Athene Donald

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Athene Donald
File:Athene Donald (cropped).jpg
Born Athene Margaret Griffith
(1953-05-15) 15 May 1953 (age 70)[1]
Nationality British
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Institutions <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Alma mater Girton College, Cambridge
Thesis Electron microscopy of grain boundary embrittled systems (1977)
Notable awards <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Spouse Matthew J. Donald[1]
Website
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Dame Athene Margaret Donald DBE FRS (born 15 May 1953)[1] is a British physicist.[4][5] She is Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, a member of the Cambridge University Council and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

Education

Donald was educated at Camden School for Girls[1] and Girton College, Cambridge. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Science (Theoretical Physics) followed by a PhD in 1977.[14]

Research

Donald worked at Cornell University as a postdoctoral associate, before returning to Cambridge in 1981 and to the Cavendish Laboratory in 1983. She became Professor of Experimental Physics in 1998. Her major domain of study is soft matter physics, particularly its applications to living organisms and the relationship between structure and other properties.[15][16] Her research has applied microscopy, and in particular Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy to the study of both synthetic and biological systems, notably protein aggregation.[17][18][19][20][21][22]

Donald was a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, director of WiSETI, the University's Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative, and the University's Gender Equality Champion.[23] Outside the university, she chairs the Athena forum,[24] an organisation which aims to provide a strategic oversight of developments that seek to, or have proven to, advance the career progression and representation of women in science, technology, mathematics, and medicine (STEM) in UK higher education. She is also a member of the ESPCI ParisTech Scientific Committee[25] and was the first director of the Physics of Medicine Initiative. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering,[26] and was appointed a Trustee of the National Museum of Science in Industry in 2011.[27]

Awards and honours

In 1999 Donald was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her nomination reads

Athene Donald is distinguished for her work relating mechanical properties to the structure of polymers. She showed that polymer crazing could not be understood without reference to the entanglement network, and showed that two processes are involved, chain scission and chain disentanglement, depending differently on temperature and molecular weight. This work underpins the understanding of brittleness and ductility in solid polymers. She pioneered studies of thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers via transmission electron microscopy, revealing the ubiquity of banded textures after shear flow in these materials. More recently, she has developed X-ray methods for characterising starch, thereby opening up the field to novel physical methods which enhance those of the plant biologists and food scientists.[2]

Donald has also been awarded the following:

Personal life

Donald is married to the mathematician Matthew J. Donald;[1][35] the couple have two children.[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.(subscription required)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ University Council[dead link]
  7. ↑ University of Cambridge web page[dead link]
  8. ↑ Prof Dame Athene Donald, DBE, FRS at Debrett's People of Today
  9. ↑ Athene Donald's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Athene Donald on TwitterLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ University of Cambridge webpage
  20. ↑ List of publications from Microsoft Academic Search
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ University of Cambridge Equality Champions
  24. ↑ Athena Forum
  25. ↑ ESPCI ParisTech ISC
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Science Museum press release
  28. ↑ Women in Science laureate picks up award
  29. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 59446. p. 6. 12 June 2010.
  30. ↑ UKRC web page
  31. ↑ Honorary Doctorate of Science
  32. ↑ https://www.exeter.ac.uk/honorarygraduates/2012/honorarygraduates/ceremony14/
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Academic offices
Preceded by Master of Churchill College
2014 -		 Succeeded by
Incumbent
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