January 29, 2009

NSLS Physicist Pete Siddons Named APS Fellow

Pete Siddons, a physicist at the NSLS, is among four scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory to be named Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS), a professional organization with about 46,000 members. Election to APS Fellowship is limited to no more than one half of one percent of its membership in a given year, and election for this honor indicates recognition by scientific peers for outstanding contributions to physics.

Pete Siddons

Siddons, who was named in addition to BNL physicists Thomas Ludlam, Triveni Rao, and Werner Vogelsang, was honored "for his contribution to x-ray optics, x-ray physics, x-ray detectors, and the development of synchrotron radiation instrumentation and experimental techniques."

Siddons is the group leader of the Experimental Systems Detectors Section at NSLS. To enable the study of a wide variety of materials ranging from computer components to proteins needed for novel drug development, the NSLS produces intense beams of infrared, ultraviolet, or x-ray light in the form of photons at varying energies. Siddons helps experimenters on site and worldwide implement new and more efficient ways to "see" their results through better optics, an arrangement of crystals, mirrors and lenses used to condition the light at the sample being studied, and new systems of detectors used to determine how the light interacts with the sample.

Siddons earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of London, Kings College, in 1979. After serving as director of R&D at Precision Electronic Corporation in Toronto, Canada, Siddons joined Brookhaven in 1985 as a scientist in the NSLS Beamline R&D and User Support group, of which he became the leader in 1994. In 2000, he was made the leader of the NSLS Detector Development & Beamline Controls group. He has shared R&D 100 Awards in 1990 and 2006 and was the recipient of Brookhaven Lab’s Science and Technology Award in 2006.

ARTICLE BY: Kendra Snyder