Andrew Gordon Holmes-Siedle British research scientist, developer of a new type of radiation detector, the RADFET dosimeter, author of works on the effect of radiation on materials and devices, major fields of enquiry being space radiation, nuclear fusion, silicon devices, dosimetry and radiotherapy. Worked in the UK and USA and, in his sixties, held an honorary professorship at Brunel University of West London, while running his own company, REM.
Early history
editBorn in Hove, England October 12th 1929, attended Xaverian College, Brighton, England, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge University, England. Did national service in the UK Royal Air Force. A degree in Organic Chemistry was followed by a PhD and postdoctoral research on enzymes and energy transfer. Following ten years of work in the USA he returned to the UK and has thereafter lived in or near Oxford .
Professional career
editAfter research at Cambridge, Andrew Holmes-Siedle opted for greater excitement in his career by joining the space industry. This led to a career transition from chemistry to physics. studying the effect of radiation on high-tech materials. He started this transition as a project engineer with Hawker-Siddeley, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK, studying the effect of radiation on communication satellites. He then moved across the Atlantic to RCA Space Center in Princeton, NJ, USA, in a post which comprised both an engineering and research. His job was the development and testing of electronic and optical components for use in space. While doing so, he and his fellow researchers discovered that a silicon device, the MOSFET, was unexpectedly sensitive to radiation (1). He and W.J. Poch made constructive use of this effect to design a system of radiation measurement ordosimetry (2). Some of the following 40 years was spent studying and exploiting the use of this effect, through the development of a radiation-sensitive MOSFET, or "RADFET dosimeter". At RCA, he and his fellow researchers (particularly those at RCA Laboratories (1), designed radiation-hardenedCMOS(1)and solar cells for aerospace applications and discovered new physical effects such as gain degradation in transistors passivated with silicon dioxide,this being explained by a "surface effect" (3). He returned to his home country on a UK government "bring 'em back" fellowship at the University of Reading and later at Fulmer Research Institute and Brunel University as an Honorary Professor. The work included materials consulting and research on charge-coupled devices (CCD) for high-energy accelerators (4) and a European astronomy satellite called XMM-Newton (5). During those years, he also founded the two firms, REM Oxford and REM S.T. In this period, he developed his current research interests -- dosimetry for radiotherapy (6) and the understanding of the severe levels of radiation damage expected in energy sources operating by nuclear fusion (7,8). Reference 9 surveys the past and future of his invention,the RADFET dosimeter.
Membership and Awards
editFellow of the Institute of Physics, past member of the IOP Electronics Committee, Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the IEEE Radiation Effects Committee. For innovation and academic research in radiation effects , he received prizes including the NASA, IR-100 and IEEE Radiation Effects awards (8) and a medal of the University of Montpellier . He received a patent on a fire detector in which the ultraviolet emission of flames activates a microminiature vacuum device.
Publications
editTwo books and over 60 research papers. Among several industrial reports he wrote a handbook on the design of unmanned spacecraft for the European Space Agency and another on radiation issues in the construction of the Joint European Torus nuclear fusion experiment These handbooks later grew into the OUP "Handbook of Radiation Effects" (11) and also Reference 12, a pioneering step by the European Space Agency in specifying and controlling radiation effects in satellites.
Notes
edit1. W.J. Dennehy, A.G. Holmes-Siedle and K. Zaininger, "Digital Logic for Radiation Environments" RCA Rev. 30 (4) 668 (Dec 1969).
2. A.G. Holmes-Siedle (1974). The Space Charge Dosimeter;General Principles of a New Method of Radiation Dosimetry. Nuclear Instruments and Methods, 121, 169-172 (1974).
3. G.J. Brucker, W.J. Dennehy and A.G. Holmes-Siedle, "Ionization abd Displacement Damage in Silicon Transistors" IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 13( 6) 188-96 (Dec. 1966).
4. B. Camanzi, A.G. Holmes-Siedle and A.K.McKemey. “The dose mapping system for the electromagnetic calorimeter of the BaBar experiment at SLAC”. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers,Detectors and Associated Equipment, 457, (3), 476-86 (21 January 2001).
5. A.G. Holmes-Siedle, S.J. Watts and A. Holland. “The impact of space protons on X-ray sensing with CCDs”. IEEE T-NS-43 (6) 2998-3004 (Dec 1996).
6. D.J. Gladstone, L.M. Chin and A.G. Holmes Siedle, "MOSFET Radiation Detectors used as Patient Radiation Dose Monitors during Radiotherapy", Paper S3, 33rd Ann. Mtg., Am. Assoc. of Physicists in Medicine, San Francisco, July 21-5, 1991.
7. B. Camanzi and A. G. Holmes-Siedle, "The measurement of ultra-high radiation environments: accelerators and nuclear fusion reactors". Invited paper, RADECS06, Athens, September Athens, 26-29 September 2006.<http:/www.radfet.com>.
8. B. Camanzi and A. G. Holmes-Siedle, " The race for new radiation monitors", Nature Materials Vol. 7, 343-345 (May 2008). http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v7/n5/full/nmat2159.html7.
