Peter Hirsch (metallurgist)
{{Short description|British metallurgist (born 1925)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2023}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2012}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Sir Peter Hirsch FRS
| image =
| image_size = 200px
| caption = Sir Peter Hirsch
| birth_date = {{Birth-date and age|16 January 1925}}
| birth_place = Berlin, Germany
| death_date =
| death_place =
| field = Materials Science
| work_institutions = University of Oxford
| alma_mater = Christ's College, Cambridge
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
| doctoral_advisor = W.H. Taylor
| doctoral_students = Michael J Whelan{{Cite news|url=https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/31625|title=Peter Hirsch|date=11 February 2015|access-date=16 January 2018}}
| known_for = Transmission Electron Microscopy
Physics
| prizes = Franklin J. Clamer Medal (1970)
Hughes Medal (1973)
Royal Medal (1977)
Wolf Prize in Physics (1983/4)
Holweck Meda (1988)
Lomonosov Gold Medal of Russian Academy of Sciences (2005)
Fellow of the Royal Society
| thesis_title = An X-ray micro-beam technique
| thesis_url = http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.604092
| thesis_year = 1951
| relatives = Afua Hirsch (great-niece)
}}
Sir Peter Bernhard Hirsch HonFRMS FRS (born 16 January 1925) is a British metallurgist who has made fundamental contributions to the application of transmission electron microscopy to metals.{{cite web|url=http://www.materials.ox.ac.uk/peoplepages/hirsch.html|title=Personal Homepages Professor Sir Peter Hirsch FRS Emeritus Professor Department of Materials Oxford Materials|archive-date=3 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120403234532/http://www.materials.ox.ac.uk/peoplepages/hirsch.html|url-status=dead}}{{Cite journal | last1 = Wilkinson | first1 = A. J. | last2 = Hirsch | first2 = P. B. | doi = 10.1016/S0968-4328(97)00032-2 | title = Electron diffraction based techniques in scanning electron microscopy of bulk materials | journal = Micron | volume = 28 | issue = 4 | pages = 279–308 | year = 1997 | arxiv = 1904.05550 | s2cid = 118944816 }}
Biography
Hirsch was born in 16 January 1925; his parents divorced in 1934 and his father died two years later.{{Cite web |last=Physics |first=American Institute of |date=2021-09-24 |title=Peter Hirsch |url=https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/31625 |access-date=2025-03-19 |website=www.aip.org |language=en}} Hirsch lived in Germany until 1939; he was one of hundreds of Jewish children that escaped Germany via the various Kindertransport missions that saved many such children from the impending dangers of World War II and the Holocaust.{{cite web | url=https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/31625 | title=Peter Hirsch | date=24 September 2021 }}
Hirsch attended Sloane Grammar School, Chelsea, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1946 he joined the Crystallography Department of the Cavendish to work for a PhD on work hardening in metals under W. H. Taylor and Lawrence Bragg.{{Cite journal|last=Kelly|first=Anthony|date=1 January 2013|title=Lawrence Bragg's interest in the deformation of metals and 1950–1953 in the Cavendish – a worm's-eye view|journal=Acta Crystallographica Section A|language=en|volume=69|issue=1|pages=16–24|doi=10.1107/s0108767312034356|pmid=23250056|issn=0108-7673|doi-access=free|bibcode=2013AcCrA..69...16K }} He subsequently carried out work, which is still cited, on the structure of coal.
In the mid-1950s, he pioneered the application of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to metals and developed in detail the theory needed to interpret such images. He was a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge from 1960 to 1966 and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Christ's in 1978. In 1965, with Howie, Whelan, Pashley and Nicholson, he published the text Electron microscopy of thin crystals.P. Hirsch, A. Howie, R. Nicholson, D. W. Pashley and M. J. Whelan (1965/1977) Electron microscopy of thin crystals (Butterworths/Krieger, London/Malabar FL) {{ISBN|0-88275-376-2}}{{Cite journal | last1 = Hirsch | first1 = P. B. | last2 = Howie | first2 = A. | last3 = Nicholson | first3 = R. B. | last4 = Pashley | first4 = D. W. | last5 = Whelan | first5 = M. J. | last6 = Marton | first6 = L. | doi = 10.1063/1.3047787 | title = Electron microscopy | journal = Physics Today | volume = 19 | issue = 10 | pages = 93 | year = 1966 | bibcode = 1966PhT....19j..93H }} The following year he moved to Oxford to take up the Isaac Wolfson Chair in Metallurgy, succeeding William Hume-Rothery. He held this post until his retirement in 1992, building up the Department of Metallurgy (now the Department of Materials) into a world-renowned centre. Among many other honours, he was awarded the 1983 Wolf Foundation Prize in physics. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1963 and knighted in 1975.
Hirsch was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for experimentally establishing the role of dislocations in plastic flow and of electron microscopy as a tool for materials research. He is also a fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
His great-niece is the writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch.{{cite web | url=https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/festivals/antidote/digital/articles/cheat-sheet-afua-hirsch.html | title=Cheat sheet: Afua Hirsch }}
References
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{{Wolf Prize in Physics}}
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Category:Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge
Category:Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
Category:British metallurgists
Category:English people of German-Jewish descent
Category:Fellows of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Category:Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society
Category:Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Category:Isaac Wolfson Professors of Metallurgy
Category:Jewish British scientists