Obituaries
Please alert us to the recent death of any other Rhodes Scholar by emailing communications@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
Alan attended Rutgers University and went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a second Bachelors and a Masters Degree. He then served as a First Lieutenant in Air Force Intelligence, stationed at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, returning to the States to attend Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Lincoln's Inn Society.
Alan was employed for forty years at the Harter, Secrest and Emery Law Firm. In 2006 he received the County Bar Association's Rodenback Award, given in recognition of his skill as a lawyer and the content of his character.
Alan joined a large number of pro bono boards, in many cases serving at one time or another as President: the Visiting Nurse Service, the Rochester Area Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Lewis Street Center, the Rochester Presbyterian Home, Trustee of Third Presbyterian Church, the Chamber of Commerce, the Highlands at Pittsford, the YMCA, the Boy Scouts of America, the Al Sigl Center, the Monroe County Bar Association, the United Way of Greater Rochester, Kirkhaven, Lifespan, and the Strong Museum of Play, of which he was a Founding Trustee. He was also a twenty-three year member of the University of Rochester Medical Center board.
We are saddened by the news of Francis' passing. He studied Modern History at the University of Oxford.
Muhammad “Max” Zahir. Physician. Author. Rhodes Scholar. Mentor. Born Nov. 7, 1936, in Ludhiana, India; died March 20, 2021, in Kamloops, of bone marrow cancer; aged 84.
Max never celebrated a birthday as a child. In India during the 1930s, it was not customary to issue a birth certificate and no one in the family took it upon themselves to make note of it otherwise. It was never an issue for Max, until his medical school application had a birth date requirement. Many visits to government offices eventually secured a declaration that would suffice. As the top high-school graduate in his year, this would be the only barrier he faced to attend the prestigious King Edward Medical University in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1953.
After graduating with a specialty in pathology, Max became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. His dissertation on wound healing earned him a Doctor of Philosophy, the respect of his supervising professors and a research post.
Max’s leadership and self-effacing demeanour was warmly welcomed by his hospital colleagues. The Moncton winters, however, did not offer a similar welcome. Before a move to milder climes occurred, his third child, Suzanna Kate was born. In 1974, Max moved his family to Kamloops, where he began 28 years of service to Royal Inland Hospital.
Max made it a priority during retirement to chronicle the years when the Partition of India destroyed the early years of his life. Max was 11 in 1947 but he remembers it as a time of unrelenting bloodshed and violence. On a train escaping to Pakistan, Max witnessed the abduction of his sister. The family never saw her again. While it was heart-wrenching to write of this tumultuous episode in South-Asian history, Max persevered and in 2011 published his book 1947: A Memoir of Indian Independence.
Until the very end, Max showed an unequivocal appreciation for the opportunities life so generously afforded him. His family said their final goodbyes as dawn greeted the first day of spring. When we held him for the last time, there was a modicum of comfort knowing that as he left us new life surrounded us.
David graduated from Mount Allison University in 1967, attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1969, and graduated from Dalhousie Medical School in 1973. Family Medicine was the bedrock of David's long, impactful, professional career. He was dedicated to the worth and value of compassionate, patient and relationship centred care. An avid reader and original thinker, he embraced narrative medicine, the deep understanding of the person with their unique story, beliefs and values, as the path to healing in the day to day work of family doctors.
'The universe is made not of atoms, but of stories.'
He began practice in Fredericton, NB, in 1973, and joined the Department of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University in 1978 as a leader in continuing medical education, and care of the elderly. Although he held many other posts, he kept his Dalhousie faculty appointment the rest of his life. As Professor and Head of Dalhousie Family Medicine from 1987 - 1995, he led and taught through understanding and gentle challenge - his motto 'When we tell a person something, we remove their chance to discover it themselves'. He asked astute questions, encouraged and supported people to discover their own answers. Kind, humble and patient, he delighted in the achievements of those he mentored. A timeless sense of duty, instilled by his parents, shaped his approach to life and work. David was always ready to lend a hand and most happy when he felt he was contributing.
