Obituaries
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John Maxwell Bailey (1935-2024) was a particle physicist and pioneering world expert in muon storage rings. He was born and raised in Australia, the eldest child of Victor Albert Bailey, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Sydney, and Joyce Hewitt, a professional concert pianist from New Zealand. His middle name predestined him for a career in science
During WWII the family moved to the countryside due to Dr VA Bailey’s work on radio communications. When they returned to the city, John found himself transported from a one-room schoolhouse to the prestigious Sydney Boys High School where he flourished. John became an accomplished chess player at junior national level. He was also a talented musician, playing and singing in school productions of Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas. He famously accompanied soprano Joan Sutherland on his flute, preluding a lifelong love of poetry and music.
After completing his first degree in Mathematics at the University of Sydney and doing National Service in the Australian Navy, John won a Rhodes Scholarship to study Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford. He travelled to England on a cargo boat and during the six-week voyage coped with cabin fever by becoming a proficient bridge player. Arriving at Queen’s College in Autumn 1957 he threw himself into student life: coxing the College Rugby VIII, providing technical support to OUDS theatrical productions and becoming Captain of the University Chess Team. He also met his future wife Elizabeth Rippon (St Hilda’s College, 1955-58) although the college curfew meant their romance necessitated some climbing of drainpipes. John’s time at Oxford was thus a gateway to both future family life and his career as a particle physicist.
Graduating with a DPhil in 1960, John was awarded a postdoctoral position at the University of Yale (1960-4) before being recruited to join the research team at CERN (1964-72). The Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire had started operations just ten years previously to re-establish a collaborative centre of scientific excellence after WWII: for a young physicist, it was an infinitely exciting place to be. John further developed his expertise in sub-atomic particles, becoming a leading expert in muon storage rings. A muon, from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it, is an elementary particle similar to an electron but many times heavier. Researchers are still making discoveries about these fundamental building blocks of matter.
High energy physicists in person are exactly what the name implies. For months John and his colleagues would explore ideas together, talking animatedly and filling vast blackboards with equations scribbled in coloured chalk. Then came experimental runs, when protons were accelerated to incredible speeds, whilst round-the-clock shifts of scientists watched for them to smash on impact into new, hypothesized but never-before-observed constituent parts. This cutting-edge research was based on extensive international cooperation. (Another Queensman working at CERN twenty years later developed the world wide web). Archive video ‘In the heart of CERN 1967’ captures perfectly the spirit of this time.
Such comprehensive teamwork necessitated truly global communications. John was a talented linguist, reading racy detective novels to hone his colloquial skills so he could chat with colleagues from around the world. His subsequent work took him to many other leading edge particle accelerators including Daresbury, Brookhaven, DESY, NIKHEF and TRIUMF. During this international career John became fluent in French, German and Dutch, as well as conversant in Italian, Turkish and Russian. He was also an epicure of world food, particularly enjoying a well-ripened Camembert cheese.
During the 1980s John lectured at the University of Liverpool and contributed to experiments at Rutherford Laboratory. After his retirement, he used his professional expertise to establish Chester Technology and install speaking software for the blind on home computers. John was a polymath, an inveterate reader on every subject from arts and politics to the ecological environment: the walls of his home were literally lined with shelves housing tens of thousands of books. His life exemplified his belief that you have to enact the changes you want to see in this world.
John and Elizabeth had five daughters, two of whom followed their father to Queen’s College, Oxford. The first, Jane Francesca Bailey (1979-82), matriculated amongst the ‘first fifteen’ female undergraduates and writes books on Myth and Archetype as Jane Bailey Bain. The fourth, Lucy Bailey (1987-90), is Dean of Bahrain Teachers College. The family expanded to include fifteen grandchildren and John lived to see six great-grandchildren including one born on his 88th birthday.