Saturday, February 16, 2019
I have just seen Roland's obituary in today's (Feb 16) Globe and Mail, and I am greatly saddened to hear of his passing. Roland was my Ph.D. supervisor (1971-75) and he taught me a great deal about physics and about life in general. I wanted to do a research project on a theoretical subject (the initiation of warm rain) and Roland encouraged me to do so despite his intense specialization on the experimental side of things. I would often bring him the results of my computer models of rain-drop growth, which he would dismiss out of hand. "This is wrong", he would say, not because he knew anything about the model specifics, but because he knew instinctively that my results did not jive with the the physics of rain drops that he had observed. So I would go back to my model and eventually discover the coding errors. "That's better", he would say, "but it's still wrong!". Then I would discover more coding errors until the model output matched reality as he had observed it. We then pushed the model into territory he had not observed. After I completed the defence of my thesis he said two things to me: First, "My name is Roland" - I had never called him by his first name before that, - and secondly he said that I was "a critical mass of one" - probably the highest compliment I have ever received.
Rest in peace, my friend.
