John Nye

John Frederick Nye (26 February 1923 – 8 January 2019 ) was a British physicist and glaciologist. He was the first to apply plasticity to understand glacier flow. He was a member of the University of Bristol's physics department for 66 years.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. He served as president of the International Glaciological Society (1966–9), He was also president of the International Commission of Snow and Ice of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (1971–5). The Cryosphere Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union hosts a Nye Lecture each year at its fall meeting.

Nye worked into his nineties, even after his formal retirement, and "never lost his intellectual curiosity". When he grew too frail to physically go to the university, he would write papers from home. He was known at Bristol for "his decency and his scientific generosity... His intellectual determination... balanced by his unfailing politeness".

Personal life In 1953, Nye married Georgiana Wiebenson, whom he had met during his year at Bell Laboratories, in the chapel of King's College Cambridge. They had three children: Hilary Catherine (b. 1957), Stephen Christopher (b. 1960), and Carolyn Lucy (b. 1963). Nye renovated a rundown house in Bristol into their family home. On the side, he was an avid gardener, and left the garden open as part of the National Open Garden Scheme. He also enjoyed snorkeling, painting, poetry, and the Christian choral tradition.

Nye died on 8 January 2019 at age 95 from heart failure. In addition to glaciology, his research interests included caustics and microwave probes.

Books J. F. Nye, 1957, Physical Properties of Crystals: Their Representation by Tensors and Matrices. Oxford University Press. J. F. Nye, 1999, Natural Focusing and Fine Structure of Light: Caustics and Wave Dislocations. CRC Press.

Scientific publications 1951, The flow of glaciers and ice-sheets as a problem in plasticity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A-Mathematical And Physical Sciences, 207(1091),554-572. 1952, The mechanics of glacier flow. J. Glaciol. 2 (1952), pp. 82–93 1953, The flow law of ice from measurements in glacier tunnels, laboratory experiments and the Jungfraufirn Borehole Experiment. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A-Mathematical And Physical Sciences, 219(1139), 477–489. 1958, Surges in Glaciers, Nature 181, 1450–1451 1959. The motion of ice sheets and glaciers. J. Glaciol., 3(26), 493–507.