The suffix “oid” designate that such clusters possess at a molecular scale, atom arrangements that appear in bulk intermetallic compounds with high coordination numbers of the atoms such as for example in Laves phase and Hume-Rothery phases.
He later on became a research student in the laboratory of Dr. William Hume-Rothery, the founder of Oxford's metallurgy department.
The almost-free electron model was eagerly taken up by some researchers in this field, notably Hume-Rothery in an attempt to explain why certain intermetallic alloys with certain compositions would form and others would not.
The site had been occupied since the early 1890s by the Hotel Netherland, designed by William Hume for William Waldorf Astor, a member of the prominent Astor family.
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The Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, England was founded in the 1950s as the Department of Metallurgy, by William Hume-Rothery, who was a reader in Oxford's Department of Inorganic Chemistry.
It was built in 1870 for William Hume-Dick, father-in-law of Richard Penruddocke Long, by William White.