Professor Keith Bowen FREng FRS, born 10 May 1940, was educated at Christ’s Hospital and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was the first Armourers and Brasiers’ Scholar. He obtained his MA and DPhil in Metallurgy at Oxford University, working on mechanical properties of body-centred cubic metals with JW Christian FRS. He was appointed Lecturer in Materials in the Department of Engineering, Warwick University in 1968 and held various academic positions, including Head of Department, Professor of Engineering, Chairman of the Graduate School for Science and Director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Microengineering. He held visiting professorships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Paris and University of Denver. He has acted as consultant to several organisations including Rolls-Royce, Shell Venture Research, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and others in the materials, X-ray, legal and venture capital fields. He has authored about 150 publications on the theory and application of X-ray characterization techniques, theory of dislocations, X-ray interferometry and ultra-precision engineering, including the book “High Resolution X-ray Diffraction and Topography” with Prof. Brian Tanner. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998.

Keith joined Bede Scientific Instruments Ltd. part-time in 1983, went full time in 1997 on taking early retirement from Warwick University, and served as Group Director of Technology of Bede plc  from 2000 until his retirement from the Board in 2005, then Chief Scientist of Bede plc from 2006 – 2008,  From 2005 – 2011 he was a non-executive director of Circadian Solar (formerly Advancesis Ltd.), spending two years acting also as Engineering Director, and is currently NED and Chairman of goHDR Ltd. Circadian and goHDR were both spinouts from Warwick University.