Professor Ondrej Krivanek

Presentation address by Professor Rik Drummond-Brydson:

In the summer of 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, Ondrej Krivanek found himself stranded in London following the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. However, with what in hindsight showed great insight, the University of Leeds offered him a scholarship to study Physics.

Despite still learning English when arriving in Leeds, he graduated top of his class with a first-class honours in 1971 which launched a career in Electron Microscopy that has truly revolutionised the subject. He excelled not only academically, but was also part of the Leeds University Volleyball Team which took second place at the 1971 Universities Championship.

Ondrej’s journey continued with a PhD in Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Archie Howie, a Royal Society Fellowship and Postdoctoral Research positions at Bell Laboratories and UC Berkeley. Following an Assistant Professorship at Arizona State University he transitioned into industry as Director of Research and Development at the company Gatan. Following a return to Cambridge enabled by a Royal Society Instrument Development Grant to work with Prof. Mick Brown, Ondrej took a position as Research Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and formed his own company Nion with Niklas Dellby.

Ondrej has enabled at least three pioneering, order of magnitude improvements in the analysis of the structure and chemistry of materials using electron microscopy.

Firstly, at Berkeley and subsequently Gatan, he developed the first commercial spectrometer for electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) which allows for the analysis of chemical bonding of atoms in the transmission electron microscope. Ultimately this spectrometer, along with detectors he also co-developed, could record the energy spectrum of transmitted electrons simultaneously, rather than in a serial fashion (energy by energy) which provided an order of magnitude improvement in the signal obtainable.

Secondly, during his Royal Society Instrument Development grant in Cambridge he developed the world’s first correction system for imperfections in lenses used to focus small electron probes. Again, this led to an order of magnitude improvement this time in spatial resolution for imaging and chemical analysis in the scanning transmission electron microscope and was developed as a commercial microscope through his company Nion.

Most recently Ondrej designed a new electron monochromator which provided an order of magnitude improvement in energy resolution for electron spectroscopy allowing vibrational spectroscopy to be performed on single atoms.

Ondrej has been awarded numerous medals and prizes during the course of his distinguished career, including election as a fellow of the Royal Society and also the American Physical Society. This culminated in the award of the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 2020.

Executive Dean, it is a great pleasure to welcome Ondrej back to Leeds, where he began his distinguished scientific journey. I am personally very honoured to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Ondrej Krivanek.