Shaun Fischer#

Obituary, Lancaster University

Professor Shaun Fisher, member of the Department of Physics died on 4 January 2015. Shaun joined the department in 1988 and apart from a brief period working at CNRS in Grenoble has been with the department ever since. Shaun is regarded as one of the world’s leading low temperature physicists. Already as a graduate student he was devising experimental techniques which have since been taken up worldwide. In 1998 he was awarded the Charles Vernon Boys Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics “for a distinguished early research career in low temperature physics…” He has a long list of research firsts to his name bu will be best remembered for his discovery of quantum turbulence in superfluid helium-three at microkelvin temperatures (previously thought impossible). He sat on the editorial boards of several journals and was in great demand for international conference talks and was a key member of the European MICROKELVIN network of leading low-temperature laboratories.

The wider low-temperature community has responded to this loss with many messages of support from around the world. The Lancaster Ultralow Temperature Group has lost a valued member and leader whose innovative and meticulous experimental abilities inspired and energised his colleagues. He will also be greatly missed by his colleagues in the Physics Department, where he was Director of Undergraduate Teaching for 5 years and by numerous cohorts of Lancaster physics students who benefited from his comprehensive, enthusiastic and stimulating lectures and laboratory demonstrations.