Quirky astronomer took on UK PM
Wastronomer b July 28, 1953 d July 6, 2022
illiam Tobin, who has died in France aged 68, was a renowned Kiwi astronomer and, in later life, a fierce opponent of Brexit.
As an expat Briton who had not lived there since the early 1980s, he was frustrated at being unable to vote in the Brexit referendum of 2016, or in general elections. However, he discovered that he was nonetheless eligible to stand for Parliament. So in 2019 he stood in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip under the slogan ‘‘Don’t vote for Tobin, let Tobin vote!’’
Five people ignored his pleas, giving him the lowest vote count of any candidate in the entire election. His press release after the count noted: ‘‘The prime minister asked people in Uxbridge & South Ruislip to vote for him, and 25,351 out of 48,157 did so. I asked them not to vote for me, and 48,152 heeded my call. This is a massive majority!’’
Tobin was born in Manchester, and did his first degree in natural sciences at Cambridge University. There he befriended a group of women medical students from Newnham College. His signature charm activity was punting on the River Cam with a gramophone on the deck. He kept close contact with his Cambridge friends all his life and they regularly visited the family in Brittany after he retired from the University of Canterbury.
After Cambridge, he did masters and doctoral degrees in observational astronomy at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, followed by a postdoctorate lectureship at St Andrews (1979-82), and five years at the Laboratoire d’Astronomie Spatiale and the Observatory in Marseille. It was in St Andrews in 1981 that he met his French future wife, Laurence.
He arrived at Canterbury University in April 1987, as a lecturer in astronomy. He had relatives all over New Zealand, after two Tobin brothers migrated here in 1871. His grandfather, Charles O’Hara Tobin, was born in New Zealand and served as a chaplain for the NZ Expeditionary Force in Malta during World War I.
Tobin was also a director of Mt John Observatory and is remembered for his definitive biography of the French astronomer Le´on Foucault. He served the university for 19 years, until April 2006.
The core to his life was his deep reverence and appetite for science, which guided him in his life. On top of that, his characteristics were a remarkable sense of humour and having fun, a great loyalty to many friends all over the world, and always wanting to support the underdog in any controversy. Some described him as mildly eccentric, but any eccentricity was always charming and endearing.
His academic interest was in the spectra and photometry of blue stars, and he made a special study of the star beta Pictoris while working at Mt John. He was able to confirm the observation of infalling comets frequently colliding with the star.
He also studied eclipsing binary stars in the Magellanic Clouds, and produced many light curves of these stars, working with his PhD student Glenn Bayne.
Another interest was the history of astronomy, which led to an extensive study of past transit of Venus expeditions, as well as the well-researched and widely acclaimed biography of Foucault, published by Cambridge University Press in 2004. Tobin was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand and was a regular contributor to the society’s magazine with articles and book reviews.
He retired from Canterbury in 2007, to spend all his time with family in Vannes, Brittany. Laurence had returned to a teaching position in Vannes some years earlier. For several years he had gone back and forth between France and New Zealand, but found this too arduous.
Nevertheless, he maintained a close connection with New Zealand, returning on five occasions between 2008 and 2017.
The first of these was to take up a visiting Erskine fellowship in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Canterbury in 2008. On subsequent occasions he came to the Starlight Conference in Tekapo in 2012, to the Mt John Observatory 50th Anniversary Conference in 2015, and he made further visits in 2016 and 2017, the last being with Laurence and daughter Melanie, who was born in Christchurch.
He had a wide circle of friends in New Zealand and excelled at repartee and convivial conversation. He enjoyed good food and wine, so was always great company at dinner parties. At one party for a dozen people in Christchurch in 2016, he recalled that he was a student at Stockport Grammar School near Manchester, one of England’s oldest and more renowned boys’ schools. But he noted there was a sister girls’ school next door and one of the school rules was no intercourse with the girls through the boundary fence!
This story produced gasps and much laughter, but was a classic albeit slightly risque´ Tobin remark. He certainly loved New Zealand, and acquired dual UK and Kiwi nationality.
His decision to stand for Parliament in 2019 was spurred by there being about 2 million disenfranchised expat Britons, many in continental Europe, and about 2.2m foreigners in the UK who were also unable to vote. In the Brexit referendum of 2016, 17.4m voted leave and 16.1m voted remain. Tobin noted that the combined 4.2m ineligible voters may well have given a very different result had they been allowed to vote.
Subsequently, the UK government did amend the election rules for expats, but too late for the Brexit referendum, and Tobin was never able to exercise his new voting rights, the next UK election not being due until 2024.
Tobin was first diagnosed with cancer in 2012, but he never complained and continued his activities, going to lectures on all kinds of topics at the university in Vannes, and pursuing many projects.
These included a six-week lecture trip to China in 2018, trips to Italy, New Zealand and the US, as well as standing for Parliament and writing numerous articles and demonstrating against the war in Ukraine every Saturday morning in Vannes.
For all who knew William Tobin, we will greatly miss his academic excellence as an astronomer, his warm friendship and his wit, charm and endearing eccentricities. He was a great friend to many in this country. We send our heartfelt condolences to Laurence, and to their daughters Lara and Melanie. – By John Hearnshaw
With thanks to Laurence Tobin and Professor Alison Downard, of the University of Canterbury, for useful information and helpful comments.