Vale Prof John Newton

Published in the Research School of Physics Event Horizon
Vol42 Issue39 3–7 October 2016

Professor John Newton FAA, past Head for 18 years of the Department of Nuclear Physics, RSPE, passed away on Monday, 26 September 2016. 

John Newton was recruited to the ANU in 1970 by Sir Ernest Titterton, to be Professor and Head of the Department of Nuclear Physics. He continued as Head until 1988, when he stepped down due to health reasons, retiring at the end of 1989. After this he continued to carry out research until 2008, within the research group he had led. Among his first-authored papers, the last one he wrote, submitted to the journal on his 80th birthday, has received the second highest number of citations, and is still going strong!

His major achievements as Head were overseeing the installation of the 14UD tandem electrostatic accelerator, successfully encouraging staff to work in research groups rather than individually, and initiating a research program in nuclear fusion and fission in heavy ion collisions. This was an inspired choice, matching the excellent characteristics of the accelerator, and defining the career-path of many of the students and postdocs in the research group he initially led, then continued to work with for nearly 20 years after his formal retirement.

His experiences were documented in the Australian Academy of Science’s “Interview with Australian scientist” series (https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/history/interviews-australian-scientists/professor-john-newton-nuclear). This describes how through outstanding school results in Birmingham, John won a scholarship to Cambridge University. His undergraduate education was interrupted through working on radar and then missile guidance during and after the war. He started his PhD at Cambridge in 1948, and afterwards carried out research at Harwell (UK), Berkeley (California) and Manchester (UK) before coming to the ANU. He worked with many famous and Nobel-prize winning nuclear physicists over his long career, who along with John himself, led the field from simple experimental apparatus and sketchy theoretical ideas to the complex and quantitative experimental and theoretical field it now is.

Our thoughts are with his wife Silva, their friends and family.