Posted on Oct. 15: Nobel laureate Bertram Brockhouse: A modest hero’s figure

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/brockhouse.gif” caption=”Bertram Brockhouse”]McMaster professor emeritus Bertram Neville Brockhouse, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1994, died Monday. He was 85.

Brockhouse shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with American physicist Clifford G. Shull for their separate but concurrent development of neutron-scattering techniques.

Bertram was a pioneer who made an incredible impact on the world of science, said McMaster President Peter George. He also had a passion for science that was an inspiration for many.

One researcher he made an impact on was Bruce Gaulin, Brockhouse Chair in the Physics of Materials. I am literally where I am today because of the work he did, said Gaulin, who also wrote an article with Brockhouse for the Encyclopedia of Physics.

Gaulin was impressed by Brockhouse's modesty for his work. To me, the most amazing thing about him was how modest he was and how he always was such a fine gentleman.

Gaulin explained how after Brockhouse received the Nobel Prize, he appeared at a Canadian Undergraduate Physics Convention at McMaster and said to the students that he never realized how important his work was until now. He was always incredibly modest about his accomplishments even though they were so remarkable.

He was really a heroic figure in the area I work in (neutron scattering), Gaulin said.

Brockhouse, who was a professor at McMaster from 1962 until his retirement in 1984, was chairman of the department from 1967 to 1970. He was educated at the University of British Columbia (B.A., 1947) and at the University of Toronto (M.A., 1948; Ph.D., 1950). He conducted his award-winning work from 1950 to 1962 at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory, a facility operated by Atomic Energy of Canada.
Brockhouse used inelastic neutron scattering in his pioneering examination of phonons, which are units of the lattice vibrational energy expended by the scattered neutrons. He also developed the neutron spectrometer and was one of the first to measure the phonon dispersion curve of a solid.

In an autobiography, Brockhouse wrote, The research program that I had embarked on 11 years before had been successful beyond expectations and the field was becoming well established. For over 15 years it had been my intention to take up a University career and in my mid-forties it seemed that “now” was the time if I were to do so. McMaster had a “swimming-pool” reactor which promised to make the transition easier on the research side. For social reasons I preferred not to join a mega-university or live in a mega-city, partly because I thought that it would be better for our family of six children. Dorie was supportive of these ideas. So off we went in the summer of 1962, first to a house in Dundas and soon after to the house in Ancaster in which we still live.

Brockhouse received many honours over the years, including the Tory Medal of the Royal Society of Canada, the Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, the Duddell Medal and Prize of the (British) Institute of Physics and Physical Society “for excellence in experimental physics”, and the Centennial Medal of Canada. He was a Companion of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Canada and London, and a Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He received honorary D.Sc. degrees from the University of Waterloo and McMaster University. He was also a member of the Philosophy of Science Association.