Walter Stibbs

Prof Douglas Walter Noble Stibbs CBE FRSE FRAS (1919–2010) was a 20th century Australian astronomer and astrophysicist, remembered for his work at St Andrews University where he held the Napier Chair in Astronomy for 30 years. The Prof Walter Stibbs Lectures at Sydney University are named in his honour.^[1] In authorship he is usually known as D. W. N. Stibbs.

Life

He was born on 17 February 1919 in Sydney in Australia, but of Scots descent.^[2] His father died when he was three. From 1937 he studied Physics at the University of Sydney winning a Deas-Thomson Scholarship in 1940 and graduating BSc in 1942 and MSc in 1943.^[3] In the Second World War he was based at Mount Stromlo Observatory researching gunsights. In the latter years of the war he lectured in Maths and Physics at the University of New South Wales, before returning to Mount Stromolo in 1945.^[4]

In 1951 he moved to the University Observatory, Oxford as a Radcliffe Fellow, working alongside Prof Plaskett. During his time in Oxford he played cricket with the Berkshire Gentleman. From 1955 to 1959 he did research at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.^[5] In 1959 he was given the Napier Chair as Professor of Astronomy at St Andrews University. There he organised the building of the 38-inch Cassegrain-Schmidt telescope.He also organised for the construction of the university's very first computer in 1964. In 1968 he worked on the first studies of stellar radioactive opacity with T. R. Carson and D. F. Mayers.^[6]

In 1961 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[7]

He was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and served as its Vice President 1972/3.^[8]

A keen runner, in 1991 he won the gold medal for the marathon in the Australian Veteran Games in Canberra.^[9]

He died in St Andrews on 12 April 2010.

Family

In 1949 he was married to fellow-scientist Margaret Calvert.

Publications

• The Outer Layers of a Star (1953) co-written with Sir Richard Woolley.

Walter Stibbs Lectures

The lecture series was created in 2013 by Dr Katynna Gill of the University of Sydney.

• 2014 - Prof Fulvio Melia - "Cracking the Einstein Code"^[10]
• 2015 - Dr Andrea Ghez - "The Monster at the Heart of our Universe"
• 2016 - Dr Natalie Batalha^[11]
• 2017 - Dr David Reitze - "LIGO Gravitational Waves"^[12]
• 2018 - Prof Brian Schmidt - "The State of the Universe"^[13]

References