Alick Ashmore

Alick Ashmore, a former Director of the UK Daresbury Laboratory died on 28 February 2014 aged 93. He was born in on 7 November 1920 in Disley, England and grew up in New Mills and Lytham-St. Annes, where he attended King Edward VII School. In 1941 he graduated in Physics from Kings College, London. After carrying out war work at the Radar Research and Development Establishment, Malvern, he joined the Physics Department at the University of Liverpool in 1947 as a Lecturer and also obtained his PhD. Later, as a Senior Lecturer, he led a research group working on the 156 inch cyclotron in the laboratory developed by James Chadwick. This machine was also used by CERN staff to gain experience before CERN’s first accelerator became operational.

In 1960 Alick was appointed Reader in Experimental Physics at Queen Mary College London to lead a user group on Nimrod the 7 GeV proton synchrotron under construction at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory (RHEL). He continued research started at Liverpool on the spin dependant parameters in proton-proton scattering using the 50 MeV proton linear accelerator at RHEL, and also spent time at CERN, measuring proton-proton total cross sections at the new Proton Synchrotron.

Alick, with Eric Taylor of Harwell and colleagues, proposed and completed the first approved experiment on Nimrod: small angle proton-proton elastic scattering. The programme expanded with financial support from RHEL, including additional academic staff positions at QMC. Since then, the QMC experimental particle physics group which Alick started over 50 years ago, has evolved into the Queen Mary Particle Physics Research Centre with a total of about 45 staff and research students, who over the years have carried out experiments in the UK, Canada, Germany, USA, Japan and CERN.

Alick was promoted to Professor in 1964, and during 1965-66 he spent a sabbatical year at Brookhaven National Laboratory where he participated in a series of experiments on pion-proton, kaon-proton and proton-proton scattering with a Brookhaven-Cornell group. In1968, Alick became Head of Department and was appointed Chairman of the Board of Studies in Physics for the University of London of which Queen Mary was a constituent college.

In 1970 he was appointed Director of Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory. Daresbury’s 5 GeV electron accelerator, NINA, had been operational for nearly four years and was supporting a mature particle physics experimental programme, with its own staff and with many users from northern universities in the UK and a few from abroad.

It had been realised that synchrotron radiation emitted by the relativistic electrons as they passed through the synchrotron’s bending magnets, regarded as a nuisance by particle physicists, was a remarkable source of radiation for other sciences, and NINA had two embryonic beam-lines for molecular and atomic research on a wide range of materials. Alick enthusiastically pursued funding for expanded use of NINA by installing a new experimental area for using synchrotron radiation in material and life sciences.

The UK Science Research Council closed NINA in 1977 in order to concentrate UK particle physics resources at CERN. Alick was instrumental in organizing the particle physics users from Daresbury and several Northern UK universities in three collaborative international projects: the Omega spectrometer and the European Muon Collaboration at CERN, and at the PETRA collider at DESY, all of which had highly successful programmes.

Alick lead the development of the new nuclear structure facility (NSF), a vertical tandem Van de Graaff accelerator, on the Daresbury site. Construction of the tower was controversial as some people were against a tall structure in the Cheshire countryside, but after a delay planning permission was obtained, and the now-iconic building remains as a landmark even after the closure of the NSF. The NSF went on to deliver outstanding nuclear physics including the discovery of the existence of nuclear super deformation providing a wholly new insight into the dynamics of atomic nuclei.

Following this success Alick initiated construction in 1975 of the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS), which became the world’s first dedicated facility for x-ray synchrotron radiation research. Over its 28 years of operation, the SRS supported cutting-edge research in physics, chemistry and materials science and opened up many new areas of research in fields such as medicine, geological and environmental studies, structural genomics and archaeology. It played a critical role in supporting work which resulted in two Nobel prizes. Sir John Walker’s research solved the structure of an enzyme that opened the way for new insights into metabolic and regenerative disease, and resulted in a share of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s work was on the structure and function of the ribosome. He shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009.

In securing funding for both the Nuclear Structure Facility and the Synchrotron Radiation Source, Alick lead the transformation of Daresbury Laboratory from a high energy physics laboratory to an international centre for nuclear physics and synchrotron radiation. Alick also saw the significant growth of scientific computing at Daresbury when the existing Theory Group at Daresbury was expanded to form a new Science and Computational Science Division through the inclusion of work related to the applications of computing to structural chemistry, x-ray crystallography and atomic physics.

In addition to his guidance and drive for the design and construction of these new facilities, Alick demonstrated a clear grasp of the motivation and management of the very diverse staff needed for the success of a large research laboratory. His leadership was shaped by his benign, sympathetic and gentle character. He was strongly driven by an awareness of social fairness and justice and was, as the Laboratory’s senior manager, determined to work according to these precepts. As an example he reduced the difference in employment conditions between the Civil Service “Staff” and “Industrials”, by creating flexible working hours, and getting this agreed by Government and the trade unions.

Alick was awarded a medal (CBE) by the Queen in 1979 for services to science, and retired in 1981. He was highly regarded and widely admired by the Daresbury Laboratory staff, and by his colleagues and students at Queen Mary.

Alick enjoyed a long and healthy retirement in Cumbria with his wife Eileen. He was very involved in local community events and organizations.. He enjoyed walking in the Lake District and travelled extensively to visit family, for relaxation and education.

Pre-deceased by his twin brother Owen and by two of his grandchildren, he is survived by Eileen, whom he married in 1947, his five children, thirteen grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren.

Peter Kalmus
Queen Mary University of London