Emeritus Professor Ron Newman FRS - Obituary

Emeritus Professor Ron Newman FRS died on 30th July 2014 after a long illness.

Emeritus Professor Ron Newman FRS, who died on 30^th July 2014 after a long illness, began and ended his academic career in the Physics Department at Imperial College London. Ron joined the Department as an undergraduate student in 1949 and was awarded a First Class Honours Degree in 1952. He then went on to study for a PhD under the supervision of Sir George Thomson and Professor Maurice Blackman, which he completed in 1955 with a thesis entitled ”The Deposition and Orientation of Thin Metallic Films on Single Crystal Substrates” This was at a time when the Department had great strength in electron diffraction. He co-authored several papers in this area with the late Professor Don Pashley, who was a Post-Doctoral Assistant at the time. They joined forces again at Imperial College over 30 years later.

Having completed his PhD, Ron left College to become a Research Scientist at the then AEI Research Laboratories at Aldermarston Court, where he continued his thin film work, but on semiconductors rather than metals, following the invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories a few years earlier. For the next nine or ten years he pursued his work in this area, but extended his activities to include the study of crystal defects, diffusion and impurity precipitation, all important topics in the newly emerging field of semiconductor materials.

After the effective closure of AEI Laboratories in 1964 (probably the first of all the important UK industrial research laboratories to be lost), he was appointed to a Lectureship in physics at the University of Reading and was promoted to a Personal Chair in 1975. It was at Reading that he began his work on the local vibrational mode (LVM) spectroscopy of dopants and impurities in semiconductor crystal lattices. It was in this area that he became an international authority, perhaps even a world leader and he continued with great distinction until his retirement in 2000.

In 1988, however, he was invited by the late Professor Tony Stradling to join the newly formed Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) for Semiconductor Materials at Imperial College as an Associate Director, a position he took up in 1989. He joined the Centre (which was directed by Professor Bruce Joyce) with two colleagues from Reading, Dr (now Professor) Ray Murray and John Tucker. They formed the nucleus of a group within the IRC which produced internationally acclaimed work on LVM spectroscopy, mainly on silicon and gallium arsenide, based on Fourier Transform IR techniques. Although Ray and John both left the group to take on other roles in the IRC (and eventually in the Department in the case of Ray), it grew significantly with new postdoctoral research assistants and research students, until the eventual closure of the IRC in 2000. It is an interesting aside that Ron’s move to Reading was initiated by Sir Bill Mitchell, who was Head of the Department at the time and that IRCs were established by Sir Bill during his term as Director of SERC (EPSRC).

Ron’s eminence as a scientist was recognized by his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1998, which afforded him enormous pleasure, and by his membership and chairmanship of a large number of Research Council Committees, starting in 1974. He was also a stereotypical Englishman, perhaps best illustrated by the way he sought out the nearest McDonald’s on visits to countries where exotic food was served, especially Japan!

Unfortunately, his latter years were somewhat blighted by ill-health, but he received devoted care from his wife Jill, who survives him, together with two daughters and four grandchildren.

Emeritus Professor Bruce Joyce FRS (Physics)