Talk:Consultation

How to Participate in the Membership Consultation?

The consultation is open to all PCG-SCMP members and it will run for three months (15 June - 15 September). We hope that this will provide sufficient time for useful and constructive discussions.

Please email your views on the PCG group name to the PCG-SCMP committee at: PCG-SCMP@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Contributions will be posted on this website, so that different views can be read and discussed.

PCG-SCMP Committee

The comments we have received are posted below

Received Monday, 20 June 2011 14:37

Dear Committee,

I am well aware of the problems with the name and of attracting large numbers of condensed matter physicists to attend PCG meetings. I am happy with the suggested "Functional Materials Group" name. I do not support the "Applied Fundamental Crystallography" name, it is so poor that I would prefer to continue to live with PCG. How about "X-ray and Neutron Scattering"? Maybe it is too specialised?

Yours,

Peter

Professor Peter Hatton Professor of Physics Department of Physics University of Durham DH1 3LE

Received Monday, 20 June 2011 12:56

Dear All,

I think a renaming of the group would be appropriate only in the context of a more general renaming of BCA groups along the “special interest” lines described in your document. I don’t think it would make a lot of sense to have “Functional materials” alongside CCG, but it would fit in parallel to, say, “Small molecule crystallography”. Moreover, as you have pointed out, the name seems to exclude large sections of more fundamental work, which has been actually at the core of the activity of many PGC members. Overall, at this stage I am rather against changing the name.

Paolo

Professor Paolo Radaelli Dr Lee's Professor of Experimental Philosophy, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Received Monday, 20 June 2011 10:32

Changing the name - an excellent idea

I have probably attended more ACA meetings than BCA ones partly as a result of their more enlightened structure eg Fibres, Small-angle Scattering etc

Working in polymers and liquid crystals, I would feel it would be a more inclusive name

I wonder whether Materials Group is better than Functional Materials Group not least because all materials are functional and the meaning will vary from person to person.

Good to encourage BCA as a whole to review the Groups and the names

Geoff

Geoffrey Mitchell PhD FRSC FInstP Director and Professor of Microscopy Centre for Advanced Microscopy University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AF UK

Received Friday, 17 June 2011 12:48

Physical crystallography grew up in the context of other BCA names such as chemical crystallography. As such it seemed to me entirely appropriate. Agreed that much work - increasingly - cuts across boundaries, but that can be dealt with through joint meetings, which is often the case at BCA meetings. I think it is important to emphasise the physicality rather than broadening it to something else, which would also potentially tread on the toes of other groups. e.g. 'functional' could also be applied to systems focussed on by 'chemical' and 'biological' crystallography. A similar comment applies to 'applied'.

I favour keeping the name as is.

John.

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John Finney Emeritus Professor of Physics Dept of Physics and Astronomy University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT