Emeritus Professor Harvey Rutt

Professor Rutt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2011. He is recognized for his contribution to electro-optical research and development in laser technology for industrial application.

Professor Rutt was Head of ECS from 2007 to 2010 and played a significant role before that in planning and commissioning the new Mountbatten Building, the University of Southampton’s £100M world-leading research facility for optoelectronics and micro- and nanotechnology.

Professor Rutt is a graduate of the University of Southampton, taking both his BSc and PhD degrees in Electronics. He established his first laser research group in Brazil before returning to the UK in 1973 when he joined the Atomic Energy Authority at Culham Laboratory, working on novel infrared gas lasers for the sixteen micron region. He was appointed to the newly established Rank Chair of Infrared Science and Technology at the University of Southampton in January 1992. His group has established a broad range of work in novel sources, instruments and systems in the mid and far infrared. He edits the Journal Infrared Physics and Technology.

He remains passionate about his own research and is on the brink of developing a terahertz microscope which will be 100 times faster than any existing and will be a very powerful device for studying materials. Looking at the way in which terahertz radiation interacts with biological molecules, and how infrared radiation can be used to assist in the understanding of Alzheimer disease or aid neurosurgeons, are also areas which fascinate him.