Dr. Ronald George Cavell was born on October 15, 1938, and passed away on November 25, 2017.

After graduating from McGill University in 1958 with a BSc (Honours) degree in Chemistry, Ron crossed the country to complete masters (1960) and PhD (1962) degrees at UBC. From 1962 to 1964, he studied as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University in the UK, receiving a PhD in 1964. After joining the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta in 1964, he was promoted to full professor in 1974, and made Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in 2004. Awarded a fellowship in the Chemical Institute of Canada in 1975, in 1979, he received the CIC’s inaugural Alcan Lecture Award for distinguished contributions in inorganic or electrochemistry in Canada. The University of Alberta awarded him the 1993/94 McCalla Research Professorship.

In 1985, Ron began working with synchrotron-generated radiation that allows scientists to see matter at a microscopic level. He became a founding member of the Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR), formed to establish the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan. He was also a founding member of the Alberta Synchrotron Institute, and served on the management committees of the Canadian Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Pacific Northwest Consortium at the Advanced Photon Source, the Alberta Center for Surface Engineering and Science, and the Canadian Center for Isotopic Microanalysis, all of which he was instrumental in establishing. As a founding member of the CLS Board of Directors, he helped guide the facility from concept and design through to construction. In recognition of those efforts, he received the Saskatchewan government’s prestigious Saskatchewan Distinguished Service Award in March 2009.

Ron was passionate about his work. When he passed away, he was in the midst of setting up the Ronald George Cavell Graduate Scholarship in Physical or Inorganic Chemistry to foster research excellence in his chosen area of inorganic or organometallic chemistry. Your gift will help support his goal and create a fitting legacy for his life and career. Thank you.