Obituary: Peter David Simmons
Staff in the science schools and IT Services were sorry to hear last month that their former colleague Peter Simmons had died on 22 October, aged 72, after a long illness.
Peter joined the University in 1970 as a senior electronics technician in the then School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (MOLS), and helped to keep in working order the large number of instruments that were in use for teaching and research in the School.
After six years he left to take up a post as Lecturer in Electronics at the then Brighton Technical College and in 1989 returned to the University at a time when personal computers were being introduced for administrative and research staff.
Peter is remembered gratefully for the way in which, together with colleagues Bryan Law and Phil Chitty, he shepherded people through the transition from the analogue to the digital world. He facilitated the introduction of the first generation of the Linux operating system for personal computers, which had a huge influence on the analysis of scientific data.
He continued to work at the University as the names of the schools changed from MOLS to CPES to SciTech. In the last few years before his retirement in 2009 he was assigned to IT Services.
Peter was accessible, self-effacing, unflappable, generous with his time and professionally extremely competent. He got on well with people and managed to show an interest in what they were doing. He mentored a number of undergraduates in their long-vacation projects, giving them wide experience and encouraging them in their choice of career.
One of his lasting contributions has been the University’s Amateur Radio Society, set up in the early 1970s and still thriving in 2014.
Outside the University Peter’s abiding interest was in the town of Newhaven, where he lived all his life. He often referred to it as Meeching, its former Saxon name. He was active in the Newhaven Historical Society and liked to describe the explosion of the ammunition barge that hit a mine on the beach in November 1944 and the damage to the house where he lived.
Dr David Smith
Emeritus Reader, Chemistry