Notebook sent by Andre Guinier to G D Preston.

The notebook describes experiments conducted at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers Testing Laboratory (Laboratoire d'Essais) in Paris. Includes photographs and diagrams.

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Deposited by the Physics Department in 2011.

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Description compiled by Kenneth Baxter

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Guinier and Preston are coupled together with the discovery of Guinier-Preston zones in alloys. They found them independently, both in 1938. Various biographies of Guinier available online. Educated at Cambridge, George Preston joined the staff of the Metallurgy Division of National Physical Laboratory in 1921. Here he applied the techniques of X-ray and electron diffraction to the study of crystal structures of metal alloys. Working on the structure of alloys in 1921 he formulated the idea that different atoms show clustering or segregation effects; the so called Guiner Preston zones. The techniques of X-ray and electron diffraction were still in their infancy, and he began a systematic application of them to the crystal structures of metal alloys. This Guiner - Preston effect was used in the early development of the electron microscope. The first electron microscope (one of earliest in Britain) was brought to Dundee by Preston when he came to University College, Dundee from National Physics Laboratory. He succeeded Peddie to the Harris Chair of Physics in 1943, where his teaching and administration commitments along with low budgets for research meant his work diminished. His tenacity meant that X-ray equipment was somehow created in the department and some work on X-ray crystallography has continued in Dundee since.

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