Prestigious physics honour

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 1

Prestigious physics honour

A Christchurch man is the first New Zealander to win one of the most prestigious physics awards in the world. Professor Roy Kerr, head of the mathematics department at the University of Canterbury, learned two weeks ago that he had been awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal for his work on “black holes” in space. The Hughes Medal is considered most prestigious. Since its establishment in 1902, former award-winners have included a number of Nobel prize-winners for physics, among them Enrico Fermi, Max Born, and Martin Ryle — some of the top names in twentieth century physics. Professor Kerr is the first New Zealander to have received the medal. (An Englishmen living in New Zealand was awarded it early this century.) Although self effacing, Professor Kerr admits to being “pleased” at the acknowledgement the medal gives his work. “Anyone who is anyone in physics is listed, and some of us too,” he said. He looked down the list of former winners, nodded and said, “I know them all.” It is

in recognition of his achievement and eminence that the computer company, N.C.R., will give Professor Kerr’s mathematics department two N.C.R. Decision Mate personal computers this morning. The two computers have a market value of $14,000 to $15,000 and are suited to high-quality colour graphics work. “They will be most useful for our work,” Professor Kerr said. “We had almost no equipment 12 months ago, and we have been scraping funds from all sorts of places to get the department into the 1980 s.” “We have been fairly successful, and with these two computers in two months time almost all staff members should have either a terminal or a micro-com-puter in their office.” Professor Kerr’s own office is rather daunting. What look like hieroglyphics cover the blackboard, the bookshelves are lined with such titles as “Relativity Theory,” and Professor Kerr talks nonchalantly about . interatomic forces, black holes in space, and gravitational fields. When asked to explain

more specifically about “black holes,” with the caution that it must sound intelligible to the layman, Professor Kerr began. After 10 minutes of circuitous sentences and long pauses as he struggled to render the complex concepts simple, “The Press” gave up. “I normally do better than this,” Professor Kerr said. “You caught me concentrating on another problem, and it is hard to switch over.” Suffice to say, the “black hole” in space is concerned with exploding stars and the process of light in the gravitational field. One phenomenon associated with “black holes” is now known as the Kerr effect, named after a discovery Professor Kerr made in the early 19605. The Royal Society newsletter lauds Professor Kerr’s work “as of particular importance to general relativistic astrophysics, and all subsequent detailed work on black holes has depended fundamentally on it. Professor Kerr has continued to make significant To page 4