Obituary of Yoginder Joshi

Dr. Joshi was born in the Punjab in India. After completing a master’s degree at Punjab University and teaching in India for two years, he came to Canada in 1961. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1964. He joined the physics department at StFX in 1965 after having taught at St. Dunstan’s University (now the University of Prince Edward Island) for one year. He was chair of our physics department from 1990- 96. Upon his retirement from the university in 2001 he was appointed a Senior Research Professor and continued his research and some teaching until his death.

Yogi established a world-renowned laboratory in atomic spectroscopy at StFX and created a world-wide network of collaborators. He had active collaborations with physicists in the Netherlands, Russia, France, Italy, U.S.A., India, Egypt and Canada. His research was funded continuously by the National Research Council of Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for the 43 years he was at StFX. He published over 240 papers, including five in the past few months while recuperating from cancer treatment.

In 1993 Dr. Joshi was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and in 1994 was elected an Associate Member of the Institute of Atomic Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received the St. Francis Xavier University Research Award in 1996.