Head and shoulders image of Dr. John Weil, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry.

Bio/Historical Note: Image appeared in 30 Nov. 2001 issue of OCN.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. John Ashley Weil was born 15 March 1929 near Hamburg, Germany. He, his mother, and his brother fled Europe during the Nazi regime and arrived in the United States in 1940. Dr. Weil received his early education in a one-room schoolhouse in the Catskill region of New York state, and then moved to Chicago where he completed high school in 1945. He completed his doctorate in Chemical Physics at the University of Chicago in 1955, and then did a post-doctoral fellowship and taught at Princeton University. He was lured away to Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where he worked on research for a dozen years, achieving the level of senior scientist. In 1971 Dr. Weil moved to the University of Saskatchewan to take up a tenured professorship in Chemistry. In 1996 Dr. Weil formally retired from the U of S; but as Professor Emeritus, continued active research throughout the remainder of his life. Weil was known internationally for his work on electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. He collaborated heavily with various research groups around the world; and published hundreds of papers, numerous book chapters, an EPR-NMR computer program, and several editions of an EPR textbook. Dr. Weil lectured all over the world. Sabbatical years were spent in New Zealand, Oxford, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), Chicago, and Urbana (Illinois). He received many honors, including the NSERC Longevity Award (1994 and 2004), the Gerhard Herzberg Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada (2000), a Fellow of the International EPR Society (1998), the Distinguished Researcher Award at the U of S (1996), the Erskine Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, NZ (1987). Dr. Weil was awarded an earned Doctor of Science degree by the U of S (1985), a Thorvaldson Professor (1983-1988), and a Fulbright Scholar (1967-1968). Dr. Weil died in Saskatoon in 2010.