Bob Reid obituary

Bob Reid’s work took him to the University of the West Indies, where he co-founded the Jamaican rugby team Photograph: family photo

My friend Bob Reid, who has died aged 92, was a cosmic ray physicist who studied these mysterious particles in Jamaica, on the moors of North Yorkshire and at the South Pole.

Bob also had a fascination with boomerangs and was a member of the British Boomerang Society. In December 1988, while searching for cosmic rays from Supernova 1987A, he threw one around the South Pole, which technically stayed aloft for 24 hours and nine seconds as it travelled through 24 time zones.

Bob Reid’s circumpolar boomerang throw, at the South Pole in 1988 Photograph: family photo

Bob was devoted to his students and to the University of Leeds, where he was appointed as a lecturer in 1962 and a senior lecturer in 1970. He remained, giving lectures primarily on mechanics and statistics, until his early retirement in 1991. He was a natural with students and served as a warden of Bodington Hall student residence (1966-68), and as an adviser to overseas students (1968-75). After retirement, he took an extramural course in geology at the University of Leeds and the Open University and used his new knowledge to work on a leaflet describing the geological features of Roundhay Park.

Bob was born in Loughbrickland in County Down, Northern Ireland, to Gladys (nee Phillips), a linguist, and the RevThomas Reid, a Presbyterian minister. He went to Banbridge academy, where he excelled at rugby and science, and studied physics at Queens University, Belfast, followed by a further year of electronics at the University of Southampton. He then worked for three years as an electrical engineer for Vickers-Armstrongs in Weybridge, Surrey. During this time he played a season for London Irish rugby team.

In 1956 he signed up for a postgraduate scholarship in cosmic radiation at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. That work took him to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, where he co-founded the Jamaican rugby team. He met Dr Noreen Evans when she treated him for an infected boil at the University hospital in 1957. In 1958-59 they went to Northern Ireland so Bob could complete writing up his research, got married, and returned to Jamaica until 1962.

Bob influenced the careers of many people, including my own. He and I met in 1964 when I went to Leeds for a job interview. He took me to visit Haverah Park, the moorland site near Harrogate where high-energy cosmic rays were studied, driving there in his Sprite with the top down.

Noreen died in 2018. Bob is survived by his two daughters and two grandchildren.