Obituary -- Neville Smith

Neville Smith, scientific director for the Advanced Light Source of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading authority in the field of photoemission spectroscopy, died on August 18, 2006, at age 64, unexpectedly of cancer. A native of England with a PhD in physics from Cambridge University, he moved to the US in 1966. After post-doctoral research at Stanford University under photoemission spectroscopy pioneer William Spicer, he joined the staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and continued the study of the electronic structure of solids and surfaces for 25 years. In 1991, Dr Smith was awarded the prestigious Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society for his contributions to the development of momentum-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. In 1994, he was named as the first scientific program head of the Advanced Light Source (ALS). Under his leadership, the ALS scientific program thrived. "It is not the number of warm bodies on the floor but the quality of science produced that is the true measure of a user facility's success," Dr. Smith once said. During his tenure as scientific director, the number of scientific users of the ALS grew from a few hundred to several thousand. There will be no funeral, but a memorial service to celebrate Smith's life will be held in the fall.