Scientist’s perfectly weighted life
Cmetrologist b June 18, 1948 d December 13, 2018
hris Sutton was a square peg in a square hole. ‘‘What he did was him to a tee,’’ his wife Professor Vicky Mabin says.
Sutton, a world-leader in metrology, the study of measurement, died from cancer on December 13, aged 70.
Advocacy of metrology’s importance was something close to Sutton’s heart, and when he won a Welly Award shortly before his death, his family celebrated it not just as a hat tip to Sutton, but to the field of science he loved.
‘‘We were really glad he got the Welly,’’ Mabin says. ‘‘We were surprised he won [because] I don’t think we thought people understood what metrology was.’’
Born in Palmerston North in 1948, Christopher Mannings Sutton moved to the Ka¯ piti Coast with his family at the age of four.
The middle child between older sister Vicky and younger brother Pete, he was the son of a Royal Air Force squadron leader who lost an arm and a leg during World War II.
His mother, Pamela, met his father, Ken, through the air force, while she was serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
Sutton’s father had been a great role model to him, teaching him determination and inventiveness in the face of obstacles, Mabin says.
Sutton finished at Wellington’s Rongotai College as dux and deputy head prefect. He then attended Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a bachelor of science honours in physics, followed by a PhD in solid state physics.
His first job out of university was with the old Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR), which is now part of Callaghan Innovation. This was despite ‘‘not having much of a clue what it was about’’, Mabin says.
‘‘Even though he didn’t know a lot about the job at first, he actually really loved it and developed into and with it, helping develop the field of metrology.’’
It came through clearly when he talked about it just before his death – that it wasn’t just the ‘‘scientific side’’ of the work, but the ‘‘deep and lasting’’ friendships he had made in New Zealand and overseas in the course of his work that made it so satisfying.
He soon became a leader in the field and, in 1977, at the first meeting of the Asia Pacific Metrology Programme, he volunteered New Zealand – and therefore himself – as the new organisation’s first chairman.
Mabin and Sutton met in 1983 though their work as scientists at the DSIR.
‘‘He took over from me as the scientific liaison officer. I still remember him walking round the corner by our unit . . . I briefed him. I don’t remember much about the briefing.
‘‘He was very handsome and very pleasant and very charming and very intelligent and all those things, the complete package.’’
They were married in 1987 and had two daughters, Rebecca and Emily.
Rebecca, now married to maths teacher Aaron Hawke, has followed in her father’s footsteps, working in metrology at the Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL) as a research scientist in mass and pressure.
Emily Sutton works in a startup business in Portugal.
‘‘They’ve both gone on to do amazing things. Chris was amazingly proud of them,’’ Mabin says.
It was Sutton’s work on the development of a super-precise weight-measuring instrument – a new, smaller Kibble Balance – that would really solidify his role in the history of the field.
In November last year the General Conference on Weights and Measures voted to change the definition of the kilogram, a standardised weight that affects the daily lives of millions of people.
Instead of being defined by ‘‘Le Grand K’’, a cylinder of platinumiridium that lives under lock-andkey in France, the kilogram will now be linked to a constant (the Planck constant) and so will be able to be realised worldwide.
One way to measure the precise weight of an object is with a Kibble Balance, which uses an electric current in a magnetic field to produce a force to balance the object’s weight.
A Kibble Balance in the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, in Maryland, the United States, is 2.5 metres tall. Sutton developed one that could fit inside a standardsized room.
And while other Kibble balances have problems with magnetic fields, which can create tiny biases, Sutton’s design has no interfering magnetic fields, helping metrologists around the world weigh more accurately.
MSL director Fleur Francois says the invention was ‘‘a true stroke of Kiwi genius’’ and believes the innovation would soon be used by many countries to calibrate kilogram measurements.
When one of Sutton’s colleagues, distinguished scientist Keith Jones, accepted the Welly Award on his behalf, he spoke about Sutton’s fondness for making friends with others who shared common interests, which saw him found the Asia-Pacific Metrology Programme (APMP), which now has 56 member laboratories around the world.
‘‘Chris was on the founding committee of APMP and never stopped helping. In essence he was always the gentlemanly diplomat offering solutions; shunning any need for recognition or control.’’
He won APMP’s annual award in 2017 for his contribution to the development of metrology in the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite his scientific impact, Sutton was described by his family as a humble man with integrity who would want to be defined not just by his work, but by kindness and compassion.
Sutton said his biggest legacy was his family, Mabin says. ‘‘He had a gentleness and a warmth and a calmness, a calmness that I find still helps me now. He’s left that with us.
‘‘He’d always think things through, and I think that’s the thing about a scientist – you’ll encounter blocks and barriers, but they always think ‘We just haven’t found our way around this obstacle yet, we haven’t found the solution yet’.’’ –
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