Roy Neil West

Born in Croydon, South London, Roy earned his PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London in Experimental Physics. In 1987 Roy crossed the Atlantic to become Chairman of Physics at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Roy earned the honor of Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Roy was an avid cyclist, garnering multiple trophies in his youth, even holding a national record in time and distance from Land’s End to London.

Survived by his wife, Victoria Gillette, sons Simon, Daniel, and Michael, stepchildren Natalie, Barron, and Carter, and six grandchildren.

Service to be held at Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home, 7405 W Northwest Hwy, Dallas, TX, 75225 United States, at 4 pm Saturday, March 26th. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Alzheimer's Association are appreciated.

Biography:

Roy Neil West was born in Croydon, in the south of London on March 27, 1938. He was the only child of Grace West (known as “Pinky”, twin sister to “Bluey”) who raised him as a single mother in her parent’s home. The early days of the Second World War would shape many of his childhood memories. While he grew up poor, he would never say he was deprived. Until he reached the age of 7 or 8, Roy had never seen a car other than an emergency vehicle. He had never seen a banana or a fresh egg. With red skies over London, and the sound of air raid sirens Roy would be found peddling his tricycle down the street, ringing the bell shouting “Germans, Germans, Germans!” until his mother called him into the bomb shelter. He and his friends were also fond of collecting pieces of shrapnel from bomb sites. He grew up in a world without men – all of them off at war. One of the few at home, his grandfather Charles Webber, became the father figure in his young life. “The Old Man”, as Charles was known, was brilliant, irascible, intolerant of children and a charmer - which would go along way to inform Roy’s personality. For a time during the Blitz, he was separated from his mother and evacuated to the countryside; as many children were for their own safety. When he arrived home he recalled the men returning, marching down the main road, with their spectacular military vehicles and military bands. Growing up in the middle of the war, he never knew the world was supposed to be any different. It changed so slowly afterward that he hardly felt the transition. But it helped shape the person he would become.

When Roy was nine, the entire Webber family migrated to Australia on the famous “Ten Pound Ticket”, as part of an Australian government incentive to increase immigration after the war. Most of the family returned four years later, while those who remained have by now made a material difference to the population of Queensland.

An early passion for cycling, on both two and three wheels, increased with age. A racing tricycle propelled him to a national record at the age of 21. He completed the trip from Land’s End to London in 15 hours and 26 minutes, a record held for more than sixteen years. Between the years of 1959 and 1961 Roy amassed multiple trophies for cycling and tricycling. He biked throughout his life, regularly putting younger men to shame. He was known to compete in area races including the notorious Hotter Than Hell marathon in Wichita Falls where he came in the top one hundred, outracing cyclists a third of his age, a humiliation he also frequently inflicted on his sons.

With memories only of emergency and military vehicles in childhood, Roy came to love cars, a passion that fueled ownership of a long and mainly distinguished line of automobiles from the practical to the exotic, including a Frog Eyed Sprite, a Jaguar XJ6 and a handful of Lotuses. Many of these were taken apart and then put back together again, occasionally on the kitchen table. He put himself through night school, earning his PhD while in his spare time helping out on the pit crew of racing driver Sir Gawaine Baillie at the Brands Hatch race track. Roy even consulted with his favorite automobile manufacturer, Lotus, and provided information and insight around the consequences of metal fatigue. His love for the Lotus brand resulted in the purchase of a 1969 Lotus Elan later in life, a car the he frequently needed overseas parts for that were reluctantly provided by his children.

Anyone who listened to the soundtrack of “Oh What a Lovely War” with Roy could attest to his nostalgia for the war songs of his youth. But jazz became Roy’s cup of tea. Ever enthusiastic about music, Roy even cajoled the famed Modern Jazz Quartet to perform at the University of East Anglia during his tenure. Other favorites included Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald – as well as an unfortunate fondness for The Carpenters and Barbara Streisand.

Roy became a role model through his distinguished career as a professor and scholar, and as remarkable father.

Roy began pursuing his PhD at Birkbeck College in the early sixties under the supervision of Norman Cusack and was subsequently awarded it in 1966. Both moved to the University of East Anglia in Norwich where Roy was involved in studies in his field of experimental physics. He was soon promoted to the rank of lecturer, an honor at his young age.

Some of Roy’s colleagues described his achievements in his field at a celebration of 60th birthday and his work in these excerpts:

“In these early days Roy made pioneering contributions to his chosen field, for example the formulation in 1969 of the two-state trapping model - a cornerstone for the interpretation of positron-based defect studies. Roy is the `W' in the LCW theorem along with Dennis Lock and Vic Crisp, a theorem has been widely applied since its publication in 1973. Roy's authoritative book Positron Studies of Condensed Matter, published in 1974, has become a `bible' for several generations of graduate students entering the field, and is still quoted regularly in research papers. In the late 1970s Roy developed the use of medical gamma, or Anger cameras in two-dimensional angular correlation studies of Fermi surfaces in metals and alloys. An imaginative step forward at the time, typical of Roy's lateral but practical thinking, this approach is used widely to this day.

In the 1980s Roy's interests broadened to include slow positron beams and their applications to surface and near-surface phenomena. He became a member of the positron consortium at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the installation of two Anger cameras at either side of the intense positron beam line led to a number of important papers on surface electronic structure. In this same period Roy became Head of the School of Physics at UEA, approaching his administrative duties with the same zeal and fervor that were always a feature of his scientific life.

Roy was always a prominent member of the scientific community. He is justly proud to have contributed to every International Positron Annihilation Conference since the first in Detroit in 1965, and he served on the International Committee for these triennial meetings. Roy was also inducted as a fellow in the American Physical Society.

As written by his colleagues M Ashraf Alam (University of Bristol) & Paul G Coleman (University of East Anglia)

In the midst of a prospering career, Roy raised three sons; Simon, Daniel and Michael as a single father - with the aid of grandparents and the occasional housekeeper (who were frequently commissioned to make Marmite sandwiches, a task never verbally agreed to in their required job duties.) Roy raised his sons whilst working as a full time department head. All the while he found the time to drop the boys off at school, attend parent/teacher meetings and still have time for fish and chips and a VHS every Friday night.

In 1987 Roy crossed the Atlantic with his three sons to become Head of the Physics Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. He continued to play a leading role in the field of electronic structure, contributing to the development of new and powerful data reduction techniques.

In 1989, Roy married Victoria Gillette and became stepfather to Victoria’s children, Natalie, Barron and Carter. Together, Roy and Victoria traveled all over the globe for Roy’s lectures and research.

Roy retired in 2002 and took up cycling again, racking up thousand of miles a year on his beloved Colnago bicycle. He researched his family lineage, making contact with half siblings he had no knowledge of previously. He also proudly gained his U.S. citizenship. Avid skiers, Roy and Victoria moved to Denver, Colorado in 2007 where Roy mastered the blue/black course at Breckenridge at 68 years old.