Alan Huber 2016 Birks
Award Recipient
Alan co-founded Amptek Inc. in 1977 along with John Pantazis, where he was foremost in the conception of the XR-100 X-ray detector for commercial use. When Alan began development of the thermoelectrically cooled detector there was virtually no hand-held or portable XRF market. No cost-effective technology existed with good enough performance in a small enough package that could be incorporated into a portable XRF analyzer. Alan’s research has been instrumental in improving detector resolution and cost efficiency thus enabling more applications and thereby providing access to the technique to markets and users never thought possible by the analytical industry.
Alan Huber, a graduate of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the co-author of numerous research papers concerning X-ray spectrometry and has received two R&D 100 awards recognizing his scientific innovations.
About the Birks Award
The Denver X-ray Conference Advisory Committee established the Birks Award in 1986 to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of X-ray spectrometry. The award is named in honor of L. S. (Verne) Birks for his many contributions to the X-ray analysis field. Presented biennially, the award is made possible through the generosity of the companies and organizations that exhibit their products at the Denver X-ray Conference. The award was presented at the Plenary Session of the Denver X-ray Conference on August 3. The International Centre for Diffraction Data organized the Conference. The Centre is a non-profit scientific organization dedicated to collecting, editing, publishing, and distributing powder diffraction data for the identification of crystalline materials.