Bertram Brockhouse

Brockhouse first met Doris Miller at the National Research Council in Ottawa. The two eventually got married in May 1947. Dorie, as she was fondly called, bore him six children. She supported and encouraged Brockhouse throughout his research years.

Brockhouse suffered from serious medical ailments starting 1960s. His medical problems caused him discomfort in his later life.

Brockhouse breathed his last on October 13, 2003 in Hamilton Ontario. He was 85.

Bertram Neville Brockhouse was born July 15, 1918 in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to Israel Bertram Brockhouse and Mable Emily Brockhouse. He had a sister Alice Evelyn and a brother Gordon Edgar who eventually became a railroad civil engineer.

The Brockhouse family shifted to United States when young Bertram was two years old. However in the winter of 1926-27, the family shifted back to Vancouver, BC.

Brockhouse’s gained his early education from a string of schools starting from the Central and then Lord Roberts elementary school, eventually enrolling at the King George High School and finally Sunday School of St John’s United Church.

During the Great Depression, Brockhouse family that was already suffering from low-slung financial statusdrained further down.Hoping for better opportunities, they shifted to Chicago where Brockhouse enrolled at the Central YMCA College for an evening course.

His love for radios was initiated by his cousin Wilbert B Smith. Taking it further, at YMCA he learned the technical aspects of radio technology, designing, building and repairing them. Meanwhile, for livelihood, he worked as a lab assistant at Aubert Controls Corporation, a small electronic firm. He also started a small business enterprise of repairing radio sets.

Brockhouse most spectacular achievement came while he carried out his research at the Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory. He made pioneering contribution to the development of neutron scattering techniques and also in the development of neutron spectroscopy. Generally, in neutron-scattering technique, a beam of neutrons is aimed at a target material, and the resultant scattering of the neutrons yields information about that material’s atomic structure. Brockhouse developed a different technique wherein the relative energies of the scattered neutrons were measured to yield additional data. This method was called inelastic neutron scattering. He used it in his ground-breaking examination of phonons. He also developed the neutron spectrometer and was one of the first to measure the phonon dispersion curve of a solid.

In 1962, Brockhouse was felicitated with the Oliver E Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. Following year, he received the Duddell Medal and Prize.

In 1965, Brockhouse was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

In 1973, Brockhouse won the Henry Marshall Tory Medal.

In 1982, Brockhouse was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1995.

In 1994, Brockhouse received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics for developing neutron scattering techniques for studying condensed matter. He shared the prize with American physicist Clifford Shull who independently carried out similar workconcurrently.