9. A. Holmes-Siedle, P. Menary, P. Sharpe and J. Mills "MOSFET radiation dose monitors (RADFETs) in medicine: are they coming of age? " SCOPE, Volume 19. Issue 2, 21-27 (June 2010, a journal of the IPEM, Londonl see www.ipem.org).
10. " Andrew Holmes-Siedle Receives the 2001 NSREC Radiation Effects Award", IEEE NPSS Newsletter, Sept 2001. <http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/newsletters/npss/0901/siedle.htm> .
11. A. G. Holmes-Siedle and L. Adams "A Handbook of Radiation Effects" 2nd Ed. (Oxford University Press 2002) <http://www.oup.co.uk> ISBN 0-19-850733-X.
12. ESA/SCC Basic Specifiation No. 22900, Issue 4 (European Space Agency, Paris 1995). www.spacecomponents.org.
Representative Publications
editB.C. Saunders, A.G. Holmes - Siedle and B.P.Stark, "Peroxidase, A Versatile Enzyme", (Butterworths, London 1964).
A.G. Holmes-Siedle and E. Harari, "Optical Absorption and Defect Structure in Thin Amorphous Films of Aluminium Oxide", Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. Ser II, 16 (4) 500 (1971).
A.G.Holmes-Siedle and I.Groombridge, "Hole Traps in Silicon Dioxide: A Comparison of Population by X Rays and Band Gap Light" Thins Solid Films 27 165-170 (1975).
A.G. Holmes-Siedle, A.K. Ward, R. Bull, N. Blower, and L. Adams, "The METEOSAT-3 Dosimeter Experiment Observation of Radiation Surges During Solar Flares In Geostationary Orbit" ESA Space Environment Analysis Workshop October 1990, The Netherlands.
A.G. Holmes-Siedle. "Predicting end-of-life performance in space". Radiation Physics and Chemistry, 43, 57-77 (1994).
A. Holmes-Siedle, K. Lauridsen, P. Christensen, S. Watts, "The management of radiation-induced faults in teleoperators used in nuclear plants", ANS 6th Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote Systems, Monterey, CA, February 5-10 1995, Transactions of the ANS, 1995.
A. Holmes-Siedle and L. Adams (1994). "Mapping CMOS radiation tolerance data on a four-lane chart". IEEE Trans Nucl. Sci, NS-41 (6) (1994).
M.S. Robbins, T. Roy, S.J. Hedges, A.G. Holmes-Siedle, A.K. McKemey and S.J. Watts. (1993)."Quality control and monitoring of radiation damage in charge-coupled devices at the Stanford linear collider". IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., NS-40 (6) 1561-8 (1993).
A.G. Holmes-Siedle. "From space to therapy: the radiation-sensitive silicon field-effect transistor", Technology Transfer Workshop, European Space Agency, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, May 26th 1944. ESA Sp. Publ. No. SP-364 (August 1994).
A.G. Holmes-Siedle and S.J. Watts. "Radiation effects in space, nuclear power and accelerators: impact on optics and light sensors". Invited paper, SPIE Conference, San Diego, CA, 27 July - 1 August 1997, San Diego, CA. Published in: Critical Reviews of Optical Science and Technology, CR 66-02, pages 37-57 (1997).
M.A.H. Chowdhury, S.J.Watts, D.C. Imrie, A. McKemey and A. Holmes-Siedle. “Studies of radiation tolerance and optical absorption bands of CsI(Tl) crystals” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 432 147-156 (1999).
F. Ravotti, B. Camanzi, M. Glaser, M. Moll, A.G. Holmes-Siedle and Ch. Ilgner. "Response of RadFET dosimeters to high fluences of fast neutrons". IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci . NS-52 (6) 959-65 (Dec 2005).
A. Rosenfeld, E. Siegbahn, E. Brauer-Krisch, A. Holmes-Siedle A. Bravin, M.L.F. Lerch, I.M. Cornelius, G.J. Takacs, N. Painuly, H. Nettleback and T. Kron.." Edge-on Face-to-Face MOSFET for Synchrotron Microbeam Dosimetry: MC modeling". IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci .NS-52(6) 2562-70 (Dec 2005).
N. Crosby, C. Foullon, A. Holmes-Siedle, D. Heynderickx . "Mission to Mars: Interplanetary Space Weather and the Scientific Issues", European Solar Physics Meeting-11, Session 6, Leuven, Belgium:"Coronal Mass Ejections and Space Weather" <http://wis.kuleuven.be/cpa/spm11.php > .
C. Lobascio, V. Guarnieri, P. Parodi, M.A. Perino, S. Masiello, S. Eckersley, C. Cougnet,V. Tamburini, G. Parisi, S. Guatelli, P. Spillantini, D. Heynderickx, N.B. Crosby, A. Holmes-Siedle, P. Nieminen and E. Tracino. " Radiation Exposure and Mission Strategies for Interplanetary Manned Missions (REMSIM)". Earth Moon and Planets, 94 (3-4), 167-285 (2004).
A. Holmes-Siedle, F. Ravotti and M.Glaser (2007). "The dosimetric performance of RADFETs in radiation test beams" Paper W-8, IEEE NSREC07 Radiation Effects Data Workshop, Honolulu 2007. Workshop Record, IEEE Catalog No. 07TH8965-42-57-2007, pp 42-56.
External links
edit<http://www.radfet.com>