Austen Angell

Charles Austen Angell (14 December 1933 – 12 March 2021) was a renowned Australian and American physical chemist known for his prolific and highly cited research on the chemistry and physics of glasses and glass-forming liquids. He was internationally recognized as a luminary in the fields of glasses, liquids, water and ionic liquids.

His best known contribution is probably the development of the fragility concept and the "strong–fragile" classification of viscous liquids in general. The plot of logarithm of viscosity of liquids of all types to be placed on the same diagram by using the reduced temperature scale with the glass transition temperature T_g as scaling parameter, is widely known as the "Angell plot".

He was a pioneer of discovering the extraordinary behavior of supercooled water and launched the modern era of exploring the anomalies of water, which transformed the understanding of the most common substance on Earth in modern physics and chemistry. He was one of the first scientists to embrace molecular simulations for gaining insights into the amorphous materials and liquids. He also worked on the problems of ionic liquids and Li battery electrolytes. He is credited with the "decoupling index" concept for characterizing the freedom of conducting species and with the "polymer-in-salt" concept for lithium battery electrolytes. He was a "visionary explorer of glasses and the limits of the liquid state". Provided by Wikipedia