PRYCE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-12 published
Died This Day -- 13 school canoeists, 1978
Thursday, June 12, 2003 - Page R9
Adventure outing by Saint John's School, Claremont, Ontario, struck
by high winds on Lake Temiskaming, single capsize caused panic
and the upset of other canoes, led to deaths of teacher Mark
DEANNY and boys
Todd MICHELL,
Barry NELSON,
Jody O'GORMAN,
Timothy PRYCE,
David GREANEY,
Andy HERMAN,
Simon CROFT,
Tim HOPKINS,
Tom KENNY,
Scott BINDON,
Kevin BLACK,
Fraser BOURCHIER
Autopsies showed all drowned but that some had been in water 12 hours before death occurred.
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PRYCE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-09 published
PRYCE,
Maurice
Henry
Lecorney
Maurice
Henry
Lecorney
PRYCE died at Vancouver, British Columbia,
aged 90. He was a theoretical physicist with very broad interests.
Following a spectacular early career at Cambridge, Oxford, and
Bristol, he spent the second half of his life in the United States
and Canada. Born in Croydon, England, on the 24th of January,
1913, he spent part of his childhood with his French mother in
France where he learned to speak French 'like a Normandy peasant'.
He was always encouraging to his two younger brothers, and fond
of risky experiments such as using a magneto to fire a small
cannon loaded with home-made gunpowder. Educated at the Royal
Grammar School in Guildford he entered Trinity College, Cambridge,
in 1930, graduating in 1933 and continuing to do research there
initially with Sir Ralph Fowler and subsequently with the Nobel
laureate Max Born. He spent two years as a Commonwealth Fund
Fellow at Princeton University in 1935-7 before returning to
Cambridge as a Fellow of Trinity College. During this period
in Cambridge he made outstanding contributions to the so-called
''New Field Theory'' proposed by Born and Infeld. He also wrote
an incisive paper demolishing the then fashionable idea that
light quanta might consist of pairs of neutrinos. Paul Dirac,
then one of the most influential theoretical physicists, was
so impressed (which was a very rare occurrence) that he spontaneously
offered to communicate the work to The Royal Society. Maurice
PRYCE later remarked that this was the high-point of his scientific
life. In 1939 he was appointed to a Readership in Theoretical
Physics at Liverpool University, and married Margarete
(GRITLI)
BORN. At the advent of war he joined the team working on radar
at the Admiralty Signal Establishment, and in 1944 transferred
to the Joint Atomic Energy Project in Montreal. In 1945 he returned
to his fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a university
lectureship, but was soon invited to become Wykeham Professor
of Physics at Oxford, a chair which had recently been earmarked
for a theoretical physicist after the long tenure of Sir John
Townsend. It was a bold appointment for someone aged only 32,
who looked even younger than his years. At Oxford he rapidly
acquired a large group of research students, many returning from
war service, several of whom were to become very distinguished
in their fields. His interests and knowledge spread across many
branches of physics, and students were put to work on widely
ranging topics stretching from field theory, the nuclear shell
model, liquid helium, to solid state physics. Maurice
PRYCE became
most directly involved in interpreting the magnetic properties
of atoms which were being studied in great detail through the
paramagnetic resonance techniques by Brebis Bleaney and his colleagues
in the Clarendon Laboratory. Almost half his published work relates
to this area where he elucidated in detail the interaction between
the magnetic electrons and the lattice (the crystal field), the
effective lattice dynamics (the Jahn-Teller effect) and interaction
with the nucleus (hyperfine structure). He also added considerably
to the understanding of the magnetic properties of atoms in the
actinide series, including the newly discovered transuranics.
During his time in Oxford he took sabbatical leave to spend a
year as Visiting Professor at Princeton. On his return he acted
as the part-time head of the theoretical physics division at
the nearby Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, where
he replaced the previous head, Klaus Fuchs, who was arrested
in 1950 and convicted on a charge of spying. In 1951 Maurice
PRYCE was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1954, frustrated
by the constraints of his position and in particular by the autocratic
management of Lord Cherwell, he accepted an invitation to succeed
Nevill Mott as Henry Overton Wills Professor of Physics at the
University of Bristol. With greater administrative duties as
head of the department he had less time to develop his research
group but he continued with the subjects that he had begun at
Oxford. His first marriage had broken down, and he married Freda
KINSEY in 1961. He then accepted a tempting offer by the University
of Southern California, and moved there in 1964, with the promise
of resources to build up, essentially from scratch, a first class
physics department. The reality turned out to be less attractive
than he had hoped. In 1968 he moved again to a chair at the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver where he was to remain until
his death, on the 24th of July 2003. During these later years
his main contributions were in the quite different field of astrophysics,
although others, on molecular photoionisation and on the properties
of the hydroxyl radical, continued to display his versatility
and his wide understanding of physics. This knowledge was greatly
valued by his colleagues who would rely on a critical appraisal
of their work and its interpretation. But he did not suffer fools
gladly and was a harsh critic; in a seminar, he could devastate
the speaker and embarrass the audience with his acerbic comments.
He also continued his interest in atomic energy derived from
his wartime work and was latterly a member of the Technical Advisory
Committee to the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited with a particular
interest on nuclear fuel waste management. Some of his last work
related to the questions of the safety of deposit of radioactive
materials in geological structures. Maurice
PRYCE was a keen
walker and camper and, in younger days, a dinghy sailor. He was
a competent pianist and liked to relax by playing classical music,
mainly Bach and Mozart. He was a good cook, which stood him in
good stead when entertaining Friends and family after his second
wife died in 1990. He inherited from his father a love and knowledge
of gardening, which he passed on to all four of his children.
He always kept a boyish liking for silly games, from elaborate
sandcastles on the beach to noisy card games on the living room
floor. Until ill health stopped him, he was a skilful Scrabble
player. He created a family tradition, perhaps characteristic
of his personal philosophy, of Collaborative Scrabble -- the
main aim is, within the rules, to maximize the overall score
rather than to beat the other players. The mathematical gene
has also passed on to his son John, well known in his field of
mathematical software engineering; and
to John's son Nathaniel,
a professional software engineer. The last 14 years of his life
he spent in the company of his great friend Eileen
GOLDBERG,
the widow of a South African lawyer who had been active in the
fight against apartheid. They shared their love of music, literature,
and walks in the woods. In December, 1997, he was incapacitated
by an osteoporosis-induced bone fracture and subsequent infection,
and spent his last five years at the University Hospital in Vancouver,
visited daily by Eileen. During this period his mind was unaffected,
and he bore immobility and frequent pain with patience, courage
and a sense of humour, remaining in exemplary good spirits throughout.
He is survived by his son, John, and three daughters, Sylvia,
Lois and Suki, all from his first marriage.
Copyright: Roger Elliott and John Sanders/The Independent, London.
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