Sir John Enderby 1931 - 2021

The eminent British physicist Sir John Enderby, who began his teaching career at Huddersfield’s College of Technology and which later became the University of Huddersfield, has died at the age of 90.

Sir John was renowned for his pioneering work in developing new techniques using neutrons to study the structure of liquids, and was knighted in 2004.

He began teaching at Huddersfield as a Grade B assistant teacher of Physics in September 1957, becoming a lecturer in April of the following year. He had graduated from Birkbeck College, London, with a first-class honours in Physics and also taught O-level Physics at an evening school in Penge before taking his post in Huddersfield.

He remained here for three years and subsequently taught at the universities of Sheffield and Leicester before accepting a chair at the University of Bristol in 1976.

Professor Rob Edgecock, Professor Bob Cywinski, Sir John Enderby and Professor Roger Barlow pictured at the University of Huddersfield in 2011.

Between 1985 and 1988 he was British director at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, a leading international centre for neutron science, where he assisted in the planning of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. He returned to Huddersfield in 2011 when he became an honorary Doctor of the University.

His collaboration with Peter Egelstaff in the 1960s that used innovative neutron-scattering techniques to demonstrate the validity of the Faber–Ziman theory of liquid binary alloys has been described by physicist Alan Soper as “one of the most significant achievements in liquid-state physics that occurred in the 20th century”.

Sir John was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1985 and was an honorary fellow and President of the Institute of Physics. He is survived by his wife Susan and four children.