Professor John Harding

Professor John Harding has been Professor of materials simulation at Sheffield since 2004.  Before that he worked in the Physics and Astronomy Department at University College London (1996-2004) and the Theoretical Physics Division at Harwell (1978-2005). His PhD (Department of Chemistry, Cambridge) was in the area of ligand field theory.

John’s work in the simulation of defect processes (particularly work on entropies of point defects) received international recognition.  More recently his interests have extended to include processes at surfaces and interfaces, particularly work on the interface between mineral surfaces and water.  This led to work on processes of biomineralisation (where he led an EPSRC programme grant) and crystallisation more generally.  In all these areas, John has used a variety of methods: static lattice calculations, molecular dynamics, kinetic Monte Carlo, quantum (ab initio) methods, mesoscale (coarse-grained) and finite element simulations in conjunction with experiment to try and understand materials at all appropriate length and timescales.  In addition to other activities, he has chaired the CCP5 network in computer simulation and run an international summer school in computer simulation methods for eleven years (2002-13).