Dr. Bill Wignall

Just reading all of Bill's papers on quantum mechanics from the 1990s. Falling in love with the ideas.

Bill taught me in the early 1980s at U. Melbourne. I enjoyed his course, and he was very understanding when I needed to sit his exam at a slightly later time than expected! Most gracious.

The world lost my father's extraordinary mind in two steps: firstly with his slow decline into dementia - and then suddenly with his passing this week.

A born teacher and communicator, my father taught me to always wonder why things are so - and was always willing to explain, share or discuss the reasons behind things with anyone interested. Growing up with him - a man who was always a teacher and in equal measure always a student - I learnt to learn: and that life is an adventure in endless discovery.

Apart from being a theorist, researcher and lecturer in his field of physics, he was a journalist and broadcaster in all matters of science: writing for many years for the Age, and writing and presenting his science programme on Radio Australia for two decades - to an audience of literally hundreds of million people.

The meaning of the word 'genius' has been diluted by its overuse; I have no doubt my father was the genuine article. Sadly, at first through the difficult hurdles to getting new and revolutionary ideas published, and at last through his advancing dementia, he was never able to properly share his profound breakthroughs in theoretical physics, and especially in quantisation, the nature of matter, mass and waves.

I imagine him somewhere beyond - up there with his heroes like Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Scroedinger, de Broglie and Maxwell. I have no doubt they will welcome his beautiful mind.

He will be sadly missed by his beloved wife Valerie, his children, grandchildren and wider family, his many friends in science, music and the community, his colleagues, and his students.

On behalf of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne, let me express our deep sadness at this news and pass on our condolences. Bill will be remembered as a respected colleague and a true scholar.

Ray Volkas
Head, School of Physics