The world of cryogenics lost a distinguished and dear friend on Sunday, June 17. Dr. Herby Sixsmith, 93, of Norwich, VT died at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, NH.
He was born February 23, 1914 in Dublin, Ireland. Following his graduation from Trinity College, Dublin, he worked with British research teams for the Admiralty Research Group in the development of the cavity magnetron – a device critical to radar during World War II. He then returned to academia to lecture and embark on a Ph. D. in Physics at the University in Reading. He then joined the Dept. of Engineering Science at Oxford University.
While at Reading and Oxford, he developed devices useful for the liquefaction of gases to produce cryogens. These fundamental building blocks – miniature turbomachines, gas bearings, heat exchangers – gained him international recognition and brought opportunities to work at several national laboratories to support the U.S. high-energy physics programs.
He retired from Oxford and in 1979 took an engineering position at Creare Incorporated in Hanover, NH, where his innovations continued as he accumulated international and U.S. patents until his retirement earlier this year. Herby’s most notable contribution at Creare was the development of the key technologies for a cryocooler that controls the temperature of the Near InfraRed Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. The cryocooler was installed on HST in 2002 and has allowed astronomers a unique view of the history of the universe.
Herby had a love of the mountains, gardens and crows, and rejoiced in his friends. He spent years in the Alps and on the trails of the White Mountains. He was a member of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club of the English Lakes District, and his sabbaticals in the western U.S. introduced him to hiking in the Rockies. He is survived by his loving wife, Winifred, of Reading, England and by his nephew Jack Carter in Ireland.
