Towards implementing the new kelvin

J P Martin Trusler is Professor of Thermophysics in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He obtained his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from University College London, and was both a Lindermann Trust Fellow and a Ramsay Memorial Fellow prior to joining Imperial as a lecturer in 1988. In 1984-5, he participated in the NBS (now NIST) project to re-determine the gas constant by means of sound-speed measurements with a spherical resonator. Spherical resonators were also the tool of choice in other early-career research, including the measurement of acoustic virial coefficients at low temperatures and determination of the thermodynamic properties of gas mixtures at high pressures. His current research is focused on studies of the thermophysical properties and phase behaviour of industrial fluids at high pressures, with applications in carbon capture, transportation and storage, and oil/gas exploration and production.

John Saunders completed his doctoral research in 1978 on “Nuclear refrigeration of ³He and measurements on superfluid ³He-A confined to small cylinders”, at the University of Sussex, following undergraduate studies at New College, Oxford University. He was subsequently a post-doc at Cornell University, in the group of Bob Richardson. In 1983 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, held at the University of Sussex. He moved to Royal Holloway in 1986, co-founding the low temperature laboratory there, and currently leads the London Low Temperature Laboratory, an academic partner of the European Microkelvin Platform http://www.emplatform.eu/. His interests include: studies of atomically thin helium films as model condensed matter systems; topological superfluid 3He under engineered nanoscale confinement; quantum systems based on semiconducting nanoelectronic devices at ultralow temperatures; NEMS at ultralow temperatures; development of instrumentation, including noise thermometry, NMR using SQUID detection, and cryogen-free refrigeration into the microkelvin regime. He is Chair of IUPAP Commission C-5 (Low Temperature Physics).

Joachim Fischer holds a PhD in physics from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Since 1982 he has been with the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin, first at the electron storage ring BESSY. In 1986 he joined the section temperature radiation. Since 2001 he has been head of the temperature department where the international temperature scale is developed and disseminated to the user by contact thermometry. He is involved in the improvement of temperature measurement and in research on a new definition of the SI-base unit kelvin by fixing the value of the Boltzmann constant.

He represents PTB in the Consultative Committee for Thermometry, chairs the working group for contact thermometry and the task group for the new SI. Other international work includes membership in the CODATA task group on fundamental constants and in standardisation bodies, and he is the German contact for the EURAMET Technical Committee of Thermometry.

Peter Hänggi is distinguished for his many seminal contributions in the area of statistical physics and driven quantum mechanics, which he achieved at the Polytechnic Institute of New York and the University of Augsburg. He is known worldwide for his key contributions to reaction rate theory, driven quantum mechanics, quantum dissipation, foundations of statistical mechanics, the phenomenon of Stochastic Resonance, his discovery of coherent destruction of tunnelling, and his initiation of the field of Brownian motors.

Graham has a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Astrophysics from Birmingham University and a DPhil from Oxford University in high energy astrophysics. He is head of the NPL Temperature Group, chairs the Euramet Technical Committee for Thermometry (TCT), represents the UK on the Consultative Committee of Thermometry (CCT) and IMEKO TC12, chairs CCT Noncontact thermometry group, is a member of EPSRC Physical Sciences Strategic Advisory Team, and contributes to a number of other committees. He has published 150+ technical papers and given numerous talks on temperature related topics. He has been a guest researcher to NMIJ (Japanx2), NIST (USA) and NIM (Chinax2). He holds visiting Professorships at the University of Valladolid, Spain and the University of South Wales. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Institute of Measurement and Control and was awarded the 2012 InstMC Callendar medal for innovations in temperature measurement. Current research interests include primary thermometry (acoustic and radiometric), radiation thermometry and thermal imaging, clinical thermometry (contact, non-contact and internal), new thermocouples, self-validation methods and reliable temperature measurement in hostile environments.