Alasdair attended Queen Elizabeth High School, in Halifax, before taking a B.A. with First Class Honours at Dalhousie University. Alasdair won the Governor General's Gold Medal in 1956 and was also awarded the Rhodes Scholarship. He received a B.A. and a B. Phil. from Oxford University before moving on to Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D.
Alasdair taught Economics at Dalhousie from 1961 to 1994, focusing on Macroeconomics and International Trade. In 1982 he became Dalhousie's first elected Chair of the Senate, and from 1983 to 1988 he was Vice-President Academic and Provost. He was made Professor Emeritus in 1995, and in 'retirement,' he continued to lecture, served on the Dalhousie Board of Governors, sat on numerous boards and committees, and did consulting work all over the world.
Chris studied English and Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, and went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar where he was awarded an MA in English Language and Literature. He went on to Rhodes University where he was a professor of poetry with the Institute for the Study of English in Africa. Chris founded Wordfest, a national multilingual festival of South African languages and literature with a developmental emphasis.
Chris wrote poetry for publication, performance, and multi-media presentation using the graphics of modern technology (created by artist Julia Skeen, Chris's wife). His work appeared in a wide range of journals, textbooks and anthologies in South Africa and abroad. His many publications include First Poems (Bateleur Press, 1979), New Shades (David Philip,1982), Kites (David Philip, 1992), Mann Alive! (David Philip, 1992), South Africans (University of Natal Press, 1996) and Heartlands (University of Natal Press, 2002).
Chris was an active member of the Hall Writers’ Forum. He posted his Valediction to Seamus Heaney there, as a contribution to our National Poetry Day commemorative event in 2013 – it was read movingly by his sister beside the candle-lit well in the front quad, and subsequently published in the Oxford Magazine.
David Brink obtained a BSc from the University of Tasmania in 1951, and then moved to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. His DPhil, 'Some Aspects of the Interactions of Fields with Matter' was awarded in 1955. David was a Royal Society Rutherford Scholar from 1954-1958 and during this period he spent a year at MIT. He was appointed Fellow of Balliol College and Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Oxford in 1958.
David was a nuclear theorist who contributed very significantly to our understanding of nuclear structure and nuclear reactions. His book Angular Momentum is a classic introduction to the topic.
David was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1981. He was awarded the Rutherford medal of the Institute of Physics and the Lise Meitner prize for nuclear science of the European Physical Society, and was honoured as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of Sciences of Uppsala. At Oxford he held the position of H.J.G. Mosley Reader between 1988 and 1993. After Oxford, David moved to Trento where he was Vice-Director of ECT, the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics, and Professor of the History of Physics at the Universita degli Studi di Trento.
Robert “Buzz” Baldwin, PhD, professor emeritus of biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, died March 6 in Portola Valley, California at the age of 93.
On obtaining a bachelor’s of arts degree in chemistry in 1950 at the University of Wisconsin, Baldwin studied biochemistry at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, receiving his D.Phil. degree (the British equivalent of a PhD) in 1954.
Baldwin devoted his career to studying how proteins, which begin life as linear chains of chemical building blocks, quickly assume their characteristic highly complex, functional structures. His research sped a shift in many biologists’ attention from organismic biology, the study of creatures great and small, to molecular biology, which focuses on the individual biochemical reactions that underpin all living processes and on the molecules — usually proteins — responsible for catalyzing those reactions.
You can see a full obituary for Buzz here.
Schindler originally studied engineering physics, but inspired by Charles Elton's seminal work on invasive biology, he transferred into the zoology program at North Dakota State University. He then went on to study under Elton at Oxford University, where he graduated with his doctorate in 1968 as a Rhodes Scholar.
Schindler's 1970s and early '80s landmark experiments sounded the alarm on acid rain and led the Canadian federal government to ban high-phosphorus laundry detergents. His 2010 research into Alberta's oilsands pushed the government to establish independent oversight of the industry, after he showed it was contributing contaminants to the region's watershed.
A skilled public communicator, Schindler is a recipient of the Order of Canada and numerous scientific awards, including the inaugural Stockholm Water Prize.