TIMMERMANS o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-09-10 published
Elizabeth TIMMERMANS
In loving memory of a dear wife, mother and grandmother, Elizabeth
TIMMERMANS,
September 9, 1921 to September 5, 2003. A resident of
Little Current passed away at Manitoulin Health Centre at the age of 81.
She was born in Wakefield Yorkshire, England to Walter and Edith
ASHTON.
Predeceased by parents and brother Walter, all of England.
Elizabeth met Gerald while he was stationed in England with the Air Force during WW2.
They married May 10, 1945 in Bramley Leeds, Yorkshire, England.
They moved to Blind River in 1946 and then to Little Current in 1952.
Elizabeth leaves to mourn, her beloved husband Gerry, sons Bob and
his wife Anca of California, Craig of Little Current and her daughter
Catherine and her husband David
ANDREWS of Port Elgin. She will be
missed by her three grand_sons Todd and Brett
ANDREWS and Carson
TIMMERMANS.
Funeral
Service was held on Monday, September 8, 2003 at
Holy Trinity Anglican Church Little Current, Ont. Cremation. Island Funeral Home.
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TIMUSK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-17 published
A true hero of Canadian science
Professor who won 1994 Nobel Prize didn't think his work was
very important but had to change his mind after he got award
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, October
17, 2003 - Page R13
Canadian physicist Bertram
BROCKHOUSE once likened winning the
Nobel Prize to winning the Stanley Cup.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1994
for his work developing a technique to measure the atomic structure
of matter, died on Monday in a Hamilton hospital. He was 85.
After the prize announcement, the visibly abashed emeritus professor
of physics at McMaster University told reporters in Hamilton
that when the Swedish Academy of Science telephoned him at 6: 45
a.m. his reaction was "enormous astonishment."
"It came as a complete surprise," he said. "I would have otherwise
been dressed and ready."
He said at the time he was unaware he had been nominated.
Aside from his own personal achievement, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE is the
only Canadian Nobel laureate who was born, educated and completed
his life's work in this country.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE shared his Nobel prize with Clifford
SHULL, a
former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
who died in 2001 at the age of 85. They were honoured for research
conducted at the first nuclear reactors in Canada and the United
States as early as the 1940s and 1950s.
In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy said "Clifford
SHULL helped answer the question of where atoms 'are' and Bertram
N. BROCKHOUSE the question of what atoms 'do.'
Much of Dr.
BROCKHOUSE's award-winning work was carried on at
the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, a facility operated by
what is now called Atomic Energy of Canada, where he was a researcher
from 1950 until 1962. The original Chalk River reactor, located
190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, drew curious scientists from
around the globe in the 1950s. Dr.
BROCKHOUSE used the neutron
beams from the nuclear reactors to probe materials at the atomic
level. Using a device he built for his research, known as the
triple-axis neutron spectrometer, he is recognized for improving
the understanding of the way neutrons bounce off atomic nuclei.
His triple-axis neutron spectrometer is still used around the
world and parts of the original device he built are still at
Chalk
River, said Dr. Bruce
GAULIN, who holds the Brockhouse
Chair in the physics of materials at McMaster.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE worked with simple materials like aluminum and
steel. Today the technique he developed, known as neutron scattering,
is used in widely differing areas such as the study of superconductors,
elastic properties of polymers and virus structure.
Scientists had previously relied on radiation from devices like
X-rays to look at the atomic structure of matter. "He is a heroic
figure," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Described as competitive in his scientific endeavours, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE
didn't want to miss a single minute. A colleague at Chalk River
once asked him why he worked so hard. "Every minute of every
day is unique," he replied. "And once that minute is gone, it
is lost forever."
While he had little spare time during his years at Chalk River,
he did use opportunities to take part in a number of amateur
dramatic productions, including three operettas. A great lover
of music, particularly for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan,
Dr. BROCKHOUSE was known for loudly singing excerpts while working
on experiments.
Bertram Neville
BROCKHOUSE was born on July 15, 1918, in Lethbridge,
Alberta. "My first memories are of a farm near Milk River where
I lived with my mother and father and my sister, Alice Evelyn,
and a variety of farm and domestic animals," he wrote in an autobiographical
sketch for the academy.
His parents Israel Bertram
BROCKHOUSE and Mable Emily
(NEVILLE)
BROCKHOUSE had two other children. One son died in infancy and
another went on to become a railroad civil engineer. The family
moved to Vancouver while Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was still a young boy.
He completed high school in 1935 and instead of going to university
went to work as a laboratory assistant and then as a radio repairman.
When the Second World War came along he used his radio skills
as an electronics technician in the Royal Canadian Navy. He spent
some months at sea, but most of his war years were spent servicing
sonar equipment at a shore base.
After the war, he returned to Vancouver to attend university
at the University of British Columbia. He later went to the University
of Toronto where he completed his PhD in 1950 with a lofty thesis
entitled "The Effect of Stress and Temperature upon the Magnetic
Properties of Ferromagnetic Materials".
In 1962, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE joined the department of physics at McMaster
University and remained there until his retirement in 1984. He
and his wife Doris raised their six children in Ancaster, a small
community outside Hamilton, in a house they occupied for close
to 40 years.
At the university, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was highly regarded as a professor
known for having high expectations of his students and for most
often being deep in thought.
"You had the sense you were in the presence of an unusual person,"
said Dr. Tom
TIMUSK, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy
at McMaster.
Dr. TIMUSK, who shared an office with Dr.
BROCKHOUSE at McMaster
for some time, said his colleague jokingly told students after
he won the Nobel Prize that he didn't think his work was very
important but that had to change his mind after he got the award.
"I think he genuinely believed that what he did was good work,
but not so important," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE likened himself to an explorer who woke up on
any given morning not knowing exactly what he was going to do,
except follow some vague instinct about what should be explored
next.
He also liked to say that scientists were really just mapmakers
with a greater eye for detail. "The metaphor that I think of
is that of the atlas you're all familiar with. What we work on
in basic science is just a bigger atlas, with places and objects
and so on that are not as familiar."
Dr. BROCKHOUSE leaves his wife, children Ann, Gordon, Ian, Beth,
Charles and James, and 10 grandchildren.
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