Stephen Blundell

Stephen Blundell is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford. He was the previous head of Condensed Matter Physics at Oxford, and is also a professorial fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. His research is concerned with using muon-spin rotation and magnetoresistance techniques to study a range of organic and inorganic materials, particularly those showing interesting magnetic, superconducting, or dynamical properties.
Blundell completed both his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, attending Peterhouse for his undergraduate degree in physics and theoretical physics and doing his Ph.D. at the Cavendish Laboratory. He was subsequently offered a SERC research fellowship which involved a move to the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University; he was later awarded a junior research fellowship at Merton College, where he began research in organic magnets and superconductors using muon-spin rotation. In 1997 he was appointed to a university lectureship in the Oxford Physics Department and a tutorial fellowship at Mansfield College, and was subsequently promoted to reader. On 28 July 2004, at the young age of 35, he was appointed professor of physics. He was a joint winner of the Daiwa Adrian Prize in 1999 for his work on organic magnets.
Blundell is also involved in teaching for the Honour School of Physics – including running two undergraduate lecture courses on thermal and statistical physics, and tutoring second-, third- and fourth-year undergrads. He has also authored two textbooks, the first being Magnetism in Condensed Matter, which covers the quantum mechanical nature of magnetism. Most recently he has co-authored, with his wife and colleague, astrophycist Prof. Katherine Blundell of St John's College, Oxford, a textbook entitled Concepts in Thermal Physics. It provides an introduction to the topics of thermal physics and statistical mechanics covered in a typical undergraduate course in physics. Additionally, he has authored a Very Short Introduction to Superconductivity (OUP).
He has put his name to over 300 articles ranging right across the world of solid-state physics.
He lives in Oxford with his wife, Professor Katherine Blundell. In 2001, Blundell was quoted in Physics World as saying, "Ultimately your marriage is more important than your career."