Gillian Gehring

Gillian Anne Gehring (born Gillian Anne Murray, 19 May 1941) is a British academic physicist, and emeritus Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. She was the second woman in the UK to become a Professor of Physics and in 2009 won the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize.

Early life and education
Gehring was born in Nottingham. She lived at 42 Roland Avenue in Nuthall, and attended Nottingham Girls' High School. She was at school with Rosalind Pope, who also studied Physics at Manchester.

She studied Physics at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1959 to 1962 and from 1962 to 1963 she studied for the Diploma in Advanced Studies. She was the third woman to get a first since the war. From 1963 to 1965, she studied for a DPhil in Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford.

Career and research
From 1965 to 1968, Gehring was a Leverhulme Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and then a NATO fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1968 to 1989, Gehring was a lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Physics and a Tutorial Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1989 to 2006, Gehring was Professor of Solid-State Physics at the University of Sheffield and was the only female professor in the Physics department.

Gehring's research field is theoretical and experimental magnetism, and she has made major contributions to research projects concerned with orbital ordering and the co-operative Jahn-Teller effect.

Gehring has an interest in women in science. She sat on the Administrative Board of the European Platform for Women in Science, served on the Institute of Physics’ Women in Physics Group, and chaired the Women’s Group of the European Physical Society.

Awards and honours

 * 2009 — Institute of Physics Nevill Mott Medal and Prize
 * 2005 — OBE, 2005 Birthday Honours, for services to Physics and to Equal Opportunities.

Personal life
She married on 5 October 1968 to Karl Adrian Gehring at Sherwood Congregational Church. Karl Gehring grew up at 6 Newton St in Basford in Stoke-on-Trent. He went to Adams' Grammar School in Newport, in Shropshire. His father Ernest was from Switzerland, and had come to the UK in the war. Ernest died on 3 November 1988, and had a wife Dorothy.

She had two daughters in 1979 and 1981.

Publications

 * Sharma, P., A. Gupta, K. V. Rao, F. J. Owens, R. Sharma, R. Ahuja, J. M. Osorio Guillen, B. Johansson and G. A. Gehring, "Ferromagnetism above room temperature in bulk and transparent thin films of Mn-doped ZnO," Nature Materials 2, 673 (2003). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat984
 * Gehring, G. A. and K. A. Gehring, "Co-operative Jahn-Teller effects," Rep. Prog. Phys. 38, 1 (1975). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/0034-4885/38/1/001
 * Behan, A. J., A. Mokhtari, H. J. Blythe, D. Score, X.-H. Xu, J. R. Neal, A. M. Fox, and G. A. Gehring, "Two Magnetic Regimes in Doped ZnO Corresponding to a Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor and a Dilute Magnetic Insulator," Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 047206 (2008). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.047206