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Robert Joseph Young FRS FREng FInstP (born 29 May 1948) is a British materials scientist specialising in polymers and composites. He is a Professor of Polymer Science and Technology at the National Graphene Institute of the University of Manchester.
Education
Young was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
Research and career
Young has published over 330 research papers. He is known for research on the relationships between the structure and mechanical properties of polymers and composites. A particular focus of his work has been the study of how materials such as carbon fibres and spider silk deform at the molecular level. He has also studied carbon-fibre composites, carbon nanotubes and the deformation of graphene — a one-atom thick sheet of carbon.
In his research, Young made a novel use of Raman spectroscopy. In this technique, laser light is shone onto a material and the wavelength and intensity of the resulting scattered light is measured and analysed. The changes in the light relate to changes in bond length between the atoms of the molecules in the material when the material is deformed.
Awards and honours
Young received the 2011 Leslie Holliday Prize and the 2012 Swinburne Medal from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and delivered the Swinburne Lecture in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. His certificate of election reads:
Robert Young is one of the world's foremost scientists and his innovative research has transformed our understanding of the relationships between structure and mechanical properties in polymers and composites. He has developed a theoretical framework to describe the role of dislocations in the plastic deformation of semi-crystalline polymers and identified new toughening mechanisms. He subsequently pioneered the use of Raman spectroscopy to study deformation micromechanics in fibres at the molecular level. He has demonstrated that this approach can be extended to the deformation of carbon-nanotubes and graphene nano-composites and has proven that continuum mechanics is still applicable at the nano-scale