Alan Soper

Alan Soper
Alan Soper at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2014
Born	Alan Kenneth Soper (1951-06-15) 15 June 1951 (age 72)[3] Romford, Essex
Alma mater	University of Leicester (BSc, PhD)
Awards	FRS (2014)[1] ISIS Senior Fellow (2009)[2]
Scientific career
Fields	Aqueous solutions Neutron diffraction
Institutions	Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory University of Guelph[3]
Thesis	The Structure of Aqueous Solutions (1977)
Doctoral advisor	John Enderby[4]
Website	isis.stfc.ac.uk/People/alan_soper5044.html

Alan Kenneth Soper (born 1951)

Soper was educated at The Campion School^[3] and the University of Leicester where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree^[when?] followed by a PhD in 1977 for research into the structure of aqueous solutions conducted at the Institut Laue–Langevin in Grenoble supervised by John Enderby.^[4]

Career

Before moving to RAL in 1997, Soper was a postdoctoral researcher and assistant professor in the Physics Department at the University of Guelph, Ontario in Canada and a staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico in the United States.^[3]

Research

Soper's research investigates

Soper is a world expert in the structure of water and water-based solutions at the molecular level. Using experimental techniques such as neutron and X-ray diffraction, combined with computer simulation and structure refinement, Soper investigates the organisation and behaviour of water molecules, including their interaction with other molecules and surfaces. His work has relevance given the importance of water in the biochemical processes of living organisms.^[5]

He has characterised the structure of water under extreme conditions – as found miles down at the bottom of the ocean – and in heavily confined water such as occurs in nanoscopic mineral cavities. He has observed that this water is likely to be under significant tension – about −1000