Ross John Angel
Ross John Angel (born October 26, 1959) is an internationally recognized researcher in mineralogy, expert in crystallography and elastic properties of geological materials and key industrial materials, which he studies with experimental and analytical approaches. He is the lead author or co-author of over 240 articles in international scientific journals, he received the Dana Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America in 2011 and is currently a director of research at the Institute of Geosciences and Geo-resources of the National Research Council (Italy). Education. Ross John Angel was educated at the Trinity School of John  Whitgift Croydon and then at Clare College, Cambridge in the University of Cambridge. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Mineral Sciences in 1982, and his Master of Arts and PhD in 1986, all from the University of Cambridge. Career. Ross John Angel won a NATO Overseas Research Fellowship and joined Prof. Charles Prewitt's group at the Stony Brook University in 1985 to develop new analysis methods to determine the crystal structures of incommensurate minerals. When Charlie Prewitt was appointed director of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, now known as Carnegie Institution for Science, Ross  Angel moved with him. At the Geophysical Laboratory staff members Robert Hazen and Larry Finger trained him in high-pressure crystallography. Ross was part of the team that determined the crystal structures of the first high-temperature super-conductors in 1987, In 1988 Ross Angel won a 1983 University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society to work at University College London under the direction of David Price (British academic), and in 1994 was appointed to the staff at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut, directed by Friedrich Seifert, at the University of Bayreuth, in Bayreuth, Germany. In 2001 he was appointed research professor  in crystallography at Virginia Tech in the US and with Nancy L. Ross founded the Virginia Tech Crystallography Laboratory which performs X-ray diffraction measurements in support of research programs in chemistry, geosciences, physics, and biological sciences. In 2011 Ross John Angel held a Mercator Professorship of the German Research Foundation at the Mineralogisch-Petrographisches Institut of the University of Hamburg in Germany and then moved to Italy to work in the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Padova (2011-2017). After two years on the faculty at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University  of Pavia, in 2019 he joined the Institute of Geosciences and Geo-resources of the National Research Council (Italy) in Padova, Italy where he is now a director of research. Current research. Ross John Angel has developed and established novel methods for single-crystal diffraction, at extreme conditions in order to characterize and understand the fundamental relationships between the atomic-scale structures and properties of materials. The software that he has developed for controlling single-crystal X-ray diffractometers, and processing of data is distributed as freeware and is in use by many research groups world-wide. With colleagues he  is developing elasticity theory and methods to measure the stress and strain of inclusions inside host minerals in order to determine the pressures and temperatures at which they were trapped deep inside the Earth. Honors. Ross John Angel has been the recipient of major honors at both national and international levels. United-Kingdom: Ross John Angel has received the Phillips Crystallography Award of the British Crystallographic Association in 1991 and in 1993 the first Max Hey Award of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. International: Ross John Angel has been a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America  since 1991. He received the Medal for Research Excellence of the European Mineralogical Union (1998). More recently, he received the Dana Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America in 2011 Ross John Angel is also involved in the mineralogy community by serving as: Publications. Selected notable scientific publications in international journals.