Allan Mackintosh
Allan Roy Mackintosh ( born January 22, 1936 in Nottingham, † 20 December 1995) was a British physicist. He worked mainly in the field of solid state physics and spent most of his research time in Denmark.
Life
Allan Roy Mackintosh was born on January 22, 1936 in Nottingham, the son of Malcolm Roy and Alice Mackintosh (nee Williams). He had an older brother, Ian Malcolm Mackintosh was born in 1927. His family came from the working class. He attended Nottingham High School.
Mackintosh studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge University. His doctoral thesis "Experimental study of the Fermi surface of lead" ( Experimental investigation of the Fermi surface of lead ), he led the Cavendish Laboratory by Brian Pippard and received the Ph.D. in 1960. At Cambridge he met his future wife, originally from Denmark Jette.
1960 Mackintosh was an associate professor at Iowa State University. In 1963, he first worked temporarily at the Danish Atomic Research Centre Risø. In 1966 he went permanently to Denmark and became a professor at DTU in Lyngby, in 1970 he moved to the University of Copenhagen. In 1971 he was appointed Director of Risø Laboratories, conducted research from 1976, and he taught again in Copenhagen.
From 1976 to 1979 he was president of the Danish Physical Society, 1980 to 1982 of the European Physical Society, and from 1986 to 1989 director of the NORDITA (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics ).
1980 Mackintosh was appointed honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala. In 1986, he won together with Hans Bjerrum Møller the Spedding Award, 1991, he was inducted into the Royal Society. He was also a Knight of the Dannebrog, a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, the Royal Norwegian Academy of Science and the American Physical Society.
In addition to his research and teaching activities Mackintosh was an active figure in Danish science policy and public debate nuclear energy and in European research cooperation.
On 20 December 1995 Mackintosh died in Denmark in a car accident.
Work
In Iowa Mackintosh began with Dan Gustafson, with the work on the atomic properties of the rare earth metals and experimentally refuted the so-called promotional model. In 1963 he used in Risø a neutron spectrometer for the study of spin waves in rare earth elements. Later he worked primarily on the magnetism of rare earths. Together with Jens Jensen, he wrote the standard work of Rare Earth Magnetism. He always stressed the importance of Fermioberflächen to the understanding of the structure of metals.
In his last years, Mackintosh also dealt with the history of science. He examined about the relationship between Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr and published papers on the works of John Vincent Atanasoff and Charles Ellis.