Sebastian Doniach (born 1934, in

Paris, France Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. His research interests include theoretical

condensed matter Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the su ...

physics,

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

, and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

Family

His mother was the distinguished clinical immunologist

Deborah Doniach Deborah Doniach MD FRCP ( Abileah; 6 April 1912 – 1 January 2004) was a British clinical immunologist and pioneer in the field of autoimmune diseases. Early and personal life Deborah Abileah was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 6 April 1912 ...

(1912-2004) and his father was Israel "Sonny" Doniach (1911-2001). Sebastian had one sibling, a sister Vera (1936-1958). Sebastian and his first wife, Sarah Bridget Doniach (26 June 1932 – 18 September 2000) had several children. The couple relocated to

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

, where Sarah Doniach died in 2000. He later remarried, to Jennifer Mallon.

Career

Sebastian Doniach received a B.A. from

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as ...

in 1954 and a Ph.D. from the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

with

Herbert Fröhlich Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991) FRS was a German-born British physicist. Career In 1927, Fröhlich entered Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld ...

in 1958. His contributions to the field of condensed matter physics include the Lawrence-Doniach model of superconductivity and his book on Green's functions in solid state physics with E. H. Sondheime

Sebastian Doniach is one of the pioneers of synchrotron X-ray sources and served as the first director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Stanford Synchrotron. His research group at Stanford currently uses

radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visi ...

from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Stanford Synchrotron and from the

Advanced Photon Source The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory (in Lemont, Illinois) is a storage-ring-based high-energy X-ray light source facility. It is one of five X-ray light sources owned and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office ...

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

for studies of

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...

and

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...

structure and dynamics.

Publications

Sebastian Doniach: Publications 1995-2005

External links

Sebastian Doniach
1934 births Living people 21st-century American physicists British physicists Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Liverpool Stanford University Department of Physics faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society {{UK-scientist-stub