Paul Hubbard

1931 - 2020

Paul Hubbard
July 15, 1931 - October 30, 2020
Chapel Hill, North Carolina - Paul Stancyl Hubbard, Jr., aged 89, died peacefully of heart failure in the Health Center of the Carol Woods Retirement Community in Chapel Hill, with his wife beside him, on October 30th, 2020, after several years of declining health.
Paul was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, the son of Paul Stancil Hubbard and Lillian Lee Wilkerson Hubbard. He was predeceased by his parents and sister, Betty Lee Hubbard Long. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Sylvia, his niece, Melissa, his daughter, Carol, son-in-law, Rick Fontana, his son, Philip, daughter-in-law, Lillian Ho, and his grandchildren, Jasper and Serafina Fontana and Audrey and Spencer Hubbard, all of whom he was immensely proud.
Paul grew up in St. Petersburg, earned a BS from the University of Florida and his PhD in physics from Harvard where he worked with Nobel Prize winner Ed Purcell, studying nuclear magnetic resonance. He met his future wife, Sylvia Martyn, during her freshman physics class for which he was the section man (teaching fellow). Paul and Sylvia were married in 1957 and moved to Chapel Hill in 1958 where Paul was a professor in the UNC Physics Department for 40 years, continuing his research into nuclear magnetic resonance, the foundation of magnetic resonance imaging, and teaching mathematical methods of physics to generations of students. Paul, Sylvia and their one-year-old daughter spent a sabbatical year in Oxford, England, where Paul was supported by an NSF senior fellowship and enjoyed the amenities of Exeter College and the English countryside. Paul retired in 2000.
Paul was an early member of the Chapel Hill Tennis Club, and later was an avid table tennis player at the Seymour Center and Carol Woods. He played chess, enjoyed learning complicated ballroom dance steps and served as DJ for StarDusters Ballroom Dance Club and faculty advisor to the UNC Ballroom Dance Club. He windsurfed on local lakes and Georgian Bay, Ontario; hiked in the Rockies using a camping umbrella as a cane, to the amusement of other hikers in that arid land, and rode a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon; but most of all enjoyed his retirement project of training and playing with his beloved Golden Retrievers, Trish and Ginny, eventually getting to know every dog in the Coker Hills neighborhood and on the UNC campus.
Paul and Sylvia moved to Carol Woods Retirement Community in 2013, continuing an active life there until Paul's final illness. He was cared for, in addition to his wife, by loving, cheerful nurses and assistants in the Carol Woods Health Center, who brightened his last days.
Memorial gifts may be made to the tax-deductible Carol Woods Charitable Fund, memo: Staff Hardship Fund, 750 Weaver Dairy Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27514