Obituaries

We were deeply saddened to hear that Andrew Murray Watson died on April 4, 2024 at the age of 93. Born in 1930 to Amy (nee Reid) and Daniel Watson, Professor Watson was a graduate of Trinity College, University of Toronto. He completed his B. Comm in 1952 and his MA in 1953 before going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Later, he attended the University of Paris and studied Arabic at the University of Cairo. He received his appointment to the University of Toronto in 1957. A professor of Economic History, Watson was affiliated with the Department of Economics and Trinity College, where he was Emeritus Fellow, throughout his career with the University of Toronto.

Andrew has left a lasting legacy to the field of Economic History. In 1974, he published the paper, “The Arab Agricultural Revolution and Its Diffusion, 700-1100” in the Journal of Economic History. The paper became the basis of the 1983 book Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100. The volume and paper are still widely cited, and Watson is recognized as the first to make arguments about the role of the spread of Islam, coupled with agricultural innovations, in the economic transformation of the medieval world. 

While Watson retired in 1995, he taught until at least 2005 and completed his last academic assignment at the age of 80, following which he decided it was time to say good bye to academia and joyously devote himself solely to travel, adventure, and the enjoyment of the good company of his friends spread round the world. Amongst his many adventures in his 80's, he explored ancient grave sites in the Gobi Desert, and acted as guide for tours along the Silk Road. For over thirty years he spent the better part of his winters, at an old palace in Bali, where the staff treated him as an honoured Uncle.

Predeceased by his parents, his brother Hugh and sister Barbara, Professor Watson is survived by his nieces Janet Bell of Ottawa and Gail Lampinen of Sacramento, their families, and by countless friends.

Read full obituary here.

Professor William Bannister was first and foremost a most courteous and humble gentleman who provided the inspiration to a whole generation of doctors and academics to achieve the highest realms possible.

Known to all of who knew him as Willie, he had the time for all even though he was an intellectual giant that had a passion for getting to grips with the molecular mechanisms that provide for healthy cell function.

Willie, after completing his postgraduate studies in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, in which he was offered further opportunities to stay, decided to return to Malta in the early 60s following which he took on the reigns of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry and headed it till the turn of the century when he retired.

In 2000, the Council of the University of Malta honoured him with the appointment of professor emeritus and senior research fellow and thus he continued to be active in the field of computational biology and was sought after as ever for his expertise as a reviewer for a number of renowned international science journals.

Read the full obituary here.

We were saddened to hear of Gerald's demise in April 2024 following a short period of illness. He arrived at Oxford in 1964 to read for his DPhil in Mathematics. He joined the University of Cape Town as a Senior Lecturer of Physics in 1985.

James Ross Macdonald was awarded a four-year Tyng Scholarship during his freshman year at Williams College and won the freshman Pentathlon, which led to his immediate membership on the varsity swimming team. At the beginning of 1943, he transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts where, in a special wartime program, he was awarded an SB in Electrical Engineering from MIT in February 1944 and a BA in Physics in June of that year from Williams.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1944, trained as a radio-radar officer and was preparing to go with a night-fighter air squadron to the Pacific war theater when the war there ended in 1945. After marrying Margaret Milward Taylor in 1946, he returned to MIT, where he worked on Project Whirlwind, an early vacuum-tube, room-size computer. He received the SM degree in Electrical Engineering in 1947 from MIT.

That year, after starting a PhD program in physics at MIT, he applied for and won a Rhodes Scholarship from Massachusetts to attend New College, Oxford University. He and his wife were in Oxford from 1948-1950, and he received a D.Phil. degree from Oxford in condensed-matter physics in 1950.

After carrying out physics research at Armour Research Foundation and Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago from 1950 to 1953, he joined Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, near the beginning of its very successful silicon transistor development program. He subsequently became the Director of the Physics Research Laboratory, the Central Research Laboratories, and finally Vice President for Research and Engineering in 1968.

In 1967 he was awarded a D.Sc. degree from Oxford for his published research done since graduation. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1970 and in 1973 to the National Academy of Sciences, one of only fifty members of both academies at that time. Upon taking early retirement from Texas Instruments in 1974, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics. He took emeritus status there in 1989.

Both as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Engineering he served on many government advisory committees and university visiting committees and was a member of the NAS Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources. In 1986 he received the George E. Pake Prize of the American Physical Society, an award for combining original research accomplishments with leadership in the management of research in industry.

Dr. Macdonald was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, served on many of its committees, and was the recipient of several awards from the IEEE and its predecessor, the Institute of Radio Engineers. He was awarded the 1988 IEEE Edison Gold Medal “for seminal contributions to solid state science and technology, and outstanding leadership as a research director.”

During his years at UNC, in addition to his productive teaching and research activities, he and his associates developed LEVM, an important computer-oriented immittance- spectroscopy data analysis program which he continued to improve and keep up to date after his retirement. It has been freely available since 1990, and its current version, LEVMW, involving the possibility of errors in both real and imaginary data, is used around the world by thousands of scientists, engineers, and students in many fields.

After retirement from UNC, he continued writing papers and reviewing many more for various journals and took the position of reviewer very seriously. His love of research, as well as a facility with words, led him to a prolific research career with 10 patents and over 255 papers published in refereed scientific journals. This work, as well as a pioneering 1987 book he edited and contributed to on Impedance Spectroscopy, and his continuing help to students and colleagues around the world in using LEVM/LEVMW for data analysis, resulted in international recognition for his experimental and theoretical contributions to condensed matter physics, electrochemistry, and to data analysis. He is also a published poet.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, the Electrochemical Society, and the Audio Engineering Society. He participated in many civic organizations, particularly in Dallas, TX, and was a Wilson Fellow of the University of North Carolina Library.

Bill Neville grew up in Winnipeg, studied at the University of Manitoba, and went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He became a university professor and went on to head U of M’s department of political studies, retiring in 2005. Before he chose that academic path, Neville entered the political sphere.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was an adviser to Sidney Spivak, then-provincial minister of industry and commerce in Duff Roblin’s Conservative government. While they were both working for Spivak, Neville met Lee Southern in 1969.

Southern described Neville as a true “public intellectual.” He became a prolific columnist for the Free Press in the late 1980s and through the 1990s. He continued to write and serve as a political contributor to local news outlets into the early 2000s, becoming a thought leader and influencer of public opinion through his well-researched prose.

He served as a Winnipeg city councillor for the Tuxedo ward through the late 1970s and ’80s.

Read the full obituary here.

A cosmopolite, his many and varied interests and accomplishments took him around the world, where he made lifelong friendships and contributions to his field of condensed matter physics.

Henry was born and grew up with his older sister Helen-and younger brother Gerald, in Alberta, Canada. His parents, Henry George (H.G.) and Hilda emigrated from England. After H.G. completed a one-year art teaching fellowship in 1936 they decided to stay in western Canada where H.G. became a prominent landscape painter, teacher, and leader in shaping art in Canada.

A Rhodes Scholar, Henry earned a doctorate in physics at Wadham College, Oxford, and went on to be a professor at the University of Ottawa, University of Alberta, and University of Delaware where he was Chair of Physics from 1982 to 1989. He was a visiting professor, guest scientist and collaborator at institutions as varied as Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok Thailand, Brookhaven National Lab, National Research Council of Canada, and the lnstitut Laue­Langevin (ILL) in France.

His many professional honors and awards included the 2001 Wheatley Award from the American Physical Society. Among his most cherished roles was mentoring post-doctoral physics students from Thailand. Henry pursued his passion for physics his entire life, continuing to the end to review and edit articles for Physical Review Letters.

Henry's love of France, which he shared with his late wife Eva Daicar shaped his later decades. There, he enjoyed "doing physics" when not skiing or hiking in the Alps and enjoying fine food and wine with friends and colleagues at his apartment at Chateau d' Allieres near Grenoble.

A champion distance runner, Henry set the Masters (age 40-44) Canadian Indoor Record for the 1500 meters in 1982, won the Masters {age 45-49) mile and two-mile races at the U.S National Road Race in 1984, and competed for Canada at the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago.

Henry was a modest man. He rarely spoke of his many accomplishments and recognitions. His sons learned of them mostly from others. He was a devoted and generous father who wanted them to pursue careers and interests that brought them joy. His one caveat: whatever that is, "do it well."

Even casual acquaintances remember Henry as a true gentleman for his kindness, grace, and good humor. An engaged listener as well as skilled conversationalist, Henry could talk in an informed way about topics ranging from international relations and finance to climate change and the arts.

Alan was born in August 1937 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to Rand (Fred) and Iza Bishop. He studied at Rhodes University, South Africa, and completed a Masters and DPhil in English Literature at the University of Oxford (Corpus Christi), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught at Mpopoma High school, Zimbabwe, the University of Cape Town, and Mount Allison University, before spending 34 years in the English department of McMaster University. Alan had a strong interest in gerontology and peace literature. His own writing included a memoir of novelist Joyce Cary, and the edited papers of pacifist Vera Britain: chiefly "Chronicle of Youth" and "Letters from a Lost Generation". Under the name of Peter Abbot, he also wrote several novelettes. Alan was a gentle, kindly man, whose sense of justice was profoundly influenced by his own expulsion from apartheid South Africa in 1966. In later life, he spent many years as a volunteer visitor at McMaster Hospital, Saint Joseph's Hospital, and Shalom Village (senior centre). He was also a board member of several Hamilton boards. He was a compassionate listener, had a gentle sense of humour, and was passionate about music, art, and eating ice cream.

Martin Cyril McGuire was UCI economics professor emeritus and inaugural Clifford S. Heinz Chair in the Economics of Public Policy and Peace.

“Marty McGuire made important research contributions to the economics of the public sector, international trade theory, the economics of peace, conflict, and security, as well as other fields of inquiry,” says colleague and friend Stergios Skaperdas, UCI economics professor and current Clifford S. Heinz Chair in the Economics of Public Policy and Peace. “While his work was primarily theoretical, using formal models aided with diagrammatic techniques, he was deeply interested in the empirical dimensions of his research.”

McGuire was born in 1933 in Shanghai, China, to Martin and Margaret Walsh McGuire. After returning from China in 1934, McGuire lived in several locations in California and for one year in Ft. Benning, Georgia, before his family settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, McGuire attended St. Thomas Military Academy for high school. In 1951, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, NY, where he studied engineering and graduated with distinction in 1955. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and attended Oxford University, England, where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics. McGuire served in the US Army, achieved the rank of Captain, and earned a U.S. Army Commendation Medal in 1961. He earned his doctorate in economics from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1963.

Early in his career, McGuire held appointments in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis (1964-65) and the U.S. Economic Development Administration (1965-67). In 1967, McGuire joined the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a professor, where he taught and conducted research until 1992. He also continued to serve in public service consultant roles with agencies including the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Institute for Defense Analysis, and the RAND Corporation, among many others. In 1992, McGuire joined the University of California, Irvine as the inaugural Clifford S. Heinz Chair in the Economics and Public Policy of Peace, where he conducted research and taught until his retirement in 2006.

McGuire was well known for his contributions to the development of public choice theory and wrote extensively in that field, principally linking issues of defense and political economy.

Read Martin's full obituary here

Eliot attended The Buckley School and then Groton Schools, and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University College, where he was president of the Fly Club and captain of the squash team. From 1954 to 1956, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He then served in the United States Army at Fort Sill in Oklahoma from 1956 to 1958, achieving the rank of First Lieutenant. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1960 and worked as a trust and estates lawyer, first at Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts; at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy as a partner; and at Teahan & Constantino in Millbrook, NY. He served as president, a member, and a trustee on the boards of numerous organizations, including the Friends of Clermont at the Clermont State Historic Site, The Edgewood Club of Tivoli, NY, The Southlands Foundation in Rhinebeck, NY, and The Community Service Society of New York. Eliot was known for his love for his family and friends and his meticulous and devoted service to his clients. Besides family and the law, his other lifelong interests were Greek classical language, the New York Yankees, tennis, and horseback riding. Eliot's dry wit, intelligence, modesty, and keen sense of justice will be greatly missed by all who knew him.