Hubert King - Biography

Hubert King is a soft-matter physicist at ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research. He has worked at ExxonMobil for more than 35 years, and has investigated physical phenomena in systems ranging from organic conductors, to simple liquids, to polymers and, recently, porous rocks. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from the University of Kentucky, afterwards attending Stony Brook University, completing a PhD in the Earth and Space Sciences Department focusing on the effects of high pressures on the structure and properties of crystals. He continued that work at IBM-Physical Sciences as a Post-Doctoral Fellow, before being hired into Exxon's Corporate Research Lab in 1982 into the newly-formed Condensed Matter Physics Group. His work on the effects of pressure on the glass transition has been widely cited and resulted in his election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1994. He has also studied crystal nucleation and growth, work that guided developments of crystal inhibitors now used in sub-sea pipelines and diesel fuel. He has led a number of teams ranging from Polymer Science to Rock Physics. Recent work has focused on detection and imaging of microscopic features that govern flow in porous rocks, developing new experimental procedures and utilizing national laboratory facilities, i.e. NCNR.  Discoveries have included transport and storage mechanisms for gas in shale, a new hydrocarbon resource. Scattering investigations related to gas shale along with other applications resulted in Hubert being elected as a Fellow of The Neutron Scattering Society of America in 2018.