Dr. Patrick N. Keating is a theoretical physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 who has contributed to several fields of solid-state

Solid-state physics

Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials result from...

 physics, including semiconductors, semi-insulators and the basic properties of solid materials, and to other fields including optics

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...

, liquid crystals, acoustic holography

Acoustic holography

Acoustic holography is a method that is used to estimate the sound field near a source by measuring acoustic parameters away from the source via an array of pressure and/or particle velocity transducers. Measuring techniques included within acoustic holography are becoming increasingly popular in...

, and signal processing

Signal processing

Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...

. He is best known for the Keating Model

Keating Model

The Keating Model is a model introduced by P. N. Keating in 1966 for the forces induced on neighboring atoms when one atom is moved in a solid. It is most often applied to the forces on first- and second-nearest neighboring atoms which arise when an atom is moved in tetrahedrally-bonded solids,...

 of interatomic forces in tetrahedrally-coordinated solids (P. N. Keating, Effect of Invariance Requirements On The Elastic Strain Energy of Crystals, With Application to the Diamond Structure, Phys. Rev. 145, 637 (1966), which was determined to be one of the 50 highest-impact papers over a century of Physical Review publications http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0407137v1).

Dr. Keating was born in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and educated as a physicist there (University of Nottingham

University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, United Kingdom, with further campuses in Ningbo, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...

) and in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 (University of Michigan, 1969). He served as Director and General Manager of both the Advanced Technology Center and the Microelectronics Center of Allied-Signal Corporation (now part of Honeywell Inc.), and currently resides in Maryland with his wife, Julie. He has two married daughters, Clare and Fiona. Keating has been an enthusiastic tennis player, golfer, sailor, and aviator, and holds an FAA pilot's license.

Dr. Keating's current research interests include Climate Science, and a research paper in that field is currently in press, in International Journal of Climatology, 29, 1525–1534, September 2009, and available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.1803