Rod Crewther

Rod Crewther
Born	(1945-09-23)September 23, 1945
Died	December 17, 2020(2020-12-17)(aged 75) Adelaide,Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	California Institute of Technology Melbourne University
Known for	Gauge field theory
Awards	Fulbright scholarship
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	University of Adelaide CERN Cornell University Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory University of Berne University of Dortmund Max Planck Institute
Doctoral advisor	Murray Gell-Mann

Rodney James Crewther(23 September 1945 – 17 December 2020) was a physicist, notable in the field ofgauge fieldtheories.

Education

After gaining his MSc atMelbourne Universitywhere he was resident atOrmond College,Crewther was awarded aFulbright scholarshipto theCalifornia Institute of Technology.He studied under the tutelage of Nobel prizewinnerMurray Gell-Mannand completed his doctorate, in 1971, after successfully defending his dissertation against the renowned theoristRichard Feynman.His thesis was entitledSpontaneous Breakdown of Conformal and Chiral Invariance.

Career

After his PhD, he held postdoctoral appointments atCornell UniversityinIthaca,New Yorkand theFermi National Accelerator LaboratoryinBatavia,Illinois.Subsequently, he spent twelve years in Europe, six of them as a Staff Member of theEuropean Laboratory for Particle Physics(CERN) inGeneva,and the remainder as a research associate at theUniversity of Berne,University of Dortmund,and at theMax Planck InstituteinMunich.Crewther was then appointed as a senior lecturer in physics at theUniversity of Adelaide.

Having a keen interest in politics, Crewther was vice-president of the University of Adelaide branch of theNational Tertiary Education Union.He also served on the University Council.

Teaching

He designed the honours physics course "Gauge Field Theories." He also lectured on Quantum Mechanics III, Advanced Dynamics and Relativity, and Honours Quantum Field Theory. For courses Quantum Mechanics II, Honours Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics, and Classical Fields and Mathematical Methods, his notes were followed by his successors.

Dr Crewther also taught a 4-week module of Physics 1B at the University of Adelaide where he hosted mechanics lectures that focused on the centre of mass, rotation, angular momentum and gyroscopic precession.

Death

He died in 2020 around Christmas time from cancer.

External links

• Crewther's math genealogy
• Crewther's homepage
• Crewther bio
• Crewther's Expert profile
• Crewther's University of Adelaide profile
• Commentary on Crewther's work by Gerardus 't Hooft
• Crewther at the Scientific Commons
• Scientific publications of Rod CrewtheronINSPIRE-HEP
• Crewther's thesis