Eric Boyland Forsyth

Award-winning electrical engineer, sailor, and author Captain Eric Boyland Forsyth, 91, passed away on August 22, 2023, after a short illness. He was born in Bolton, England in 1932 and attended Bolton School. At Manchester University he joined the Royal Air Force Reserves, where he completed pilot training and became a fighter pilot. He moved to Canada in 1957, where he was then joined by his fiancée, Edith, an M.D. He and Edith were married in Canada, after which he completed his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto.

In 1960, he and Edith were both recruited to work at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. After moving to Long Island, Forsyth obtained his master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. His long and distinguished career at the Brookhaven National Laboratory included managing the Superconducting Power Transmission Project, serving as Chairman of the Magnet Development Committee for The ISABELLE Project, and finally as the Chairman of RHIC (The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider). Forsyth led the team that designed the superconducting magnets used in RHIC, and his magnet designs were also the basis for the magnets later used in the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

For this work Eric was presented with the Herman Halperin Award, the highest annual recognition by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for power transmission research. Forsyth was also a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), a registered professional Engineer in Canada, and a chartered Engineer in the E.U. He was an acknowledged world authority on the application of superconductivity.

Eric had many interests including restoring vintage Bentley automobiles and driving them on road rallies. He built his yacht Fiona from a bare hull. Following his retirement in 1995, he sailed the Fiona nearly full-time for the next 20 years with many different crew members. Among his numerous voyages, he made two circumnavigations of the globe, cruised the Antarctic and Arctic regions, and traversed the Northwest Passage. Eric was a member of the Seven Seas Cruising Association, which awarded him the Seven Seas Award; the Cruising Club of America, which awarded him their prestigious Blue Water Medal, given annually to one amateur sailor worldwide, in recognition of his Antarctic cruise; and the South Bay Cruising Club of Long Island.

In addition to his well-received memoir about his ocean sailing experiences, Forsyth wrote and published three historical novels depicting the adventurous life of an RAF pilot in the turbulent 1930s and '40s as Great Britain gradually was drawn into war with Germany-Wings Over Iraq (2022), Wings Over the Channel (2022), and his latest, Wings Over Germany, published in May of 2023. He also shared his adventures with the worldwide sailing fraternity over the years by means of films, videos, and numerous magazine articles, most of which appear on his official website, www.yachtfiona.com.

Eric is survived by his son Colin, his daughter Brenda and her husband Robb, and granddaughters Fawn and Gabriella. He was preceded in death by his wife Edith in 1991.

Those who wish to honor Captain Eric Forsyth's memory are invited to donate to the Post-Morrow Foundation www.postmorrow.org, whose mission is to preserve and conserve the rural, cultural, and historical character of the hamlet of Brookhaven, New York.