Second W. H. and W. L. Bragg Prize awarded to Arkadiy Simonov

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The 2023 W. H. and W. L. Bragg Prize for outstanding early-career crystallographers has been awarded to Arkadiy Simonov (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) for his development of the three-dimensional difference pair distribution function (3D-∆PDF) approach and its transformative effect on the field of materials.

Over the past decade, Arkadiy has established himself as the single most talented young researcher in the interpretation of diffuse scattering from single crystals. Not only is he the author of the foremost codes for data reduction (MEERKAT) and 3D-∆PDF refinement (YELL) but also he is applying his 3D-∆PDF methods to solve crucially important problems in materials science.

Professor Simonov started his academic career under the tutelage of Dr Thomas Weber and Professor Walter Steurer at ETH Zürich. The YELL code was a key outcome of his Doctorate; this software enabled the fitting of the 3D-∆PDF in terms of pairwise correlation parameters. In this way, Arkadiy established the first general approach for refinement of the diffuse scattering contribution to single-crystal diffraction patterns. He applied his methodology to a range of systems, and in doing so both established a series of proofs-of-concept and solved a number of important outstanding problems in the field of complex materials.

Professor Simonov will present a Keynote Lecture during the 26th IUCr Congress in Melbourne, Australia, in August 2023.

For a list of papers by Arkadiy Simonov appearing in IUCr journals click here.

1 April 2023

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