Memories of Murray from Jim Reid and Alan Watson

Jim McCaughan has passed on expressions of condolence for Murray from their mutual friends and colleagues at Leeds - Bob Reid and Alan Watson FRS.

Dear Jim,

Very sorry to hear that Murray has died. He was a good friend both at the time he spent in Leeds when he made a significant contribution to Haverah Park and to our thinking. And later after the Adelaide conference when I stayed with him and Evelyn. I still have a eucalyptus tree that they planted in our garden.

Hope all is well with you and Genevieve. With all good wishes,

Bob.

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Dear Jim,

Thanks for letting me know this very sad news.  I was very fond of Murrayand got to know him very well during his one-year visit to Leedsmany years ago.  I recall vividly him cooking a meal for me and doing frozen Brussel sprouts without water – I think with some butter, probably a French novelty.  He was a brilliant experimentalist and we used a device that he designed for us, MAGIC (Murray’s automatic gain indicating circuit), that really revolutionised our data taking at Haverah Park.  It was extended and used for many years.

I was last in contact with Murray in 2011 when I spoke at some length with him by SKYPE about the way in which the idea for the Sydney air-shower array was developed by him.  He was very animated about it.  The original way of having a timing signal across the array (now duplicated at the Auger and Telescope Array projects) was certainly his idea and in our history of EAS published in 2012 Karl-Heinz Kampert and I make this very clear.  A very brief note of my conversation with Murray is attached. 

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Conversation with Murray Winn 25-11-11

Murray rang in response to my e-mail of 08-11-11.  His e-mail is dodgy.  I called him back on SKYPE and we talked at length.

He did have the idea of autonomous detectors as I’d surmised.  McCusker had told him that he had always had the dream of building a really giant air-shower array.  Murray had the idea about a week later while on a walk to a look-out near the sea.  It all came to him in a flash – only time something like that ever happened to him.  McCusker liked the idea and said that he could get money from the Americans: he did.

It was Henri Rathgeber.  He read out title of a paper of Rathgeber’s in French.  Had a vague memory of Rathgeber mentioning that he had married the boss’s daughter.  Rathgeber was very interested in economics.  (This refers to another matter I was following up at the time: the history of Erich Regener, a German who discovered the maximum of the rate of production of ionisation in the atmosphere in the 1930s.  Regener lost his job as his wife was Jewish.  Per Carlson and I researched this a bit and there is a paper attached).

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We also discussed Henri Rathgeber who was the son-in-law of an important German physicist, Erich Regener (see paper attached).

Click here to see Regener paper.

Please give my sympathies to the children who were quite young when they were in Leeds.

Best regards,

Alan