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SET Women - Leicestershire Women in Science Engineering & Technology

e-Book - Professor Gillian Gehring OBE - Solid State Physicist

"Jobs in SET arefascinating and rewarding. Do not be put off by the realisation that you might be in a minority."

As a schoolgirl, Gillian had a talent for painting and a great curiosity into the natural world that developed into a passion for Quantum Physics. Growing up as a teen in the wake of wartime atomic and hydrogen bombs is probably what fuelled her certainty for wanting to study Physics, as there was no-one in her immediate family who had gone to university.

While applying for university courses, she was advised by one of her sixth-form teachers that she would need to get an upper second if she wanted to become a research scientist. As determined as ever, Gillian says "I had not the slightest idea what an 'upper second was' so made a mental note - find out what it is and get it!"

Gillian enrolled in the redesigned Physics course at Manchester University in 1959. "It was very stimulating, and many of my year went on to become academic leaders." She says that for the early part of the course, being one of the only 10% women attending was at first a challenge. "I felt that many of the men had been making radio sets and building Meccano since infancy, and that it was only when we started on quantum physics that I was on a level playing field."

At Oxford University, Gillian pursued her DPhil. "I was lucky to be one of the very few students supervised by Walter Marshall (later Lord Marshall of Goring) at Harwell. He was an absolutely brilliant physicist and very kind and perceptive as a supervisor." This positive experience made her keener than ever to continue her research. She stayed on at Oxford in the Department of Theoretical Physics doing her research as a Leverhulme Fellow at St Hugh's College and then became a NATO fellow at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States. On her return to Oxford a year later she married Karl Gehring, who was also an Oxford physicist, and started her teaching career as a fellow of St Hugh's College and lecturer in theoretical physics in 1968.

Many women scientists in the UK cite Oxford as a wonderful institution in which to work, because of the large number of women academics there. This became the norm in Oxford because of the women's colleges whose fellows at that time were all women. "Many of them had children, and it was expected that their academic work would continue. It was a very supportive environment in which to raise a family while carrying on a career." The most outstanding of these scientists was Dorothy Hodgkin, the Nobel-prize winning chemist, but there were many others.

Gillian enjoyed twenty-seven years of research work at Oxford, but finally was drawn away when the University of Sheffield offered her a position as a Professor. This move made her the second woman Physics professor in the whole of the UK at that time (there are now about twenty). In Sheffield's Department of Physics and Astronomy, Gillian regards herself as "a Many-Body -Physicist,' because most of my work has been concerned with interacting particles: electrons with electrons, electrons with phonons, spin waves with spin waves, spins and phonons and so on."

Her publications in solid state and condensed matter physics are numerous, and yet she enjoys her teaching responsibilities as much as her prolific research. "It is very frequently that one finds an example in one's research that one can use to illuminate a lecture, and conversely a seemingly intractable research problem can be solved by thinking about it in a new way inspired by a different aspect of the undergraduate course." She retires from her chair in 2006 when she becomes an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield. However, she holds a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship as well as several EPSRC grants to continue her research.

Paralleling her work are her manifold campaigns encouraging more women to choose and stay in physics careers. This took off as her two daughters grew to their late teens and so her domestic responsibilities reduced. She Chairs several national and international committees on Equality and Diversity, and is the author of many publications on the issues facing women in Physics. For her demonstrated dedication to supporting equal opportunities and her service to science, Gillian was awarded her OBE from the Queen in 2005.

Learn more about Gillian Gehring's work:
Professor Gehring's Home Page
Mixing Motherhood and Science
PhDs Are Worth More for Women
Institute of Physics Case Study