(Died: May 24, 1990)
Professor of Mathematics
Interests: Light, Emission Theory, Electrodynamics
Richard Arthur Waldron.
In Memorium: Prof. R. A. Waldron
We greatly regret to inform readers that Prof. Richard A. Waldron, M.A., Sc.D., F. Inst. P., F.I.R.E., F.I.M.A., Professor of Mathematics at the University of Ulster, U.K., died suddenly on 24 May, 1990. He is survived by his wife and two children.
A graduate of Cambridge University, Waldron became an international authority on the propagation of guided electromagnetic waves and worked for 20 years in the telecommunication industry in Britain and the USA. Since 1973 he was at the University of Ulster, continuing to work as a consultant to industry on both sides of the Atlantic. He published over 70 papers and six books, including The Theory of Guided Electromagnetic Waves.
His intimate knowledge of electromagnetic wave propagation put him in conflict with the Einstein theory, and he became the most articulate contemporary supporter of the ballistic theory of light, by which he sought to explain all available optical and other evidence. He published his results in The Wave and Ballistic theories of Light (Frederic Muller, London) in 1977. His was probably a minority point of view among contemporary dissidents, but he worked on undeterred, welcoming the establishment of this journal and expecting to contribute to it; his last letter (on the subject of Michelson's 1913 experiment) was received here in January of this year.
He will always be remembered as one who rejected fashionable authority in physics, and asked for logic and simplicity instead. - Petr Beckmann, Galilean Electrodynamics, V1, N5, p. 68 (Sep/Oct 1990).
