Stanley Block coauthored a pressure-measurement method using the sharp fluorescence lines of ruby inside a diamond anvil cell. Compression shifts the line energies, allowing a tiny optical marker to report pressure in a region inaccessible to an ordinary mechanical gauge. Calibration turns that spectral shift into a quantitative pressure reading. Line broadening can also reveal departures from uniform hydrostatic compression, so the spectrum contains information about the measurement conditions as well as the mean pressure.[ref]
Pressure Measurement Made by the Utilization of Ruby Sharp-Line Luminescence by Richard A. Forman and others. Science 176, 284–285 (1972), ruby-line shift and nonhydrostatic broadening
A physicist who led crystallographic research and developed ruby fluorescence pressure measurements.[ref]
Responding to National Needs: The National Bureau of Standards Becomes the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1969–1993 by J. F. Schooley. p.289, portrait caption: solid state physicist; NBS Crystallography Section
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