1983 - 1986 University of Birmingham Ph.D. Experimental Physics.
``An Optical Resonance Spectrometer for measuring solar and stellar radial velocities to high precision''. This involved the development of two resonance stellar spectrometers. The spectrometers were designed to be able to detect extra solar planets and also provided some of the first evidence of solar type oscillations on other stars.
While at Birmingham I worked on several other projects, including:
Magnetic modulation: I developed a calibration scheme for resonance spectrometers. This technique is now used by many spectrometers including those of the Birmingham International Solar Oscillations Network (BISON), and the GOLF instrument flying on the NASA/ESA SoHO satellite. After the electronics of the polarization mechanisms failed on GOLF the magnetic calibration scheme provides the only means to calibrate the GOLF instrument and allow analysis of the data.
Laser heterodyne spectroscopy: I helped to develop a tunable laser heterodyne spectrometer to perform fundamental measurements in atomic physics. The system was installed and used at the University of Birmingham and the Daesbury National Atomic Physics Laboratory.
1980 - 1983 University of York Honors B.Sc. in Biophysics (1st class
honors)
1971 - 1979 Norwich (King Edward VI) School (on music scholarship)