Faculty of Science and Technology

Professor Bill Davison has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Sustainable Water Award 2010 for his major and lasting contributions to the field of aquatic environmental chemistry in particular for his work on dynamic speciation, lake neutralisation processes and his invention of two new measurement techniques, DET and DGT.

Professor Bill Davison's international reputation in aquatic chemistry developed while he served as a research scientist at the Freshwater Biological Association, Windermere (now known as the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and then as Professor of Environmental Chemistry at Lancaster University.

His advances in fundamental understanding include biogeochemical cycling processes of carbon, iron, manganese, sulfur, trace metals and radionuclides in lakes. However, he has also applied his knowledge to solving practical problems, such as novel treatments for acidified lakes, for which he receive a commendation in the Pollution Abatement Technology Awards. Throughout his career he has contributed to the dynamics of chemical speciation.

Early work, stimulated by his PhD in Electrochemistry, gained at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, advanced understanding of voltammetric measurements of metals in natural waters, while in more recent years he has promoted the in situ use of dynamic measurement techniques.

He is particularly well known for his development of the two in situ techniques Diffusive Gradients (and Equilibration) in Thin-films (DGT and DET), which use gels and binding agents in well defined geometries. While DET is largely restricted to measuring solutes in porewaters, Professor Davison and his co-worker Zhang have developed DGT for in situ monitoring of trace elements in natural waters, as a method for defining chemical speciation, as time and flow dependent integrators of element concentrations and as high resolution (100 mm) measuring systems for porewaters of soils and sediments. DGT has found widespread use throughout the world and been the subject of two international conferences.

Thu 22 July 2010