| 1 | Name: | Professor Peter P. Edwards | |
| Institution: | University of Oxford | ||
| Year Elected: | 2012 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1949 | ||
Peter P. Edwards is currently Professor and Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and has held this position since 2003. Born in, England, he received his Ph.D. from Salford University in 1974. He has won a number of awards, including the Liversidge Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1998), the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society (2003), and the Corday-Morgan Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2006). He is a member of the Royal Society (1996) and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2009). Peter Edwards’s work spans from inorganic and physical chemistry to condensed matter physics in both their purest and most applied aspects. He is the leading chemist studying the metal/insulator transition and superconductivity. He developed and championed a simple criterion for the metal-insulator transition applicable to many systems, including expanded fluid metals, hydrogen in the outer planets, transition metal oxides and doped semi-conductors. Motivated by the size induced metal/insulator transition, he discovered a wide variety of stoichiometrically defined metallic cluster compounds. Before the discovery of cuprates, Edwards identified doped transition metal oxides as possible superconductors, beginning with the superconducting spinel . He later discovered both the mercury-lead-based compounds which held the record high temperature transition and the fluoride-oxide superconductors. Edwards leads the U.K. Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium. His scientific joie de vivre is illustrated by his paper on the materials aspects of Stradivarius violins. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |||