From blacksmith’s son to famous elementary particle researcher and on to distinguished university administrator—such is a brief summary of the life of George Dixon Rochester, who died of heart failure on 26 December 2001 in Durham, UK.
Obituary writers commonly exaggerate the personal qualities of their subjects, but anyone who knew Rochester—“GDR” to his juniors—will testify that he was an extraordinarily gentle, helpful, and friendly person. His life revolved around his family, his physics, his university, and the Methodist Church.
To the physicist he will always be known as the codiscoverer, with Clifford Butler, of the so-called V particles in cosmic-ray experiments using a cloud chamber at Manchester University. This discovery, in 1946, followed by exhaustive analysis and publication in 1947, was a breakthrough in particle physics that led to great developments, particularly with the new accelerators.
Although the dearth of further examples of the two V particles (now known to be K mesons) made the Manchester camp uneasy until further examples were found on mountaintops, it is almost unbelievable that Rochester and Butler did not share a Nobel Prize for their seminal discovery. All the ingredients were there: reputations put firmly on the line, superb technical and interpretative skill, and a very big piece in the fundamental particle jigsaw puzzle put in place. Remarkable, indeed. Be that as it may, Rochester never, to my knowledge, mentioned the matter, or complained about it—and I was associated with him for 50 years.
Rochester was born on 4 February 1908 at Wallsend near Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England. His early experiences in his father’s smithy gave him a feeling for the mechanical arts, and his later superb experimental techniques must owe a lot to his early life.
A scholarship took him to the Armstrong College of Durham University (now the University of Newcastle upon Tyne), where a keen researcher, W. E. Curtis, a noted spectroscopist, provided great stimulus. There, Rochester earned his BSc (1930), MSc (1932), and PhD (1937) degrees, all in physics. The last mentioned was on band spectra, done under the supervision of Curtis. While still working in spectroscopy, he spent 1934–35 as an Earl Grey Fellow at Stockholm University and the next two years at the University of California, Berkeley, as a Commonwealth Fellow. He moved in 1937 to take an assistant lectureship in physics at Manchester. His early experiences in spectroscopy led him, years later when designing a new laboratory at the University of Durham, to ensure that a high-current arc could be operated in every laboratory!
At Manchester, he came under the spell of the impressive Patrick Blackett (himself an experimenter par excellence) and soon transferred to cosmic-ray physics. Cloud chamber expertise led to a number of interesting results, culminating in the V particle work.
Following a spell as acting director of the physics department at Manchester, and after Blackett had departed for Imperial College, London, Rochester moved to the University of Durham in 1955 and took John Major and me with him. Using nuclear emulsions and, later, bubble chambers, Major spearheaded research at the accelerators and contributed to cosmic-ray work, too. I continued cosmic-ray research using electronic techniques, and eventually discovered, with Indian and Japanese research groups, the cosmic-ray neutrino in the Kolar Gold Fields in India. The cosmic-ray work led to astrophysics and the creation of the now most impressive astronomy group at Durham. Parallel developments in particle physics theory have led to a similarly prestigious particle theory group, currently led by James Stirling.
In all this, Rochester was at the helm in the sense of inspired choices of staff and the provision of facilities. Furthermore, he was a fine sounding board for his staff’s discoveries, real and imagined. In his early days at Durham, when he read and commented on every paper before submission, one could rely on the English being corrected, as well as the physics being queried. The English corrections, in fact, came from his wife, Ida! His companion and strength for more than 60 years, Ida was an English graduate.
Rochester spent the rest of his career at Durham, where he became the first pro-vice chancellor (deputy vice-chancellor) in 1969. His contributions to university administration were legion; he was much in demand for his logical, quiet, sensible, nonpartisan approach. He was deeply involved in the design of the department’s new main building. Opened in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of his discovery of kaons, it was named the Rochester Building by the university’s chancellor, the actor Peter Ustinov.
In the early years of his long retirement beginning in 1973, Rochester took an interest in the history of astronomy at Durham. He was fascinated by events in the 19th century, not least by the university’s first professor of mathematics, Temple Chevallier. That man was also a professor of astronomy, reader in Hebrew, deputy principal, part-time registrar, and parish priest of Esh, a village near Durham! Rochester unearthed the story of Chevallier’s “observer” in the 1850s, Richard Carrington, whose work led to the discovery of the differential rotation of the Sun and thus to the fact that the Sun is not a rigid body. Carrington threw in the towel when the university declined to upgrade the observatory’s telescopes, and he moved south, where he constructed his own observatory! Rochester loved the story.
He is remembered with fond affection by all who knew him and he is further remembered at Durham by the annual Rochester Lecture, in which leading scientists from the UK and abroad present the latest developments in physics. In addition, the universities of Durham and Newcastle jointly award the annual Rochester Prize to the best undergraduate in first-year science.
Rochester’s wife, who, with him, was a pillar of the local Methodist Church, from which they gained much inner strength, survived him by only six days.
