IN MEMORY
]Boris P. Stoicheff 1924-2010
[
Boris P. Stoicheff, an OSA Past Presi- dent and Fellow Emeritus and an
emeritus university professor of physics
at the University of Toronto, died on
April 15, 2010, in Toronto after a battle
with multiple myeloma. Stoicheff built
the first ruby laser in Canada. He was
renowned for his pioneering contributions to Raman spectroscopy and
nonlinear optics. He was the first OSA
member from outside the United States
to be elected OSA President (1976).
Stoicheff was born in Macedonia,
then part of Yugoslavia, and emigrated
to Canada as a child. After earning a
B.A.Sc. in engineering physics and a
Ph.D. in molecular physics from the
University of Toronto, he received a
Gilchrist Fellowship that enabled him
to remain in Toronto for a year to perform Raman scattering experiments at
low pressures. Stoicheff then went to the
National Research Council (NRC) in
Ottawa, Canada, to continue his work
on Raman scattering in a lab headed by
Gerhard Herzberg, who was awarded
the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1971.
Stoicheff later wrote Herzberg’s biography, Gerhard Herzberg—An Illustrious
Life in Science.
Stoicheff remained at NRC from
1951 to 1964. In 1963, he spent a sabbatical working with Charles Townes
at MIT and then joined the University
of Toronto as a professor of physics. He
retired in 1989, although he continued
to perform research.
Throughout his career, Stoicheff
served on numerous Canadian and
international technical committees,
including the board of the NRC, the
Quantum-Electronics Council, the
Council of Professional Engineers of
Ontario, the Ontario Nuclear Safety
Review Committee, the International
Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the
Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
An OSA member for nearly 50
years, Stoicheff was very active in
OSA’s publications efforts. He served
on the Board of Editors and Publica-
tions Council in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. He
also took part
in several award
selection commit-
tees. At the time
of his death, he
was a member of
the OSA Presi-
dential Advisory
Committee.
If you would like to make a memorial donation to the OSA Foundation in honor of Michael Feld, Alfred Josef Thelen, Boris P. Stoicheff
or Sang Soo Lee, please visit www.osa-foundation.org/give.
