about
Although he is now a fiction author, most of his life Martin worked as a research scientist.
He was educated at the University of Oxford, where he took a starred first-class honours degree in chemistry and was awarded a doctorate in physical chemistry.
Equally at home in physics and chemistry, he became a research fellow at Oxford and a physics lecturer at University College London and the University of York.
He also worked abroad, at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, at Kyoto University in Japan and on a prestigious Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) project in Japan, and developed a new theory of colloid stability.
CLAY SWELLING &
COLLOID STABILITY
During the 1990s, Martin developed a revolutionary new theory of colloid stability.
This may sound obscure, but about one in seven of all publications in chemistry are on colloid science, the science of gooey, blobby materials, many of which we currently have in our bathroom (soap, shampoo, etc) and kitchen (ketchup, mayonnaise, etc).
Martin was also an experimental scientist and made practical discoveries, too. Both aspects of his research are described in his book on Clay Swelling and Colloid Stability.
The following review is from a leading American science journal...
The writing style is unmistakably British, which in itself makes it very enjoyable to read (at least for me). I chuckled when I read the description of the book as “stylish and transparent, but not for the faint-hearted”, yet this description is totally accurate.
There is something totally refreshing about this book, which is worth mentioning. Most textbooks on similar subjects tend to be dry and austere. Dr. Smalley’s book is refreshingly engaging, because the author attempts not so much to present an exposé of a body of theory, but to tell a story about how he came about certain facts that had been neglected or ignored until then.
The personal perspective on things makes the book particularly stimulating. In a sense, it’s like Watson and Crick’s bestseller, “The Double Helix” even if in the present case, there is much more of an attempt to present the theoretical foundation rigorously
… in time, this remarkable book will become one of the key landmarks in the field.