Stephen William Wilkins (February 15, 1946 - March 25, 2013) was an Australian

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 ...

known for his contributions to the field of Phase-contrast X-ray imaging.

Biography

Wilkins' parents were originally from

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

, Czechoslovakia, but emigrated and came to Australia in 1939. Wilkins attended Preshil, The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School in Kew. Wilkins grew up in Melbourne and studied for a BSc in physics and mathematics between 1964 and 1967 at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

. He got his PhD in 1972 at the same university with a thesis titled "Correlations and Interactions in Binary Alloys". In 1975, he became a research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). He advanced to eventually become Chief Research Scientist in 1998. Wilkins unexpectedly died from a heart attack on March 25, 2013.

Research

Wilkins is perhaps best known for his work on phase-contrast X-ray imaging (PCXI). His article on PCXI with laboratory, i.e. polychromatic, sources was published in Nature in 1996 and it is the most cited article in the X-ray phase-contrast research field with over 2000 citations. Wilkins had an instrumental role in the conception and launch of the BigDiff beamline, BL20B, at the

Photon Factory The Photon Factory (PF) is a synchrotron located at KEK, in Tsukuba, Japan, about fifty kilometres from Tokyo. There are two major facilities, the Photon Factory itself which is a 2.5GeV synchrotron with a beam current of around 450mA, and the ...

in Japan. The work to realize this beamline began in 1985 and the first experiments were conducted in 1992. This X-ray scattering beamline was primarily used for X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The beamline was decommissioned on February 25, 2013.

Awards

* 1997 - Walter Boas Medal from the

Australian Institute of Physics The Australian Institute of Physics was established in 1963, when it replaced the Australian Branch of the British Institute of Physics based in London.

. Shared with

Keith Nugent Keith Alexander Nugent FAA (born 28 June 1959) is an Australian physicist. He is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. He was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) of the Australian ...

. * 2003 - Honorary Professor, Department of Physics,

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilkins, Stephen 1946 births 2013 deaths Australian physicists University of Melbourne alumni Scientists from Melbourne CSIRO people