Brian Garner Wybourne
Academic
Biography
Gallery (1)
Lists
Also Viewed
The basics
Quick Facts
| Intro | Academic | ||||
| Places | Poland New Zealand | ||||
| was | Scientist Physicist Academic | ||||
| Work field | Education Science | ||||
| Gender |
| ||||
| Birth | 5 March 1935, Morrinsville, Matamata-Piako District, Waikato Region, New Zealand | ||||
| Death | 26 November 2003Toruń, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland (aged 68 years) | ||||
| Star sign | Pisces | ||||
| Education |
| ||||
| Awards |
|
The details
Biography
Brian Garner Wybourne (5 March 1935 – 26 November 2003) was a New Zealand physicist known for his work on the energy levels of rare-earth ions.
Born in Morrinsville in 1935, Wybourne attended Canterbury University College, graduating with an MSc with second-class honours in 1958 and a PhD in 1960.
After post-doctoral research positions at Johns Hopkins University and Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, Wybourne returned to the University of Canterbury in 1966 to take up a professorship in physics. He served as the head of the physics department from December 1982 to November 1989. In 1991 he was a visiting professor at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, and decided to remain there permanently.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1970, and the same year he won the society's Hector Medal, the highest award in New Zealand science at that time.