Joint CCEM-CCM webinar: "In memory of Dr Bryan Kibble (1938-2016): an outstanding metrologist”

Dr Bryan Kibble, the originator of the Kibble Balance, passed away 10 years ago on the 28th of April 2016. The Kibble balance enabled the world to replace the last artefact standard in the SI: the International Prototype of the Kilogram. Whilst he built two, world leading, Kibble Balances he did not live long enough to see the final fruits of his labours: the revision of the SI in 2019, in which the kilogram was redefined in terms of a fixed numerical value of the Planck constant. He also worked on precise measurements of ac impedance using coaxial techniques. The presentation will cover his work both on the Kibble balance and on ac measurements. It will also include some illustrations of his contributions to metrology from his many friends and colleagues.

Dr Ian Robinson is an NPL Fellow at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK. He joined NPL in 1976 from Oxford University. With Bryan Kibble he worked on the first moving-coil watt (Kibble) balance, which helped unify the world’s voltage measurements. He continued his collaboration with Bryan Kibble to build and run the NPL Mk II Kibble balance. Operating at NRC in Canada, this balance made a major contribution to the new definition of the kilogram in 2019. He has extended the theory of the balance, which should lead to greatly simplified, but highly accurate, Kibble balances. He is presently working to construct such a balance.

Dr Robinson is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. In 2019 he was awarded the Sir Harold Hartley medal by the Institute of Measurement and Control. In the 2021 Queen’s birthday honours he was awarded the OBE for services to measurement science.