Colin Webb was born in Erith, Kent, England in 1937. He received the degree of BSc (Physics) at the University of Nottingham in 1960. On completing his DPhil at Oxford in 1964 he became a member of technical staff of Bell Laboratories in New Jersey USA where he was responsible for much of the early development of the Argon Ion laser.

He returned to Oxford University in 1968 to take up a Research Fellowship and to head the Laser group at the Clarendon Laboratory. In the 1970’s he became a University Lecturer and Fellow of Jesus College.

Since then he has supervised more than 35 D.Phil students in research projects which have led, for example, to the discovery of numerous new laser transitions in the visible and ultraviolet regions as well as the development of practical excimer and high power metal vapour lasers.

In particular the group led by Colin Webb has made contributions to the development of new types of gas lasers and the understanding of their mechanisms including: the introduction of new optical diagnostic techniques, the first application of flowing afterglow techniques to the study of the formation of excited species in thermal energy charge-transfer reactions, the discovery of some 30 new laser transitions excited by such charge-transfer reactions, the development of a new type of discharge device for metal-ion lasers, the demonstration of the first practical device for discharge-excitation of rare-gas-halide (RHG) excimer lasers, the introduction of the 'automatic pre-ionization' technique for discharge-excited excimer lasers, the development of practical VUV lasers, the introduction of cryogenic gas purification techniques for extending the working lifetime of the gas mixtures of excimer and VUV lasers, the development of practical high power metal vapour lasers for scientific, industrial and medical applications, as well as contributions, both theoretical and experimental, to the understanding of instabilities in high pressure glow discharges, in particular the concept of the ‘halogen donor depletion’ instability mechanism and the development of new tunable, ultra violet and visible high repetition rate, pulsed, solid state laser systems pumped by copper vapour lasers.