Obituaries of crystallographers

These obituaries were last updated 9 Aug 2007. This file contains only the announcement of the death. It begins in April 1996.
Further information is available:

Death of Durward Cruickshank

"The Times" of Thursday 9 August 2007 carried an obituary of one of our oldest Honorary members, Durward Cruickshank, born 7 March 1924, died 13 July 2007.

Death of Robert Crispin Evans

Our oldest Honorary member died on 18 December 2005 at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon at the age of 96. He was Emeritus Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. His funeral was held at the West Chapel, Cambridge Crematorium on Wednesday 4 January 2006 at 11-15 am. An appreciation will be published later in 'Crystallography News'.

Death of Robin Shirley

We were sorry to learn that Robin Shirley (born 1941) died in hospital on Sunday, 17th March 2005. He contracted Hepatitis A last November and subsequent liver problems proved fatal on Easter Sunday. He will be remembered for his 'Crysfire' software, his poetry shown at IUCr99 in Glasgow, and for his enthusiasm for the preservation of old computers.

Death of Gen Shirane

Gen Shirane, a giant in the field of neutron scattering, died suddenly on Sunday, January 16, 2005. Gen had a 50 year career in neutron scattering, most of it working at Brookhaven's High Flux Beam Reactor. He performed many seminal experiments and published more that 700 papers on a wide variety of topics ranging from ferroelectricity to low dimensional solids and High Tc.

Steve Shapiro

Death of Mary Truter

UCL announced in December that Prof Mary Truter died on 26th November 2004. Her funeral was held on 7 December 2004 at Golders Green Crematorium.

Chick Wilson writes:
"Jackie" was a founder member of the BCA and held a number of posts over the years. She was a regular attender of BCA meetings until quite recently. We anticipate publishing an obituary in a future issue of Crystallography News.

Death of Francis Crick

Francis Crick first studied physics and later found he was more interested in biology. He is probably best known for his collaboration with J.D.Watson in 1953 when they discovered the structure of DNA. Together with the experimentalist M.Wilkins they received a Nobel prize in 1962 for this discovery. After some years at the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge, he went to the Salk Institute in California. He was born 8 June 1916 in Northampton and died in San Diego 28 July 2004, aged 88. An obituary was published in 'The Times' of 30 July 2004.

Further pages on this site give details of celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery and a list of books.

Death of Sam Small

From: Chick C Wilson
Subject: Fwd: Sam Small
Another sad loss to our crystallographic community. It is poignant that David and Sam have passed away in the same week, having worked so closely together in the early days of the BCA.
Chick Wilson
BCA President

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 16:15:01 +0100
From: "Halfpenny, Joan"

Dear Chick,

Further to the sad news about David Blow, I'm sorry to tell you that Sam Small died on 8th June. Active for many years in the Institute of Physics Crystallography Group, he played a major part in the founding of the BCA and was of course BCA Secretary at the time David Blow was President.

I would be grateful if you could circulate this further piece of bad news to members.

Joan

Dr J C Halfpenny
Division of Chemistry
School of Biomedical and Natural Sciences
Nottingham Trent University

Death of David Blow

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 18:02:48 +0100 (BST)
From: Dr Peter C E Moody
Subject: David Blow

I am very sorry to have to pass on the sad news that David Blow died last night.

We will miss him.

Peter

Note: (from the Webpage editor) We have a good portrait of him in happier days here on our website.. He was instrumental in the formation of the BCA and had just completed an article with Steve Wallwork 'Prehistory of the British Crystallographic Association' Notes Rec.R. Soc. Lond 58 (2), 177-186 (2004).

Professor Carl-Ivar Br�nd�n


Dear Crystallographer,
   Our dear friend, Carl-Ivar Br�nd�n, passed away on 28th April 2004. He will be buried on the 28th May, 14:00 at V�rds�tra herrg�rd in Uppsala.
   He wanted the burial to be open to everyone, but did not expect his friends outside Sweden to come to it. Instead he hoped that if there were a memorial symposium, on that occasion his friends might like to attend.

   We hope to be able to arrange such a memorial in the autumn. Please let us know if you would like to join us. Feel free to pass on this information to others that you think may be interested.

   News of the symposium will be put on http://xray.bmc.uu.se/alwyn, as things develop.

Hans Eklund & Alwyn Jones

Death of Bill Cochran

One of our Honorary members, Bill Cochran died on August 28th, 2003
He made contributions in many fields, not least in the beginnings of Direct Methods, and was a kindly and humorous man. An obituary was published in 'The Times' on October 10th 2003; one will be published in the next issue of "Crystallography News".

Death of Bill Mitchell

'The Times' of Friday 8 November 2002 published an obituary of Sir William Mitchell, who died in Reading on 30th October 2002 aged 77.
His research interests in physics were wide ranging. He was particulalry interested in the effects of defects on material properties and so in the production of such defects throuh irradiation damage. He was chairman of the Diamond Research Fund for many years. Work with early reactors at Harwell and Aldermaston encouraged his lifelong interest in the uses of neutron scattering; he negotiated an equal partnership for the UK with France and Germany in the Insitut Laue Langevin in Grenoble. During his chairmanship of the Science and Engineering research Council the spallation neutron source, ISIS, was commissioned at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory. He nutured many collaborations with colleagues from the Continent; became vice-president of the European Science Foundation and was chairman of the Council of CERN for a time.

20 June 2002

Dear All,
It is with great sadness that I relay this message of Ron Jenkins' passing on 19 June 2002 in Pennsylvania, USA. Many of our members have benefited from his teaching at the many BCA workshops he ran over the years.
An Honorary Member of BCA - he will be sadly missed.

