Professor Wilson Sibbett CBE FRS FRSE CPhys Hon.FInstP (1948-2024)

Professor Wilson Sibbett was born in Portglenone, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in March 1948.

He studied physics at Queen’s University Belfast and graduated in 1970, before gaining a PhD in laser physics in 1973. Following a period as a research fellow and lecturer at Imperial College London, he reached readership level before moving in 1985 to the University of St Andrews as Professor of Natural Philosophy and head of the physics department.

From 1988-1994 he was head of the School of Physics and Astronomy, before becoming director of research and then Wardlaw Professor of Physics from 1997.

Wilson conducted significant research on ultrashort pulse laser science and technology. His work on streak cameras was the first to demonstrate the technique of subpicosecond chronoscopy, achieved by synchronous scanning of streak cameras to function as oscilloscopes. This was followed by pioneering work on coupled-cavity or additive-pulse modelocking.

In 1989 Wilson’s team developed the technique of Kerr-lens modelocking, allowing the generation of pulses of light with a duration of just a few femtoseconds, opening up a new field of study – ultrafast optics. This technique enabled the commercialisation of subpicosecond pulse lasers of wide tuning range, as well as giving access to a completely new class of phenomena, such as the measurement of electron movements in an atom.

He was the director of a major interdisciplinary research collaboration (Ultrafast Photonics Collaboration) where the primary objective was to develop femtosecond communications networks that might ultimately offer data transfer speeds up to 100 terabytes a second. And more recently, his research interests encompassed applications in biophotonics and medical photonics where a range of novel laser configurations were being designed for specific light-matter interactions.

In 2001, Wilson was appointed to chair the Scottish Science Advisory Committee – making him Scotland’s first ever chief adviser on science. He was made a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1997 and awarded its Rumford Medal in 2000. He received the prestigious Rank Prize for Optoelectronics in 1997 and the Charles Hard Townes Medal from the Optical Society of America (now Optica) in 2011. 

He was awarded a CBE for services to science and research in 2001. An Honorary IOP Fellow, Wilson died on 16 October 2024.

Thanks to the University of St Andrews for the biographical information.