Avionics News May 2016 - 56
series
B Y
DR. PETER DICKINSON:
E
P A T R I C I A
Spectrum Technologies
xploring the basement of his family's pharmacy
in Bath, England, was partly responsible for Peter
Dickinson's interest in chemistry.
"It was an old Victorian pharmacy, dating back
to 1823, and I loved going there and going through the
boxes and jars," he said. "That's partly what set me off on
my career."
According to Dickinson, he was extremely lucky to grow
up in Bath, a World Heritage Site, full of Georgian architecture and structures dating back to Roman days.
"My maternal grandfather had a bent toward engineering
and electronics - and I was always interested in technology," Dickinson said.
The aviation interest came from his father, a Royal Air
Force pilot during World War II, who was sent to Mesa,
Arizona, to one of four U.S.-based RAF flight training
facilities.
"My father spent six months in flight training in Mesa,
and coincidentally, one of our key customers, Boeing
Defense, has its electrical systems fabrication facility based
at the same airfield where my father trained. Of course, back
then, Mesa was in the middle of nowhere."
As he was finishing school, Dickinson had a decision to
make as to what to study in university.
"Although I was interested in chemistry, I made a piv56
avionics news
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may
2016
L U E B K E
otal decision to study both applied physics and pure and
applied chemistry at Cardiff University," he said.
Chemists were plentiful then, so he decided to go a
slightly different route in his studies.
"That course of study has been useful, especially since I
studied lasers in my last year," he said.
In the early 1970s, lasers were leading edge and novel,
having only been discovered in 1960. He also recalls a
life-changing article he read in Scientific American about
laser fusion technology.
"I was finishing my degree, and this really sparked my
interest, so I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in lasers," he said.
But these were the early days.
"Forty-plus years later, laser fusion is still to come to
fruition," he explained.
Instead, he studied UV laser technology for his Ph.D. at
the Imperial College of Science and Technology, the U.K.
equivalent of MIT, according to Dickinson.
"I was fortunate to get in there," he said. "One of the
professors was keen to investigate lasers and their applications in chemistry, so I carried out my research developing
excimer lasers and investigating their use in novel chemical reactions."
When it was time to be employed, a recession was on.
"I started applying for various jobs - including in the
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News May 2016
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Avionics News May 2016 - Intro
Avionics News May 2016 - Cover1
Avionics News May 2016 - Cover2
Avionics News May 2016 - No label
Avionics News May 2016 - 2
Avionics News May 2016 - 3
Avionics News May 2016 - 4
Avionics News May 2016 - 5
Avionics News May 2016 - 6
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Avionics News May 2016 - 9
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Avionics News May 2016 - 18
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Avionics News May 2016 - 28
Avionics News May 2016 - 29
Avionics News May 2016 - 30
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Avionics News May 2016 - Cover3
Avionics News May 2016 - Cover4
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