Born in Orlando, Florida on January 6, 1946,
I graduated from Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1963;
in June 1967 I received my B.Sc. in Physics from Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut; I completed an M.A. in Physics (in 1969)
and a Ph.D. in High Energy Physics (in 1972)
at the University of California, Berkeley.
My thesis topic was muonium chemistry in liquids.
I then held Post-Doctoral Fellowships at the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory, the University of Arizona (working at Berkeley)
and in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia
(working at the TRIUMF accelerator laboratory in Vancouver).
From 1974-77, I worked as a Research Associate at TRIUMF.
In 1977 I was appointed as an Assistant Professor in
UBC's Physics Department; in 1982-83, I took a sabbatical year
to work as a Visiting Scientist in Zurich and Tokyo.
I was an Associate of the Superconductivity Program
(later renamed the Quantum Materials program)
of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
from 1988 to 2006.
In 1997-98 I spent a sabbatical year at Columbia University.
In 2008 I was awarded the Brockhouse Medal
by the Canadian Association of Physicists;
in May 2011 I received the Yamazaki Prize from the
International Society for µSR Spectroscopy.
On 1 July 2011 I retired from UBC and was granted Emeritus status.
I am married to Patricia Anne Sparkes and have two children,
Jedidiah Daniel and Rebecca Claire.
Professional Profile:
Scientifically and professionally,
I would characterize myself primarily as
a developer of the methodology of (and facilities for)
muon spin rotation/relaxation/resonance
(µSR)
and as a promoter of its wider use as
a general-purpose tool of material science and chemistry.
For more details on µSR, visit the
µSR Home Page.
For a more longwinded description of my
research, click on
this link.
Want to see something more informal? Check out my
personal homepage.
Jess Brewer
Last modified: Tue Aug 2 13:00:35 PDT 2011
