Jeff Tallon (physicist)

Jeffery Lewis Tallon (born 1948) is a New Zealand physicist specialising in high-temperature superconductors.

Early life and education
Tallon was born in Hamilton on 17 December 1948, the son of Phyllis Blanche Tallon (née Currie) and George Frederick Tallon. He grew up in Mount Albert, and was educated at Gladstone Primary School, and later Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland from 1962 to 1966. After a BSc(Hons) at the University of Auckland, he undertook doctoral studies at Victoria University of Wellington under Stuart Smedley and Bill Robinson, completing his PhD in chemistry in 1976.

In 1971, Tallon married Mary Elaine Turner, and the couple went on to have three children.

Academic career
He was awarded a Doctor of Science by Victoria University of Wellington in 1996, on the basis of a selection of published papers.

Honours and awards
In 1990, Tallon was awarded the Michaelis Medal for physics research. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1993, and in 1998 he won the society's Hector Medal jointly with Paul Callaghan. In 2002, Tallon was awarded the Rutherford Medal, the highest award in New Zealand science. In 2011 Tallon was awarded the Dan Walls Medal by the New Zealand Institute of Physics.

In 1990, Tallon received the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. In the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to science.