John Stewart Obituary

STEWART, John John Westcott Stewart, PhD, 80, of Charlottesville, VA., died Wednesday, June 20, 2007. Born November 15, 1926, in Princeton, NJ, he was the son of the late John Quincy Stewart and Lillian Westcott Stewart. He was also preceded in death by his first wife Anne. He attended the Lawrenceville School and Princeton University. He was drafted into the army in 1944 and assigned to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. He completed his AB at Princeton in 1949. He obtained his MS and PhD. in 1954 from Harvard University, where he studied under Percy Bridgman, Nobel Prize winning physicist. Mr. Stewart did research in the fields of high pressure and low temperatures. In 1954 he married Anne Smith and moved to Charlottesville where he joined the physics faculty at the University of Virginia. In addition to teaching physics and meteorology, he worked in the office of the Dean of Admissions, was advisor to pre-medical students and Echols Scholars, and was a Faculty Marshall. In 1994, he was appointed Professor Emeritus for his many contributions to the University of Virginia. Mr. Stewart, on a postdoctoral grant, worked for the Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, from 1962-1963. In 1967, he published The World of High Pressure. He published articles in the Physical Review, Journal of the Physics and Chemistry of Solids, Journal of Chemical Physics, and Weatherwise. He contributed chapters to "Modern High Pressure Techniques", Physics of High Pressure", and "The Condensed State". He was a member of the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers, and Sigma XI, the scientific research society. In 1965, he was awarded the President's and Visitor's Research Prize from the Virginia Chapter of Sigma XI. Mr. Stewart spent most summers in New Hampshire, where he kept a summer home. He was active in the Randolph Mountain Club, President and Chairman for Trails and Trips; supervisor of trail crews, and author of "Randolph Paths." Jack had a lifelong love of hiking in Virginia and New Hampshire. He is survived by his second wife Deborah Scott Stewart of Charlottesville; daughter Christine (Tina) White and son-in-law Stephen White; five grandchildren, Christine, Sarah, Stephen, Amelia, and Westcott, all of Charleston; step-children, Paul and Debra Ernsberger, