Bessemer and Royal Society of Arts silver medal from Imperial College. In 1988 he was awarded the Rosenhain Medal by the Institute of Metals and in 1992 the Swinburne Gold Medal and prize by the Plastics and Rubber Institute, both citing his research into liquid crystalline polymers. The author and co-author of over 150 papers and two books, he lives in Cambridge with his wife and family.
In his spare time (what spare time?) he flies light aeroplanes which he describes as ``probably the most time efficient method possible of getting away from it all''.
As the incoming Head of Department, Professor Windle sees his main objective as ``steering a happy ship in a way which befits the quite exceptional talents of its crew''. He says that ``a major challenge in the years ahead will be to thrive as financial constraints become more real while the parameters which determine them become ever more mobile and subject to political manoeuvourings. We also have the challenge of financing our vision of a new International Materials Centre in West Cambridge, which is timed to coincide with the new millennium. But the key to all is never to take our eyes off the only target which really matters, which is the maintenance of absolute excellence in teaching and in research''.