Dave Taylor
BCA representative to ICDD.
An obituary will be posted on these BCA pages soon.

15 March 2002

'The Times' of 15 March 2002 page 40 in the 'Lives in Brief' section reports the death of Helen Dick Megaw on 26 February 2002 at the age of 94. Click here for a few details of her acheivements stored on this web site.

7 February 2002

'The Times' of 15 'The Times' of 7 February 2002 carries an obituary of one of our Honorary members, Max Perutz, OM. CH. CBE. FRS who died yesterday February 6, 2002 aged 87. Click here for a few details of his acheivements stored on this web site.

28 March 2000

George Jeffrey died in Pittsburgh, USA, on 13 Feb 2000, he was born on 29 Jul 1915. This sad news came from one of his students, Derry Jones, University of Bradford.

19 Jan 2000

We are sorry to report the death of Paul V. Sigler on 11 January 2000 while walking to work at Yale University. An obituary will be published in a future issue of 'Crystallography News'.

27 February 1999

The Times of Friday February 26, 1999 carried an obituary of Lord Phillips of Ellesmere, KBE. FRS., scientist and science policy maker, who died on February 23 1999 aged 74. He was better known to the BCA as David Phillips, our first President from 1982 to 1984. An obituary will appear in the next issue of 'Crystallography News'.
Click here for further information and obituaries

11 January 1999

Professor Donald Rogers, retired Professor of chemical crystallography at Imperial College, died on Saturday 9 January 1999 after a short illness. His ex-students and colleagues from Imperial College and from his earlier appointments at Cardiff and Manchester, together with his many friends, send their sympathy to his wife and family.

Frank Allen, CCDC


An appreciation of his contribution to crystallography will appear in a future issue of 'Crystallography News'.

14 Aug 98 A memorial service

A service of thanksgiving for the life and work of Sir Charles Frank will be held in Bristol Cathedral on Wednesday November 4th 11am

27 April 1998

Andrew Lang has sent me the following note:

I cannot remember if I told you of the unexpected death of our distinguished Sir Charles Frank OBE, FRS on the day our St.Andrews conference started, 5 April. He will be greatly missed. He was a first-class crystallographer; the screw-dislocation theory of crystal growth was his idea.

'The Times' today published an obituary of Sir Charles Frank, OBE, FRS who died in Bristol on April 5th aged 87. In addition to the screw dislocation theory, he also made contributions to the field of liquid crystals, (used today in computer displays) and to cold nuclear fusion. In 1947 he suggested that muons might be able to catalyse the fusion of deuterium and tritium. Experiments to verify this are continuing today. He also worked on the crystallisation and chain folding of polymers. 'The Times' appears to think the general public will remember him for his wartime activitie; his great observational skills were used to scan aerial reconnaissance photographs of German anti-aircraft radar installations. He spotted vital very small clues which led to successful identification of rotating radar antennae by the variation in their shadows on successive images.

After the war he went to Bristol University, becoming Henry Overton Wills professor of Physics and director of the laboratory until his nominal retirement in 1976.

In physics as in his intelligence work, his breakthroughs were due to clear, elegant thiinking about three dimensional structures.

8 November 1997

The November 97 issue of 'Physics World' (page 56) contains an obituary of Reginald Gibbs who died on 19 August in his 100th year. He was a world Authority on the structure and properties of quartz; he worked with William H.Bragg and was associated with University College London for more than 50 years.

27 August 1997

There is an obituary in 'The Times' today for Sir John Kendrew, who died aged 80 in Cambridge on 23 August 1997. An appreciation by Max Perutz was published in the September issue of 'Crystallography News'.

2 July 1997

I learnt today of the death of Peter Wheatley on 12 May 1997. He was a key figure in the development of crystallography in the 1950s and did a great deal of editorial work for Acta Crystallographica. An obituary will appear in the September 97 issue of 'Crystallography News'

7 February 1997

Although he lived in Australia Ted Maslen has been a member of the BCA for many years, and we are all saddened by his sudden death on Sunday 3rd February. Click here for the text of the address given by Syd Hall at the funeral service on 6th Feb.

27 October 1996

4 July 96

The 'Independent' recently published an obituary of Sir Gordon Cox, who died in London on 23 June 1996 at the age of 90 He was one of the pioneers of our subject, who gave BCA members a fascinating glimpse into the early days of crystallography in his address "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive" given at the 1993 Bragg Lecture at Manchester, which was a joint lecture that year with Max Perutz. I feel sure members will wish to join me in sending condolances to his family on this sad occasion. A full obituary was published in the September 1996 issue of 'Crystallography News'

8 May 96

It is with great regret that I have to report the untimely death of Alun Bowen on 7 May 96 at the age of 51. He had given a great talk at our Cambrige Conference only a month ago.
full obituary was published in the September 1996 issue of 'Crystallography News'.

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing this note in memory of Professor Hans Gerhard Zachmann of the University of Hamburg who passed away suddenly on Sunday, April 28 1996 of a heart attack while attending a scientific conference in Italy.

Professor Zachmann has made significant contribution to the field of polymer crystallization and morphology. He was the pioneer of time-resolved measurements for polymers using synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques.


Prof. Zachmann was a good colleague and friend to many of us. We will miss him personally as well as his technical contributions to our field.
Ben Hsiao
DuPont CR&D

Obituaries

links refer to the announcement of their death, where further links may be found.
<-- Click here to return to BCA homepage