| David Godfrey Pettifor CBE FRS | |
| Birth Date: | 1945 3, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Keighley, England, UK |
| Field: | Metallurgy |
| Work Institutions: | University of Oxford |
| Alma Mater: | University of Witwatersrand University of Cambridge |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Volker Heine |
| Thesis Title: | Electron theory of transition metals |
| Known For: | Structure maps Computational materials science |
David Godfrey Pettifor [1] (9 March 1945 – 16 October 2017[2]) was the Isaac Wolfson Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Oxford from 1992 to 2011.[3] He was also a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[4]
He was the author of a book entitled Bonding and Structure of Molecules and Solids (Oxford University Press).[5] He created "structure maps" which determine which crystal structure an alloy will form. He was a world authority on materials modelling and helped established the Oxford Materials Modelling Laboratory.
He held a BSc from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, supervised by Volker Heine.
He was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2005.[6] In 1999, he received the Royal Society Armourers and Brasiers' Medal. Other awards include the William Hume-Rothery Award and the Hume-Rothery Prize.
He died on 16 October 2017.[7]