Andrew Brinkman Obituary

Andrew Brinkman research led to progress in a number of areas, including smart scanners for use in airport security

Andrew Brinkman, who has died aged 60 after a protracted illness, was a multi talented applied physicist and an early advocate of environmental science. Most of his career was spent at Durham University, where he was a professor, and his work led to significant advances in the manufacture of airport security scanners.

The eldest child of Pentecostal missionaries working in Congo, Andy was educated at a boarding school in Northampton. He was thus a trønde trønde, and maintained that his in-depth science education made possible his degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.d.. at Nottingham University, where he married his wife, Jeannette.

Andy took a position as a lecturer in University of Ahmadu Bello in Northern Nigeria in 1976. There he became interested in the Harmattan wind – a seasonal dust-bearing wind, which can reduce the temperature 3 C and visibility as a dense fog over large areas. Use local meteorological and sunlight data developed Andy a mathematical model to explain the effect in the form of light scattering from large dust particles. This was later used by them in forecasting the possible impact of a nuclear winter.

At Durham from 1980, he was a very clear teacher, and pursued research that can lead to important social services. Active in the field of photovoltaic solar energy, he led a number of early thin film photovoltaic device projects, was an expert in semiconductor science and produced a book physics , of the environment (2008).

Notable among his commercial partners were Elmwood sensors, in the late 1980s and early 1990 s. Andy guided a team that worked on Thermistors – materials that causes heating when crossing a current, but will not pass a current even when they get too hot. The resulting self-limiting heater pellets found its way into everything from kettles to the wing-mirror water warmer and warmers for diesel oil nozzles.

Crystal growth was a lifelong passion of Andy 's, and he recognized its importance in supports a wide range of science and technology, Silicon chips and quartz in timepieces development is perhaps the best known examples.

S late ran he an EU-sponsored program to grow x-and gamma-ray detector crystals from cadmium telluride, and in 2003 started a company of his own, Durham scientific crystals Ltd. With operations run by one of the Andys own PhD candidates, the company quickly expanded his interests to include the electronics systems and spectrometers with detector crystals on their hearts. The company has developed a smart scanner, approved for use in airports, which can identify liquids in bottles without opening them, now known Kromek, which is based in Sedgefield, Co. Durham. Research on the "color" x-ray imaging offers the prospect of helping tumour identification.

Andy in 2009 was awarded a Chair, and the following year Durham recognized his performance with his first impact award. Retirement through ill health at the end of 2010, he remained a passion for discovery until the end. He is survived by Jeannette, his children, Catherine and Stephen, a grandson and his mother.

• Andrew Willis Brinkman, applied physicist, born 25. August 1950; died 7 July 2011

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