CPM and RQMP are saddened by the passing of our member Dominic Ryan, who passed away last week after a short battle with cancer.
Dominic first came to McGill as a summer student researcher in 1984 from Trinity College in Dublin, where he was a graduate student working under the esteemed Professor Michael Coey. During that summer at McGill, Dominic worked with Prof. John Strom Olsen on magnetism in amorphous metals. He later joined McGill as a postdoc and subsequently a professor and was known for expertise in the Mossbauer effect and neutron scattering. Dominic’s research was very well received by the community, and he has published more than 300 peer reviewed articles. He mentored more than 45 research students and enjoyed teaching undergraduates in lab courses.
Besides the work in his own lab, Dominic has also contributed to the community as the vice-president and subsequently the president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering (CINS), the director of McGill’s Centre for Physics of Materials (CPM) and the director of the Physics Department, among other voluntary and assigned roles. He was an active faculty member right until his diagnosis in the fall of 2025. In his spare time, Dominic was a pilot and owned a small plane he used for both pleasure and work-related travel. May he rest in peace.
Besides the work in his own lab, Dominic has also contributed to the community as the vice-president and subsequently the president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering (CINS), the director of McGill’s Centre for Physics of Materials (CPM) and the director of the Physics Department, among other voluntary and assigned roles. He was an active faculty member right until his diagnosis in the fall of 2025. In his spare time, Dominic was a pilot and owned a small plane he used for both pleasure and work-related travel. May he rest in peace.
