Leon Katz, a founding father of Sask. nuclear science, passes away
By Michael Robin
Research Communications
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| Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Professor Emeritus Leon Katz cut the ribbon at the newly-named Leon Katz Room at the Canadian Light Source in November 2000. Katz’s efforts laid the groundwork that made the synchrotron project possible at the U of S. |
| Photo by Lawrence McMahen |
Saskatchewan lost one of its founding fathers of nuclear science with the passing of Leon Katz on March 1. He was 94.
Scientist, teacher and mentor, Katz was the driving force that brought the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory (SAL) to the U of S campus in 1963. The SAL and its core of specialized expertise would be critical more than 30 years later in bringing the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron project to Saskatoon.
“He had enough stature in the scientific community and with the politicians to build a linac in Saskatoon, of all places,” says Jack Bergstrom, U of S professor emeritus and senior scientific consultant with the CLS.
“There was no one else that could do this, as far as I’m concerned. He had the clout to wrestle with the politicians and get it done.”
Katz’s reputation was founded on groundbreaking work done with a betatron at the U of S, a sort of office-sized “mini-synchrotron” used for cancer treatment research and nuclear physics. Katz’s team worked to describe the structure and characteristics of the atomic nucleus. During his career, he would be honoured as a member of the Order of Canada and inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
SAL, at the time one of fewer than a dozen linear accelerators (linacs) in the world, became a beacon for international scientists working in subatomic physics. It lured Bergstrom back from his post in Washington, D.C., together with physicist Dennis Skopik, who would become one of the prime movers behind the CLS project.
This was Katz’s talent, according to Bergstrom: the ability to take an idea, build a team, and get things done. While he retired before the CLS got started, he was on hand for every major event, from the groundbreaking in 1999 to the dedication of a room in his honour with Prime Minister Jean Chretien in November 2000.
Katz was also a gifted teacher, sharing his love of learning with his four children with his wife, Georgina. Two of the three boys, Sylvan and Zender, went into careers in science and psychology, while David went to work in Saskatchewan’s civil service. The Katz’s daughter, Faye, became a psychiatrist in Winnipeg.
“One of the things he loved most was to instil a curiosity into young people,” Sylvan says. “When he was head of the physics department, he always insisted he would teach the introductory classes. He believed if he could get them in their first year and pique their curiosity, he would have them for life.”
“Leon loved to talk to young people,” says Bergstrom, who first met Katz as a high school student, and later was taught by him at the U of S. “He would read something in a journal, something that would really excite him. But to explain it, he had to do it in very simple elementary terms. He had to strip away the complexity. He’d take very complicated ideas and simplify them in class. He was a very enthusiastic teacher.”
“It’s a skill that he had that I must admit I’ll miss the most,” Sylvan says. “His ability to look at complex issues and boil it down into simple facts or questions. He’d say, ‘If it looks complicated, it probably isn’t. There’s got to be a simpler way.’”
According to Sylvan, curiosity was his father’s most enduring trait.
“He was curious about everything and anything,” Sylvan says. “That was true until the very end. We were still talking about things he had questions about, right to the end.”
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