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Bertram Brockhouse, who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics for his brilliant, pioneering work which laid the foundation for the field of inelastic neutron scattering, died on 13 October 2003 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Bert, as he was known to his colleagues and friends, was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada on 15 July 1918. His family moved to Vancouver when he was 8 and then to Chicago in 1935, by which time he had completed High School. In Chicago he worked as a lab assistant in a small electronic firm, took evening courses, and learned to design, build and repair radios, the latter giving rise to a small business. The family returned to Vancouver in 1938 and in September 1939 Bert enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy. He spent some time at sea as an antisubmarine sonar operator but mostly serviced sonar equipment at a shore base. After completing a six month course in Electrical Engineering at Nova Scotia Technical College and becoming an Electrical Sub-Lieutenant, he was assigned to the test facilities at the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, where he met his future wife, Doris (Dorie) Miller. After his discharge from the navy at the end of the war, he used support from a veteran's program to enrol in a Physics and Mathematics program at the University of British Columbia, receiving his B.A. in 1947. After a summer job at NRC in Ottawa (when he became engaged to Dorie), Bert enrolled in graduate studies in Physics at the University of Toronto, receiving his M.A. in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1950. His thesis was entitled "The Effect of Stress and Temperature upon the Magnetic Properties of Ferromagnetic Materials". Bert and Dorie were married in 1948.
Brockhouse and the Nobel Prize next >
