Kenneth Le Couteur

Kenneth James Le Couteur (16 September 1920 – 18 April 2011) was a British physicist who was the foundation Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University in Canberra. During World War II he worked at Bletchley Park as a codebreaker.

Early life Kenneth James Le Couteur was born in Saint Helier on the island of Jersey, the son of Philippe Le Couteur, the owner of a carpentry business, and his wife Eva Gartrell. He was educated at Victoria College Preparatory School and Victoria College on Jersey, where he was inspired to become a mathematician by his maths teacher, who had been a wrangler at the University of Cambridge in England. He received a scholarship to study at St John's College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1938. There he studied mathematics, tutored by Ebenezer Cunningham, who had been the senior wrangler in 1902, and rowed for the college.

The German occupation of the Channel Islands in 1940 left him stranded in England, cut off from his family. He was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1941, winning the Mayhew Prize for the student showing the greatest distinction in applied mathematics.

Academic career Le Couteur became a lecturer in physics at the University of Liverpool in 1949. There he continued developing relativistic wave equations and working on his evaporation theory. He also provided theoretical physicist support of the work of the experimentalists working on the university's 37-inch cyclotron, and collaborated with Ernest Titterton from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in Harwell, Oxfordshire. His work on the Peeler-Regenerative Beam Extraction Method brought him renown, and his solution was employed in the design of subsequent cyclotrons. He also became known for his work on the statistical model of excited nuclei, which he would continue to pursue in Australia. and the AERE in 1959 and 1960. In 1960 he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He was the acting Director of the Research School of Physical Sciences on many occasions, occupying the position for extended periods from September 1973 until September 1974, and from February to December 1978. When he retired in December 1985, he became a professor emeritus, which he remained until 1989.

In 1988, he moved to the Ginninderra Gardens Aged Care Facility in the Canberra suburb of Page. He died on 18 April 2011. He was survived by his wife and daughters.