Laurence Eaves facts for kids

Laurence Eaves is a well-known British physicist and a professor at the University of Nottingham. He was born on May 13, 1948, in Rhondda, Wales. He has received special honors like being a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Early Life and Education

Laurence Eaves grew up in Pentre, a town in the Rhondda valley in Wales. He went to Rhondda County Grammar School. Later, he studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which is a famous university. There, he earned top grades in both Physics and Mathematics.

He continued his studies at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford. He earned his DPhil, which is a high-level degree, by studying how tiny particles called electrons behave. He looked at how these electrons interact with other particles called phonons in special materials called semiconductors. He did this research using very strong magnetic fields.

Career in Physics

After finishing his studies, Laurence Eaves worked as a research lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He also spent some time as a special fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States.

In 1976, he joined the University of Nottingham in the UK as a physics lecturer. He became a full professor of Physics there in 1984. In 2011, he was chosen to be a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, which is a group that recognizes important scholars in Wales.

Amazing Research in Physics

Professor Eaves's research mainly focuses on how electrons move in very tiny structures. These structures are so small they are called nanostructures. He studies how electrons behave when they are in strong electric fields.

His work includes mapping out where electrons are found in tiny quantum dots. He also studies how electrons move in a way that seems random, which is called quantum chaotic dynamics. He has also looked at how electrons can "tunnel" through barriers in electronic devices.

He uses very strong magnetic fields to study different things, like how liquids move. Currently, his research explores the properties of materials like graphene. Graphene is a super-thin material, only one atom thick. He studies how electrons behave in devices made from graphene and other similar two-dimensional crystals.