George D. W. Smith

Who is George D. W. Smith?

George David William Smith FRS is a materials scientist who, with Alfred Cerezo and Terry Godfrey, invented the Atom-Probe Tomograph in 1988. He is currently a Professor and was formerly head of the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He is currently associated with Wolfson College, Oxford.

Smith graduated from Oxford with a metallurgy degree in 1965, and did postgraduate work in the Chemistry Department, where he used the field emission microscope and the field ion microscope to study the epitaxial growth of nickel on tungsten.

Smith returned to the Department of Materials where, under Sir Peter Hirsch, he helped establish a research group for field ion microscopy. It was under this group that Cerezo, Smith, and Godfrey developed the Atom-Probe Tomograph. They started the company Kindbrisk, which was renamed to Oxford nanoScience and is part of Polaron to sell their tomographs. Smith now serves as the non-executive chairman of Polaron.