Richard Stevenson

He was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to Mildred and Charles Stevenson, in 1931. Mildred was a homemaker and Charles worked in varying capacities and roles in the auto industry, from manager at Ford, to running a parts manufacturing company.

After early education and high school, Richard went on to earn engineering degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan, then two postgraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a Doctor of Science.

Settling in Montreal, he became one of McGill University's youngest full professors, where he taught physics and did research in cryogenics and superconductivity. He also was an early researcher in magnetic resonance imaging. A prodigious author, he wrote more than 26 books, including academic texts, manuals on applied statistics, and novels. He founded Lionheart Press that produced and distributed many of his non-academic titles.

On a sabbatical from McGill University, he travelled with his family to the United Kingdom and India, teaching and doing research, in Bristol, London, Calcutta and Kharagpur. He served as a scientific adviser to the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and formed lasting friendships there.

He retired from McGill and moved to Mesa, Arizona, in the 1990’s, having taken a position at Intermagnetics General Corporation (IGC). There he developed a non-ozone depleting refrigerant, amongst other related innovations.

Art and culture were an abiding interest and he strongly supported Asian Studies, particularly the study of Bengal. He authored a book on the Bengal Famine, as well as republishing significant books about Bengal and its culture, books that had gone out of print. For his efforts in conducting and promoting Bengali studies he was awarded the Biren Roy Trust Medal of the Asia Society (Calcutta, 1984) and the Distinguished Award of the Cultural Association of Bengal New York/North American Bengali Conference (Houston, Texas, 1996).

Through his involvement with Asian Studies he met his current wife, Claudia Brown, a scholar of Chinese art of the Qing dynasty and Professor of Art History at Arizona State University.

He loved Arizona and East Mesa and tending to his property. A former orange orchard, it supported varieties of citrus trees, cats and dogs throughout the years, and a flock of peacocks, who would come mornings and evenings to feed. He also loved having his children and, latterly, his grandchildren visit him and Claudia there.

He and Claudia also enjoyed travel, particularly to Italy, specifically Rome and its Campo de’ Fiori, which they visited many times.

His first marriage, to Susan Stevenson, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Claudia Brown; his children, David, Michael, Matthew and Jane Stevenson and Emily Rabiner and their children. His brother, Basil, of Toronto, Ontario, also survives him.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made to Arizona State University's South Asia Studies Fund (https://shorturl.at/ziCEb) in Richards’s memory.