The Experimental Physicist will deliver the prestigious lecture in recognition of his remarkable academic, technical and commercial achievements in nano-magnetics.
The Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture is awarded biennially on any aspect of engineering and is aimed at scientists working in modern and popular fields such as new media technologies and consumer electronics.
In his lecture, 'The attractions of magnetism: chips, cancer and crime', which takes place at the Royal Society on 26 October 2016, Professor Cowburn will explain the new physics which is currently emerging from the rapidly changing research field of nanostructured magnetic materials, and how that new physics finds use in computer memory, in novel biomedical technologies and in detecting counterfeit documents and smuggled goods.
Ahead of his talk, Professor Crowburn said: "Magnetism is a very old subject and it is sometimes thought that there is little left to discover. All of that changes when nanotechnology and magnetism are brought together – without the technologies that have come out of that meeting we wouldn’t have social media, the Cloud or even the Internet."
The Clifford Paterson lectureship was originally endowed by The General Electric Company (GEC) in memory of Clifford Paterson FRS, who founded the GEC Research Laboratories in 1919. Further details of the award are available here.