Nigel Shevchik

Nigel Shevchik was assistant professor of physics from 1975 until 1979 when he died of cancer on February 23.  Nigel had been very active at Stony Brook setting up an x-ray and photoemission laboratory.  He regarded the nascent National Synchrotron Light Source (just being planned at BNL) as a challenge: he would prove that he could do in his laboratory whatever could be done at the light source.  The following obituary was published in Physics Today, July 1979.
 

Nigel J. Shevchik, assistant professor of physics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook
    Shevchik was born on 4 April 1945, of American parents. He was educated at Carnegie-Mellon (BS, 1967) and Harvard (MS, 1969; PhD, 1972). In March 1972 he joined the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany. In 1975, he joined the faculty at Stony Brook. His research resulted in nearly 100 publications on the structure and electron spectroscopy of solids. At Harvard he developed improved methods for producing electrolytic amorphous germanium, made x-ray diffraction studies and theoretical models for the structure of various amorphous materials, and devised theoretical models for the deposition process. At Stuttgart he took the principal responsibility for launching a large effort in photoelectron spectroscopy, which became enormously productive during his 3 and 1/2 year stay, resulting in many papers on the relation between energy bands and photoemission spectra.At Stony Brook he set up a laboratory and performed a series of experiments on the angle-resolved ultraviolet photoemission spectra of noble metals. He also employed the EXAFS technique for studying local atomic structure and began applying it to surfaces. His first Ph.D student graduated in December 1978.
    Shevchik was a man of great energy and ambition and had a rare capability for getting things done. He was impatient with complicated explainations and had a gift for creating imaginative simpler ones. This trait involved him in many scientific disputes; he was one of the most courageous and controversial figures in his field. Even his close associates were not spared his skepticism, which was always tempered with humour. By his premature death the physics community has been deprived of a brilliant innovator and much needed gadfly. His friends and associates are deprived of a man of great courage, decency, and humanity. He will be remembered with affection.

WILLIAM PAUL
Harvard University
MANUEL CARDONA
Max Planck Institute Stuttgart,
Federal Republic of Germany
PHILIP B. ALLEN
State University of New York at Stony Brook

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