Obituaries

Murray Hofmeyr was a South African sportsman who played international rugby union for England. Hofmeyr moved to England in 1948 as a Rhodes Scholar at Worcester College. He represented Oxford University in both cricket and rugby union. From 1949 to 1951, Hofmeyr made thirty five first-class appearances for Oxford University and scored 2495 runs. He had his most prolific year in 1950 when he scored 1063 runs at 55.94. Hofmeyr appeared in three of England's four Tests in the 1950 Five Nations Championship, against Wales, France and Scotland. He played his club rugby for Harlequins and also represented the Barbarians. He captained the Oxford University Cricket Club in the 1951 season and then returned to South Africa.

A Rhodes Scholar who gained a first class in Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Emeritus Professor in economics and vice-chancellor of the University of New England. Ronald was also a senior economics adviser at the United Nations.

An esteemed professor at the Boston University School of Law for more than 30 years. He wrote numerous books and articles and was a distinguished trial attorney and trial advocacy expert.

Professor Jim Brown, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Physics, died in April 2018. Professor Brown was appointed to the Readership in Experimental Physics from 1 September 1965 and appointed Professor of Experimental Physics from 1 April 1971. He was appointed Director of the Physics Laboratory in 1976 and he remained Director until 1982. He was appointed Emeritus Professor in 1985 following his retirement. After 1985, he continued to be closely associated with the University, acting as internal examiner in 1991, and still teaching for many years.

As he often reminded students in his lectures on magnetism, during World War II Professor Brown worked with the Royal Canadian Navy on degaussing ships and on underwater sound, including the trials of the new hydrophone array on the captured U885. The Rhodes Scholar was demobilized in Scotland as Electrical Lieutenant RCNVR in October, 1945 just in time to begin his doctorate in Low Temperature Physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. Then, wanting adventure and to explore, he went to Lingnan University in Canton, China. He used to happily regale colleagues with stories of his time in China, of which he clearly had many fond memories. As with all his stories, there was often a deep respect for others.

He then spent two years on liquid helium research at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. From Ontario he returned to British Columbia, publishing work on liquid helium and superconducting thin films. He was proud of this time in British Columbia, and enjoyed receiving updates from there.

Arriving in Kent with the first undergraduates in 1965, he established the Low Temperature Laboratory here. With colleagues, the first application of the quartz microbalance to measure thickness of the helium film was effected and measurement made of the Bernoulli effect in the flowing electronic fluid of a superconductor, as well as other work to elucidate the contact potential of metals under stress. An NERC investigation of acoustic imaging to explore its feasibility for use in coal mines was carried out on large scale in the air. More recently, Professor Brown has been a member of the Applied Optics Group and still attended meetings on campus in his 90s.

Professor Brown used to visit the campus regularly until earlier this year. He was popular with students, with some of the "First 500" holding him in high regard and still in touch with him all these years later.

Obituary taken from Kent University’s website, by Professor Mark Burchell.

Mark Edwin Turcot passed away in Montreal, on March 12, 2018, at the age of 67. As a Rhodes Scholar, Mark studied Law at the University of Oxford. 

Peter graduated from Oxford with a doctorate in nuclear physics and, he was the son of Clarence Gates Myers and Isabel Briggs Myers. Isabel and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, created the MBTI instrument as a practical application of the personality type theory of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, beginning their work in the 1940s. After Isabel died, Peter was instrumental in turning the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment into the worldwide success that it is today. Read more.

Nicholas studied anthropology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then volunteered for the army and served a tour in Vietnam before moving to Aspen in the early 1970s. Nicholas was a noted mountaineer. He climbed Cho Oyu, Ama Dablam, and a number of other Himalayan peaks, as well as Mount McKinley and Aconcagua. His climbing in the United States included the north face of the Grand Teton, the Ames Ice Hose, and many routes on peaks in the Elk Range.

Paul Theron was born in Cape Town in 1946. His second name is after a Second World War general whom his father admired. He grew up in Rondebosch and attended Rondebosch Boys Preparatory and High Schools, where he developed a number of close friends, read widely, and excelled academically. He matriculated with an ’Á’ aggregate, after which he was ‘called up’ to do military service.

Towards the end of his military service Paul contracted hepatitis, and during his convalescence resolved to become a medical doctor. In 1966 he was admitted to medical school at the University of Cape Town, where he won the Zwarenstein prize as the best first year student. Two years later he joined protests against the apartheid government’s decision prevent an African lecturer joining the university staff, and became involved in student politics. He was elected to the SRC, and the following year became its President. He also won an Abe Bailey Scholarship.

The award of a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University was to be a turning point in his life, although not in a way he had hoped it would be. To take up the scholarship, he had to interrupt his medical studies. Isolated from family and friends, he had a ‘breakdown’ and returned to South Africa. This was doubtless a bitter disappointment. No less bitter was the realization that the breakdown signified a disability which his profession has labelled as ‘mentally illness’.

Paul was to display considerable courage in coming to come to terms with this disability, and building a professional career despite it, as well leading a full and productive life. On his return to Cape Town he did a B.Sc degree before completing his medical studies, and moving to Port Elizabeth, where he taught at the university before taking up a position at Livingstone Hospital. He then spent some six years in England, most of which as a general practitioner in Ipswich, and married Rhona, the mother of Danielle and Jessica. He returned with them in 1985 to start a general practice in Wynberg.

It is for his work in the public sector, however, that Paul will be remembered most.  While in general practice at Wynberg he accepted a position as a district surgeon. His duties included sessions at Pollsmoor prison, and he worked there altogether 22 years, later becoming senior medical practioner at the prison’s Medium A section. Appalled by the unacceptable standard of health care, Paul made repeated efforts to get the Department of Correctional Services to address the situation. For his troubles, he was suspended in 2007.

“Dr Paul Theron should be publicly commended for the many years of devoted health care service he has given to prisoners at Pollsmoor Prison” wrote Solly Benatar, who was at the time professor of medical ethics. “he has distinguished himself as a doctor with integrity and admirable human values. In any decent nation his work and his courage in reporting deteriorating conditions….would be rewarded with a medal of distinguished national service.” (Cape Times, 4 October 2007)

Paul challenged the lawfulness of his suspension, in one of the first cases brought under a recently introduced law to protect whistle-blowers. Although he did not return to Pollsmoor, he was reinstated by the Department of Health, and reinvented himself as a ‘clinical forensic practioner’. He was also vindicated, in case brought by a former Pollsmoor prisoner in which Paul gave evidence, which went all the way to the Constitutional Court (Lee v Minister of Correctional Services). He is survived by Margaretha, who he married in 1993, Danielle and Jessica, and grandchildren Mikaela and Beth.