|
Alan Hamill
B.Sc. Ph.D.,
C.Phys.
After a business
failure due to the recession in 1990-91, Alan Hamill decided to go
to business school where he discovered an aptitude for
Mathematics. He applied to Glasgow University where he was
told that he could start a degree in Applied physics if he
satisfied their criteria, which was to gain the equivalent of
Higher – or College level mathematics, physics and chemistry
at their summer school.
Not only did he do
just that, he completed it with merits in all three subjects
in the space of only eight weeks! He went on to
receiving a 1st Class Honours Degree
in Applied Physics
and was recommended for PhD, in 1995. The PhD was in
Electro polymerisation of metalloporphyrins and their
applications in biosenors.
Successfully
completing his PhD in 1998, he sat his viva in February and
became a fully-fledged Doctor in July of the same year upon
graduation. He started work straight away with
Iomega UK but later that year was made a fantastic offer to
work in one of the most famous labs in the world, the one
which recently cracked the human genome; the European
Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, Germany.
Here he built and
maintained complex imaging systems such as the photonic force
microscope which uses lasers to levitate small molecule
enabling 3 dimensional analysis. Much of this work centered
around building complex instrumentation and dedicated
computers for control and data analysis, and more and more
found himself engrossed in building highly complex computers
for specialist control of other instrumentation. Always
fine tuning and optimising computers and computer programs in
C++ and Visual Basic, even at home he was always tinkering
with computers as a major hobby.
His contract
at the lab finished in December 2001 at which time he returned
to the UK with his family prepared to set down some
roots. However, the horrific tragedy of September
11th impacted the whole world and Cambridge, which
was once the Mecca of tech companies in the UK, was sinking
fast as funding was mostly US based. That was the point where
he decided to turn his hobby into a business - building
computers and writing about them.
As a Chartered
Physicist and member of the Institute of Physics, Physics is
his profession, but computers are his passion. "How To
Build Your Own PC" is a direct result of that
passion.
|
