Ted Paige

Ted Paige
Born Edward George Sydney Paige
(1930-07-18)18 July 1930
Northiam, England
Died 20 February 2004(2004-02-20) (aged 73)
Education Reading University
Occupation physicist and engineer

Professor Edward George Sydney Paige FRS (18 July 1930 – 20 February 2004), known as Ted Paige, was a British physicist and engineer. His main areas of research were semiconductor devices to improve radar, including work on surface acoustic waves, and optical techniques using programmable phase plates.[1]

Life

Paige was an only child born and raised in Northiam, Sussex where he developed a lifelong interest in ornithology. Despite a poor background, and chest complaints, he attended Rye Grammar School after winning an assisted place. While at that school, his interest in science increased (including an interest in personal experiments with explosives), and near the end of his time there he was able to study physics and chemistry with an inspirational teacher.[1] A county scholarship allowed him to attend Reading University, where he obtained a first-class physics degree.[1]

Paige was the first doctoral student supervised by William Mitchell.[1][2] His research investigated the optical properties over a wide range of wavelengths of irregularities in crystalline quartz that had been caused by x-ray and neutron irradiation.[1] He graduated in 1955.

From 1955-77 he worked for the Radar Research Establishment at Malvern in Worcestershire, where the research was pure science, without an emphasis on immediate practical applications, and he was promoted on the basis of merit, becoming Deputy Chief Scientific Officer in 1973.[1] In 1966 he went to Copenhagen for six months as a visiting professor where he taught a course on solid state plasmas. In 1968 he became leader of a research group investigating Rayleigh waves on semiconductor surfaces,[2] work which was used in the radar installed on the RAF's Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft.[2] The team won the Ministry of Defence's Wolfe Award.[2] Paige also teamed up with Dr Tom McLean, and together they wrote twenty papers on germanium. The team that Paige headed included physicists Graham Marshall, Meirion Lewis and Dennis Maines. They developed Surface acoustic wave electronic filters which had many applications, including mobile phones when they later emerged.[1]

In 1977 he became Oxford University's Professor of Electrical Engineering. There he focused on improving teaching and research, restructuring the department and upgrading the teaching laboratories. In 1978 he won the Gabor Medal from the Institute of Physics.[3] In the 1980s he developed an interest in optoelectronics, including programmable light modulators for sub-micron lithography.[2]

Paige was diagnosed with HFE hereditary haemochromatosis in 1996[1] a genetic disorder that creates iron overload in the body.[4] From 2000 until he died in 2004, Paige was a director of the Haemochromatosis Society, a group founded in 1990 to help with awareness and research into genetic haemochromatosis.[4] Paige used his statistical expertise to help the society to better survey and document the disease.[1] Paige died of liver cancer in 2004 which was caused by his genetic condition.[1]

He was married to Helen Gill and they had four children.[1]

Awards

In 1978 he received the Institute of Physics' Duddell Medal and the Institute of Acoustics' Rayleigh Medal. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983.[2] Paige was a fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Electrical Engineers.[5]

Works

Patents

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Ash, Eric A; E. Peter Raynes (December 2009). "Edward George Sydney Paige. 18 July 1930 – 20 February 2004" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 55: 185–200. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2009.0009.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clark, Colin (24 March 2004). "Professor E. G. S. Paige". The Independent. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
  3. ↑ Gabor Medal, iop.org, retrieved 22 December 2013
  4. 1 2 Haemochromatosis Society, retrieved 22 December 2013
  5. ↑ Obituary Ted Paige, soue.org.uk, retrieved December 2013
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