Flannery, Martin Raymond

by Linde Lunney and James Lunney

Flannery, Martin Raymond (1941–2013), theoretical physicist, was born on 8 January 1941 in Claudy, Co. Londonderry, one of the younger children in a family of seven of James Flannery and Bridget Flannery (née Lohan). His parents were the two teachers in the primary school at Altahoney, near Claudy. Neither was from the area: his father was from Tubbercurry, Sligo, and his mother from Roscommon. An elder brother, James Francis Flannery (1934–2005), became a consultant surgeon at Guy's Hospital, London.

After the family moved to Beechwood Avenue in Derry city in 1945, Flannery (usually known as Raymond or Ray) attended St Columb's College (1952–8). Classmates and contemporaries included Seamus Heaney (qv), John Hume, Seamus Deane, the sculptor Eamonn O'Doherty (qv), the musician Phil Coulter, and the artist Brian Ferran. As a schoolboy, Flannery won prizes for piano and violin at Feis Doire, in 1952 and 1953, and a bursary of ten guineas from Derry Corporation. Music remained a lifelong interest.

In 1958 he went to QUB, going straight into second-year pure and applied mathematics and physics. At that period, Queen's was one of the most renowned centres of atomic physics research. His teachers included scientists with established international reputations, such as Professor Sir David Bates (qv), Karl George Emeléus (qv), and the inspirational Alexander Dalgarno (1928–2015). Contemporaries in QUB included Brian Mawhinney, later a UK government minister; Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation in the US and Michael McElroy, professor of environmental science at Harvard.

Flannery graduated with a first class B.Sc. in mathematics in 1961, winning the Purser prize. He stayed on at QUB to work for a Ph.D. degree, which was awarded in 1964, and then held an assistant lectureship until 1966. From the start of his career, and working with colleagues in QUB, Flannery developed his research interests in atomic and molecular processes in ionised gases, an area of physics then of particular importance in QUB, as elsewhere, and worked on the excitation and ionisation of hydrogen by collisions with other atoms. He occasionally collaborated with experimentalists, although his own approach was primarily theoretical, helping to elucidate inter alia the nature of the ionosphere, Earth's ozone layer and planetary atmospheres. He worked on atom-atom collisions and Rydberg collisions, and studied the effects of cryogenic conditions on recombination. In the 1970s he developed a novel basic theory, called the 'three-body ionic recombination theory', to describe the recombination of atoms and molecules under particular conditions. This unified theory explained how positively and negatively charged ions can recombine in a background gas to produce uncharged neutral species. Later in his career he worked on the theory of antimatter and returned to classical pure mathematics and to the formulations of William Rowan Hamilton (qv). His last paper, 'The elusive d'Alembert-Lagrange dynamics of nonholonomic systems' in the American Journal of Physics, 79:9 (2011), was a significant contribution. His ideas also played a part in underpinning advanced technologies such as plasma processing of materials and in suggesting novel applications in atom quantum optics and precision atom manipulation. Flannery's work and theories were published in 174 refereed papers, sixty of which were under sole authorship, and in review articles and twenty-four book chapters.

Flannery held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado (1967–8) and was also a fellow there (1977–8). Between these two fellowships in Boulder, Colorado, he had been an assistant professor for a year (1967–8) in the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (Georgia Tech); a lecturer and Smithsonian physicist in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1968–71); and then associate professor at Georgia Tech (1971–4). From 1974 onwards, for forty years, his career was focused on Georgia Tech, as a full professor (1974–93), distinguished professor (1995), regents' professor (1993–2007), and regents' professor emeritus (2007–13). Other scientific institutions appointed him as a visiting professor or a holder of research fellowships; he lectured in the University of Innsbruck, and was a fellow in Harvard and the University of California.

The Derryman and QUB graduate always acknowledged the important formative influences in his life; one of the honours of which he was most proud was the 2001 Alumnus Illustrissimus award presented to him by his former school, St Columb's College, Derry. In 1994 he visited QUB as a distinguished lecturer, and in 1998 (after being awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, h.c. by his alma mater) was the commencements speaker at graduation there. He was a board member of the Friends of QUB (2005–13), and in 2011 established an annual prize in Queen's for the mathematics or physics graduate in the M.Sc. programme with the highest marks.

Flannery received many awards and honours. His work on recombination was recognised by the American Physical Society (APS) with the award of a fellowship (1979) and the prestigious Will Allis Prize for the Study of Ionized Gases (1998). In 1980 the Institute of Physics awarded him, very appropriately, the Sir David Bates prize and made him a fellow. He was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1997), and was a member or chairman of numerous committees which influenced the development of his subject area, such as the fellowship committee of the APS. He also served on the editorial boards of several journals and science publishers. Generations of students at Georgia Tech profited from his lectures, supervision and encouragement.

He married first Sheila O'Kane, and they had three daughters and a son. His second wife, Jean Clark, had a daughter from a previous marriage. Ray Flannery died on 2 May 2013 at his home in Atlanta, Georgia; his funeral was from Holy Spirit catholic church in Atlanta.