Professor Sir Paul Callaghan FRSNZ GNZM FRS
Professor Sir Paul Callaghan is a Professor of Physical Sciences
at Victoria University in Wellington. This year, he won the Gunther
Laukien Prize for Magnetic Resonance.
In 1990, Professor Callaghan was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society of New Zealand.
Professor Callaghan was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London in 2001. He went on to win the Ampere Prize in 2004 and the
Rutherford Medal in 2005 "for world-leading research in development
of new Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods that have
significant impacts in physics, chemistry, biology and
medicine."
In 2006 he was appointed a Principal Companion of the New Zealand
Order of Merit. A year later he was a winner in the KEA/NZTE World
Class New Zealander Awards, and won the Sir Peter Blake
Medal.
Why did you become a scientist?
Because it seemed the most obviously interesting thing for me to
be, and in doing so I found it is the most exciting and satisfying
professional life one can have, to do the work one loves, to lead
teams of highly talented young people, to make discoveries of
permanent value, to transcend nation, race, culture and political
perspectives in a truly international endeavour, to collaborate
with people all over the world, and to travel the world in that
work. I have been to Antarctica six times.
I was in Eastern Europe many times in the 70s and 80s, long before
the collapse of communism, I have worked in the UK, Australia,
Germany, Japan, the US, Sweden. I have been able to make
difference to New Zealand in raising the profile of science with
radio conversations with Kim Hill, popular books, documentaries,
and in turning science into profitable business. I count among my
friends some of the most remarkably talented people on the planet.
And I am very well paid. Who wouldn't be a scientist?
If you weren't a scientist, what would you be?
A composer of film scores.
Your bio on the MacDiarmid Institute website says you are
responsible for establishing the Soft Matter and Porous Media
Group, a team who studies a field of research called "squishy
physics". What is squishy physics?
Soft matter physics is sometimes called squishy
physics.
Soft matter, of which living cells are a profound manifestation,
comprise molecular assemblies with mesophase (complex) structures,
structures with multiple length scales whose dynamics exhibit
multiple time scales. Synthetic examples include high performance
polymers and elastomers, micellar structures, liquid crystals,
foams, emulsions, micro-emulsions and bicontinuous phases. As it
happens, these systems are important not only in biology, but in
advanced materials synthesis, in food technology, in oil recovery,
and in biotechnologies such as drug delivery.
I also do porous media physics. Porous materials or media, comprise
a solid or soft-solid matrix in which an interpenetrating liquid
phase is dispersed. Examples of porous materials of central
importance to New Zealand's economy are food products, wood
products, and building materials such as concrete.
Biotechnology applications of porous materials are ubiquitous, for
example in chromatography, microfiltration, drug encapsulation and
delivery, tissue perfusion and dialysis.
But in all my work I use magnetic resonance, in which I use
combinations of pulsed magnetic fields and radio waves to gain
information about these materials by communicating with atomic
nuclei, sending radio messages to them, and interpreting the radio
signals that come back.
Those signals contain crucial information about the host atoms and
molecules which contain those nuclei.
