ANSTO has appointed experimental physicist Dr Ian Ritchie to the grade of Chief Research Scientist, the highest level that can be attained by scientists within the organisation.
The appointment follows 35 years of service to ANSTO and its predecessor, the Australian Atomic Energy Commission.
Dr Ritchie, who has spent the past 21 years in ANSTO's Environment Division, is one of just a handful of scientists to have made the grade of Chief Research Scientist.
Dr Ritchie was awarded a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy by Glasgow University in 1959. He immigrated to Australia in 1963, and joined the AAEC on arrival. He undertook further studies, and was awarded a PhD in Physics by the University of New South Wales in 1971.
He has spent the past 22 years researching the generation and transport of pollutants in the environment. His work, focusing on mines, has taken him to sites all over Australia, and from the Arctic Circle to the Equator.
He has brought to the field formidable expertise in physics and mathematics, and has won worldwide acclaim for pioneering work in measurement and modelling techniques.
Dr Ritchie's main interest has been the microbial, chemical and physical mechanisms that determine the rate of oxidation of sulfidic minerals in gold, diamond, uranium, coal, iron ore and base metal mines.
He has worked out ways to control leaching from mine wastes of acid and salts - the products of sulfide oxidation.
A spin-off has been the optimisation of leach heaps, used for extracting metals from sulfidic ores, and of bio-oxidation heaps, used in the pretreatment of refractory gold ores ahead of gold extraction.
Published: 23/02/1999