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Andrew Richard Lang FRS CBE was a British scientist and crystallographer.
He was born in St Annes-on-Sea, Lancashire, UK. He obtained a First-Class Honours London External BSc in Physics at Exeter in 1944, a London External MSc in 1947 and a Cambridge PhD in 1953.
He worked in industrial research in the UK for Lever Brothers and Unilever Ltd and in the USA for Philips Laboratories, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. He was Assistant Professor of Physical Metallurgy at Harvard University before moving to a Lectureship in Physics at the University of Bristol in 1960. He spent the remainder of his career in Bristol, gaining promotion to Reader in 1966 and to Professor of Physics in 1979. He retired in 1987.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975. His candidature read "Dr. A. R. Lang has made valuable contributions to X-ray crystallography in general, especially in original developments of instrumental method which combine economy with precision; and most notably in developing the technique of X-ray topography which is the method of choice for observing the internal imperfections of highly perfect crystals. Being applicable to specimens of a convenient size for investigation by a variety of other means, this method is a powerful adjunct to experimental techniques in the physics and chemistry of the solid state. The same work furnishes experimental material from which Lang and his collaborators have been able to verify, extend, and place on a more directly observational basis the dynamical theory of X-ray diffraction. Important innovations in this earlier work were the adaptation and development of the X-ray proportional counter with pulse-height discrimination for use with X-ray diffraction. And his methods of X-ray diffracted beam monochromatization. Among his recent achievements are the observation by X-ray diffraction of internal magnetic domains, the determination of the relative phases of distinct X-ray reflexions from one crystal, and the production of X-ray Moire fringes between separate crystal slices."
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