Professor Robert Everest Newnham : 1929 - 2009

We note with sadness the passing of Robert Everest Newnham who passed away (16 April 2009) at age 80 (1929-2009). He was very well known throughout the international crystallographic and ferroelectrics community.

Whilst at Cambridge University and the Cavendish Laboratory he carried out basic research on inorganic materials between 1956 and 1958. At the time of his passing he was Professor Emeritus of Solid State Science at the Pennsylvania State University. He was awarded a PhD from Cambridge in 1960. He was a friend of Helen Megaw (and knew Kathleen Lonsdale and Dorothy Hodgkin). He, of course, also knew William L Bragg. Among his other friends were Linus Pauling.

Bob Newnham had a sixty year career in the crystallography, crystal physics, and the crystal chemistry of oxides. As a student, he studied structure-property relations of quartz, clay, and feldspars, and during his eight years at M.I.T., he worked on the optical properties of laser crystals and discovered a large family of magnetoelectric materials with the olivine structure. His long collaboration with Professor Eric Cross at Penn State began in 1966, and over the years, they built up the largest ferroelectrics research program in the United States, working mainly on barium titanate, lead zirconate titanate, and related perovskites. Much of the work was sponsored by the capacitor industry through the Center for Dielectric Studies and by the Office of Naval Research for the development of new sonar systems. Bob's main contribution was a large family of composite transducers made from ceramics, polymers, and metals, based on a number of different connectivity patterns. He wrote hundreds of research papers and more than 20 important patents on these devices. Bob was an excellent teacher and many of his students became leaders in the field of ferroelectrics.

Ph.D., Cambridge University, U.K. (Crystallography)
Ph.D., Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania (Physics and Mineralogy)
M.S., Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado (Physics)
B.S., Hartwick College, Oneanta, New York (Mathematics)

We thank Professor William Carlson of the School of Engineering, Alfred University, New York for providing us with this information.