A. David May, passed away in December, 2024, at the age of 91.

He is remembered fondly by several colleagues. His former Ph.D. student, Prof. Emeritus Stephen Morris, said:

“he very graciously allowed me to ‘do my own thing’ for my unorthodox PhD project. … He was always an enthusiastic researcher with a can do attitude.”

David was an atomic spectroscopist and laser physicist who joined the faculty in the 1960’s and remained scientifically active after his retirement in the mid-1990’s.

David attended the University of Toronto, completing the honours physics program and continued his graduate studies under Profs Welsh and Stryland, receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1957. His Ph.D. thesis entitled “The Raman Spectra of Gases at High Pressure,” looked at the spectrographic ‘fingerprints’ of light scattering from vibrational modes of simple molecular gases under higher pressures than had been previously studied.

David taught courses for both physics and engineering students. His teaching style was open and laid-back. He was happy to take questions at any time in order to make sure students were keeping up with the lecture. His courses included quantum mechanics and he was quite effective at explaining what can be an obscure subject.

He enjoyed a lifelong career at the University of Toronto and continued with research after retiring from teaching. His final paper, “The impact theory of spectral line shapes: a paradigm shift” by A.D. May, W.-K. Liu, et al., was published in the 2013 issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics (Vol 91[11]

Thank you to the May family for contributing some of the background information.