| Brian Wybourne | |
| Birth Date: | 5 March 1935 |
| Birth Place: | Morrinsville, New Zealand |
| Death Place: | Toruń, Poland |
| Fields: | Physics |
| Workplaces: | University of Canterbury Nicholas Copernicus University |
| Alma Mater: | Canterbury University College |
| Thesis Title: | An analysis of the solid state spectra of trivalent rare-earth ions |
| Thesis Url: | http://ipac.canterbury.ac.nz/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&index=.GW&term=An+Analysis+of+the+Solid+State+Spectra+of+Trivalent+Rare-Earth+Ions |
| Thesis Year: | 1960 |
| Academic Advisors: | Alan Runciman |
| Awards: | Hector Medal (1970) |
Brian Garner Wybourne (5 March 1935 – 26 November 2003) was a New Zealand theoretical physicist known for his groundbreaking work on the energy levels of rare-earth ions and applications of Lie groups to the atomic f shell and by mathematicians for his work on group representation theory.[1]
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.[2] [3]
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, at the age of 31.[4]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1970,[5] and the same year he won the society's Hector Medal, the highest award in New Zealand science at that time. [6]
He served as the head of the physics department from December 1982 to November 1989.[7] In 1991 he was a visiting professor at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, and decided to remain there permanently.
Wybourne was appointed to a professorship in the Nicholas Copernicus University Institute of Physics in 1993. In 2003 he received an award from the Polish Minister of Education for his outstanding contribution to science. A month later he unexpectedly died of a stroke. In his 13 years in Poland Wybourne published 80 scientific papers.[8] [9]
Wybourne's time in Poland was chronicled in The Polish Odyssey of Brian G. Wybourne, written by his colleague at Nicholas Copernicus University, Jacek Karwowski.