Boris P. Stoicheff | |
|---|---|
 Boris P. Stoicheff | |
| Born | Boris Peter Stoicheff[1] (1924-06-01)June 1, 1924 |
| Died | April 15, 2010(2010-04-15) (aged 85) |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Education | University of Toronto(Ph.D. 1950) |
| Awards | William F. Meggers Award(1981) Frederic Ives Medal(1983) Henry Marshall Tory Medal(1989) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | National Research Council (Canada) University of Toronto |
| Thesis | Raman spectroscopy of gases at high pressures (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Harry Lambert Welsh |
| Other academic advisors | Gerhard Herzberg (Post doctoral advisor) |
Boris P. Stoicheff,FRS,[1] (June 1, 1924[2] – April 15, 2010[3]) was aMacedonian Canadian[4] physicist.
Stoicheff was born inBitola, in theKingdom of Yugoslavia (present-dayNorth Macedonia). His family emigrated toCanada 1931, and he grew up inToronto. He earned a degree in Engineering Physics from theUniversity of Toronto in 1947, and a PhD from the same institution in 1950.[5] He stayed for another year at Toronto on a fellowship, then went to theNational Research Council (Canada) inOttawa to work as apostdoctoral researcher in thespectroscopy laboratory headed byGerhard Herzberg, where he worked onRaman scattering.[2] In 1953 he was promoted at theNational Research Council (Canada) to a permanent research position.
Stoicheff became well known for hisRaman spectroscopy through the 1950s, publishing a number of previously unavailable high-resolution molecular spectra. In 1954, he married his wife Joan, and they had a son,Peter Stoicheff, in 1956 (who would go on to become the President of theUniversity of Saskatchewan). In the late 1950s, he became interested inBrillouin scattering, and attempted to build alaser, thoughTheodore Maiman succeeded in doing so first. Stoicheff nonetheless soon built the first laser in Canada, and researched using it for spectroscopy. He spent a sabbatical year in 1963 atMIT, working withCharles Townes and some of Townes's graduate students on the same subject, and in 1964 took a professorship at the University of Toronto.[2]
In the late 1970s he changed focus from Brillouin spectroscopy toRydberg spectroscopy. He retired in 1989, though continued to perform research. By 2000, he was working on the origin ofdiffuse interstellar bands.[2]
He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1975 and a Fellow of The Optical Society in 1964. He served as president of theOptical Society of America in 1976[6] and was awarded theirWilliam F. Meggers Award in 1981 and theirFrederic Ives Medal in 1983. He also received theHenry Marshall Tory Medal, in 1989. Later, OSA awarded him theDistinguished Service Award in 2002.
Since 2011, the Optical Society of America and theCanadian Association of Physicists sponsors a scholarship in his name that is awarded annually to an undergraduate or graduate student who has demonstrated both research excellence and significant service in either professional organizations.[7][8]
