Professional Outsider Remembered

World renowned mathematician and nuclear fusion sceptic Leslie Woods has died aged 84. Born in Reparoa, a tiny settlement between Rotorua and Taupo, Woods was the first student of Seddon Memorial Technical College to win a scholarship to Auckland University. His studies in mathematics and engineering were interrupted by World War Two, in which he served as fighter pilot in the Pacific. On resuming his studies, Woods won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he earned a DPhil in computational aerodynamics and a first-class honours BSc in engineering. A series of prestigious academic postings in Australia and England culminated in his appointment as chairman of Oxford’s Mathematical Institute (1984 to 1989) and being made professor emeritus in 1990. “In calling his memoirs Against the Tide: An Autobiographical Account of a Professional Outsider, the strikingly individual New Zealander Leslie Woods … displayed considerable self-awareness,” wrote former colleagues Garry Tee and Graeme Wake in the Guardian. “… [His] robustly disputed publications on the key question of the generation of energy through nuclear fusion made his academic career as colourful and combative as his active service.”

Leslie Woods: December 6 1922 – April 15 2007