Alison Bruce

Alison Bruce is a British physicist who is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Brighton. Her research considers the shape of atomic nuclei. She developed arrays of scintillation gamma-ray detectors for the determination of electromagnetic transition rates. She was awarded the 2024 Ernest Rutherford Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics.

Early life and education Bruce completed her doctoral research at the University of Manchester. She studied W-Os-Pt nuclei and developed Interacting Boson-Fermion Models. She worked at the Niels Bohr Institute, where she used electric dipoles to understand the shapes of deformed nuclei. She used boson model symmetries to predict the spectra of odd-odd N=Z nuclei.

Research and career Bruce was made a professor at the University of Brighton in 2005. She was the first woman to hold such a position, and developed Brighton's programme on nuclear physics. She created experimental strategies to measure transition rates in rare-earth nuclei. Bruce develops scintillation gamma-ray detectors for measuring electromagnetic transition rates with high precision. These detectors can be assembled in arrays and engineered to have sub-nanosecond timing capabilities.

Bruce has led UK efforts in international programmes, including Riken's Radioactive Beam Factory, Germany's Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research and the Decay SPECtroscopy. At Riken she performed the first fast-time measurements of the most neutron-rich zirconium isotopes (104,106Zr), and found that they had deformed quadrupole shapes.

Bruce was awarded the 2024 Ernest Rutherford Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics.

Selected publications