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oct10-in-memoria-weil.pdf

John Weil died on Wed., November 17, 2010 at St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon at the age of 81.

Professor  Weil (born 1929, Germany) took his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the University of Chicago (1955), under the tutelage of Professor C.A. Hutchison Jr.  The doctoral thesis dealt with then-unknown triplet states in aromatic molecules, and with spin concentration analysis in free radicals.  He also worked as technical assistant in the Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies, and  the Institute for the Study of Metals in Chicago [thermodynamics of alloys, self-diffusion in alkali metals], and was co-author of several resulting papers now deemed to be 'classic' ones.

Thereafter, Dr. Weil spent two years in the Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, as Corning Post-doctoral Fellow.  He set up electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopic equipment and taught a number of Physical Chemistry Courses.  In 1959, Dr. Weil accepted a staff position at Argonne National Laboratory, and became a Group Leader soon thereafter.  After 12 years at Argonne, Dr. Weil moved to the University of Saskatchewan in 1971 as Professor of Chemistry.

In Saskatoon, Prof. Weil was heavily involved in research on the defect structure of crystalline quartz, as well as sophisticated theoretical and free-radical studies, while teaching subjects ranging from Elementary Chemistry to Advanced Topics in Chemical Physics.  Several generations of graduate students were trained in Dr. Weil's laboratories.  In 1983, Prof. Weil was elected Thorvaldson Professor of Chemistry (five-year term) at the University of Saskatchewan.  A D.Sc. degree was awarded to him by the same institution, in 1985.

One notable extracurricular interest was in the cultural aspects of crystalline quartz, ranging from anthropological/archaeological aspects to visual aesthetic ones.

Prof. Weil received the 1996 Distinguished–Researcher Award of the University of Saskatchewan.  In 1996 he formally retired and began his career as Professor Emeritus.  In 1999, he was elected to be a Fellow of the International EPR Society.  In 2000, he received the Gerhard Herzberg Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada.

In September 2010, just 2 months prior to his death, Dr. Weil sent a short article about his encounters with Enrico Fermi to me for PiC.  It is included here for the interest of our readers.

M. Steinitz, msteinit [at] stfx [dot] ca,
St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS