Charles E. Weir

Charles E. Weir (September 29, 1911–April 4, 1987) was an American chemist and physicist known for being one of the four co-inventors of the diamond anvil cell at the National Bureau of Standards in 1957, with Alvin Van Valkenburg, Ellis Lippincott and Elmer Bunting. Weir had the principal role in designing the first diamond anvil cell, and built it by hand using the machining tools available in his lab. The original device was first described in a paper on high-pressure infrared absorption measurements of calcium carbonate. Later, Weir collaborated in the development of diamond anvil cells for powder X-ray diffraction.

Early life and education

Weir was born in Washington, DC in 1911 That same year, Weir was chosen by Oscar Stanton De Priest as one of four nominees for the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he passed the entrance exam, but failed the vision test. He then used this device for unfunded discretionary work on the compressibility of (and phase transitions in) many other materials. Ultimately, this discretionary work brought him into contact with Alvin Van Valkenburg (a mineralogist by training), who was also pursuing high-pressure research at the National Bureau of Standards, along with Ellis Lippincott from the University of Maryland, College Park and Elmer Bunting from the National Bureau of Standards. After a failed experiment that involved compressing a sample with a diamond piston inserted into a cylindrical hole bored into a 7.5 carat diamond crystal, Weir proposed an opposed anvil device that would take advantage of the high compressive strength of diamond (as opposed to its less impressive tensile strength) to perform infrared absorption measurements at high pressure.