You're a Good Man, Robin Armstrong!

A tribute to Robin Louis Armstrong from his former students on the occasion of his 75th birthday

Dear Robin,

The following pages were written by many of your former graduate students as a way of letting you know what they did with their lives and as a token of their gratitude for mentoring their graduate programs.

Just to start you down memory lane, here a few of my (Greg) recollections of the early days.

Even as a relatively new assistant professor in 1965, you had a reputation of being a good advisor. Hoping to attend graduate school in the physics department at U. of T., I decided to visit a few of the research groups and enquire as to who was good to work for. In the old, un-air-conditioned, Maclennan lab, you and Stewart Harvey had your offices next door to your grad students’ office, followed by the lab, all on the first floor. I probably dropped into the office and talked to Manny Tward or Ken Jeffrey – your students numbered one and two. Whoever it was gave you a great recommendation, so I stopped my search at that point.

After I approached you on the subject, you had me assigned, along with my tutorial partner Pat Speight, to you for the weekly tutorial session. I guess Pat thought you were a good guy as well as we both started the summer in your group as grad students number three and four.

Do you remember that restaurant across College Street in which we took a break every afternoon? The coke was made by mixing coke concentrate and soda water – the quality was various, but no one seemed to notice as you always directed the conversation to some bit of interesting physics. The point was to just step out, together, for a few minutes. Moving to the new building was a great improvement in climate control, but I missed that restaurant. Somehow the faculty lounge in the new building did not give us quite the same break.

Speaking of the afternoon gatherings, when we moved to the new building your office was on the main floor and we had our offices and lab in first basement. So mid-afternoon you would come downstairs and poke your head in the door of our office with some sort of greeting like, “What’s new?” This question was always accompanied by a cheery smile. During those times when my equipment was not working or my progress had been zero for several weeks, the smile seemed a bit forced. But I still appreciated the effort you made to keep me thinking that all was not lost.

There are lots of great stories from those days – Stuart Harvey trying to save Helium in a weather balloon, Pat trying to explain spin-echoes to someone she later found out was a Nobel prize winner, and so on. But it’s time to let others tell their stories. Enjoy!

Greg Baker (scribe), Doug Cooke (webmaster), Jim Courtney (advisor), Henry van Driel (in charge)