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Robert C. Smith (Revised for 2023 Reunion)
After I graduated, I stayed in Glasgow until 1968, first studying for a PhD in Astronomy and then for two years as an Assistant in the then separate Astronomy Department. During my PhD I spent a fascinating and productive year as a visiting research student in Cambridge, coming back to Glasgow in 1966 to get married (to Eleanor Graham, daughter of Dr T S Graham, Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics Department) and to take up residence in Wolfson Hall, where we were jointly an Assistant Warden.
In 1968 we moved to Lewes in Sussex , where I started as a research fellow in the Astronomy Centre at the University of Sussex and joined the teaching staff in 1972. I have remained at Sussex ever since, serving from 1996 for 6 years as head of the Physics and Astronomy Department, and for two years as Dean of the School of Chemistry , Physics and Environmental Science. I retired in 2006 with the title of Emeritus Reader, and continued to do some lecturing until December 2011. I still do some research, or at least scholarly work, and until 2016 (see below) retained an office in the department.
When I switched from theoretical to observational research in 1985, I began to travel more, making observing visits to the Canaries, Australia, South Africa and Mexico, as well as attending conferences in interesting places and visiting collaborators. I have also been involved in the running of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), as a member of various committees, including its Council on three occasions. I was recently a joint author of a volume of records of the RAS Dining Club. After retirement, I increased the number of popular talks that I gave to local astronomical societies and other bodies, and became more involved in U3A. Other current activities include singing, hill-walking, travelling and studying classical Greek.
Eleanor and I have three daughters. Rachel, the older one (by 20 minutes) of twins, is a midwife in a Christian hospital in Pakistan, where we have both visited her on 4 occasions, most recently in 2015, and I alone over Christmas and New Year in 2022-23. Her very slightly younger sister, Debbie, lives in Milton, just outside Cambridge, where she works for Cambridge University Press & Assessment, in the Assessment division, the body that oversees GCSE and A-levels – she moved several years ago to the International section, which gives her opportunities for travel, she is now a Deputy Director; she is married to an architect and has two daughters, both now adults. Our youngest, Becky, is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at Birkbeck College , working on climate science, and lives in Baldock with her engineer husband and their teenage daughter and son. Her research also takes her overseas from time to time.
The fact that our two daughters in the UK live fairly close together, and are well settled, encouraged us to move closer to them, and in October 2016 we sold our Lewes home of 43 years and moved to Cambridge, where we found a delightful bungalow in Trumpington, about half-way between our daughters. We enjoy seeing our families more often, and taking advantage of the rich cultural life in Cambridge.
Sadly, Eleanor was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2017, and gradually became more confused. She went into a care home in January 2022 and died there five months later towards the end of June. We had a wonderful memorial service for her the following month, and our daughters and I scattered her ashes this summer on a hillside overlooking Lewes.
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