Prof honored for contributions to
science in developing nations

Henry R. Glyde, physics and astronomy, received the 2001 John Wheatley Award from the American Physical Society (APS) at its general meeting in Seattle, March 12-13.

The award recognizes physicists who have made contributions to the development of the science in countries of the Third World.

The APS citation honors Glyde for "his enduring commitment and multifaceted contributions to the development of physics in Thailand, which include innovative creation of scientific links between North American research universities and Chulalongkorn University, inspiring collaboration with leading Thai physicists and the marshaling of financial and intellectual resources to establish new regional research centers."

Glyde's relationship with Chulalongkorn University began in 1972 when he was sent to Thailand as a project officer for the International Development Research Centre of Canada to study the way England and Thailand developed and ran cooperative programs in science and technology.

While in Thailand, he taught a course in physics at Chulalongkorn and established ties with faculty members there.

In 1975, as a professor at the University of Ottowa, he was sent to 11 Asian countries to interview prospective students. He was impressed with the quality of students at Chulalongkorn but concerned because the university had no Ph.D. program in physics. Students at Thailand's largest university had to go out of the country to receive an advanced degree. When he returned to the University of Ottawa, he developed a proposal to establish a link between Ottawa and Chulalongkorn's physics faculty.

In 1979, the Canadian International Development Agency funded the program. The link included Ph.D. education at Ottawa for Thai faculty, equipment and technical assistance, an exchange of faculty between the two universities, and help in structuring a Ph.D. physics program at Chulalongkorn. That cooperative effort lead to the first Ph.D. program in physics in Thailand, a semiconductor physics research lab and the Forum for Theoretical Science (FTS). After Glyde came to UD, in 1982, he helped secure funding from USAID for the FTS to do superconductivity research in Thailand.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Glyde completed his undergraduate work at the University of Alberta and received his Ph.D. in physics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1964. After five years of postdoctoral research in Europe, he went to work for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), serving as a project officer with the International Development Research Centre of Canada in Thailand. It was during that time that Glyde's association with Chulalongkorn University and the program recognized by the Wheatley Award began.

He became chairperson and professor of physics at UD in 1982. Glyde, named a fellow of the APS in 1988, has served as president of the Canadian Institute of Neutron Scattering, chaired the committee that founded the Neutron Scattering Society of America, and currently serves on its executive committee.

He has been a guest scientist at the Institut Laue Langevin, France, regularly since 1975, served as chair of the research and development advisory panel to AECL, and has assisted broadly in developing neutron scattering research in the U.S.

–Barbara Garrison