Naomi. Margaret Thomas died in 2002. In April 2010, Thomas married Jehane Ragai of the American University in Cairo; the events took place in Cambridge and London. The recreations he lists in Who's Who include ancient civilisations, bird watching, and Welsh literature. Early career After a year's work for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority as scientific officer (1957–1958), Thomas joined the Department of Chemistry at the University College of North Wales (later Bangor University) as of September 1958. There he rose through the ranks from Assistant Lecturer (1958), to Lecturer (1959), to Senior Lecturer (1964) and then to Reader in 1965. Thomas demonstrated the profound influence of dislocations and other structural imperfections upon the chemical, electronic, and surface properties of solids. In 1969 Thomas became Professor and Head of Chemistry at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he broadened his interests in solid-state, surface and materials chemistry and pioneered new techniques for the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1977 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1978, Thomas succeeded Jack Linnett as Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge (then a separate department from the Department of Chemistry, which covered Organic, Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry). He also became a Professorial Fellow at King's College, Cambridge, holding both positions until 1986. Thomas continued developing new techniques in solid-state and materials science, and designing and synthesising new catalysts. For example, he extended his earlier electron microscopic and surface studies of minerals and intercalates to encompass the synthesis and structural determination of zeolitic materials by a combination of solid-state NMR, neutron scattering, and real-space imaging. Director of the Royal Institution In 1986, Thomas succeeded Sir George Porter as Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. He also became the holder of the Michael Faraday chair, and the Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory (DFRL). The Royal Institution was founded in 1799. Its earliest directors were Humphry Davy (1801–1825) and Michael Faraday (1825–1867). The Davy Faraday Research Laboratory opened on 22 December 1896, with funding from Ludwig Mond. It was "unique of its kind, being the only public laboratory in the world solely devoted to research in pure science". At this time, Thomas began using synchrotron radiation and devised techniques which combine X-ray spectroscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction to determine the atomic structure of the active sites of solid