Geoff Stedman

Geoffrey Ernest Stedman (1 April 1943 – 3 May 2026) was a New Zealand physicist, with research interests including the foundations of relativity, symmetry in quantum mechanics, and ring lasers.

Early life and education Born in Christchurch on 1 April 1943, Stedman was the son of Silas and Eleanor Stedman. He was educated at Christchurch West High School, and studied at the University of Canterbury, graduating with a BSc(Hons) degree in physics in 1965. He subsequently undertook doctoral studies at Queen Mary College, University of London, where he earned his PhD under Douglas Newman in 1969.

Career After post-doctoral research at Queen Mary, Stedman returned to lecture at the University of Canterbury in 1971. During his career, he focused on a range of research areas, but he was particularly interested in ring lasers from the 1980s onward. In collaboration with the Technical University of Munich, Stedman and his team built a series of ring lasers in the Cashmere Caverns. The lasers, regarded as some of the most sensitive and advanced in the world, were able to detect earthquakes around the world, and were also used to investigate variations in the earth's rotation. and in 1994 he won the society's Hector Medal. He was awarded the Canterbury Research Medal in 2001.

Later life In retirement, Stedman lived in Christchurch, and continued to work part-time at the university.

Selected publications

Books

Papers Stedman, G. E. "Ring-laser tests of fundamental physics and geophysics." Reports on progress in physics 60, no. 6 (1997): 615. Pancha, Aasha, T. H. Webb, G. E. Stedman, D. P. McLeod, and K. U. Schreiber. "Ring laser detection of rotations from teleseismic waves." Geophysical Research Letters 27, no. 21 (2000): 3553–3556. Rowe, Clive H., Ulrich K. Schreiber, Steven J. Cooper, B. Tom King, Morrie Poulton, and Geoffrey E. Stedman. "Design and operation of a very large ring laser gyroscope." Applied optics 38, no. 12 (1999): 2516–2523. Schreiber, Ulrich K., Clive H. Rowe, Douglas N. Wright, Steven J. Cooper, and Geoffrey E. Stedman. "Precision stabilization of the optical frequency in a large ring laser gyroscope." Applied optics 37, no. 36 (1998): 8371–8381.