Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2011
The following article is based on the presentation given by Simon C. Moss (University of Houston), recipient of the 2001 MRS Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society's highest honor, at the 2001 MRS Fall Meeting on November 28 in Boston. Moss was cited for “consistently timely and essential contributions to identifying and understanding the atomic-level structure of almost every new type of material discovered in the last 30 years.” The main unifying thread in his work is the use of diffuse scattering of x-rays and neutrons from disordered and defective solids to study their structure as well as the effects that defects have on phase transitions, whose intrinsic disorder makes them both “real” and challenging.