Professor Alan Michette did his PhD in Particle Physics at University College London. After a postdoctoral appointment at UCL he spent four years at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory before joining Queen Elizabeth College, London as a lecturer, at which point he changed to his current research field of X-Ray Physics. Following the merger of the colleges he moved to King's College London, where he has been ever since apart from a sabbatical in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. In addition to his main research interests, he is the UK instigator of a project to place cosmic ray detectors in local schools with the aim of allowing pupils and teachers the opportunity to be involved in real research - science by application.Sadly, Professor Michette passed away in May 2013 before this book was published.