Derek R. Lovejoy

1928 - 2016
Derek was born on January 19, 1928 to working class parents in south London, England. He was an only child. His mother, Ellen Langford died when he was 7 and his father, Herbert soon remarried. Derek was strongly marked by the war, first from the battle of Britain, and then later when he witnessed a V2 exploding only a block from his house. At age 16 he was already working in the day, completing his high school "A levels" by studying in the evening. In January 1946, he was conscripted into the Royal Navy and was trained as a radar technician and assigned to support a Mosquito aircraft stationed in Belfast. Due at least in part to the blatantly class-based military hierarchy, his navy experience was profoundly politicizing.
Profiting from a serviceman's grant, he completed a BSc. degree in physics at Imperial college in 1950 after which he moved to Toronto, Canada to do a PhD. in experimental low temperature physics. In 1953 he married Margot Macdonald, a young artist from Campbellton, New Brunswick. In 1955, after completing his degree he began working for Canada's National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa.
His work focused on metrology; setting up accurate procedures for measuring low temperatures. In 1963, he was contracted by UNESCO to set up a physics laboratory at the University of Cairo in Egypt, returning to the NRC in 1965. In 1966, seeking to put his knowledge to the service of humanity, he moved to New York to join the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). At first he was assigned to purely administrative positions, but by the mid 1970's, his expertise in renewable energy was recognized and he became responsible for many of the UNDP renewable energy projects. This notably included the development of biogas generators that helped improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. Later, he pioneered the installation of wind and solar generators in numerous third word countries.
He retired in 1994 and began a long association with Science and Society, sitting on the editorial board and regularly contributing book reviews. Derek was always an avid reader and debater and loved opportunities to discuss world events, history, philosophy and science. Until the end of his life, he considered himself a Marxist and he continued to believe in the necessity of socialism.
On September 13, 2016, he died peacefully in his New York home from pneumonia, presumably contracted from a brief stint in the hospital a few days earlier. He was a loving father and he will be badly missed by his three children Shaun, Kristen and Megan, his grandchildren Vanda and Miro and his spouse Margot.
Anyone wishing to participate in a memorial please contact Shaun Lovejoy: lovejoy@physics.mcgill.ca.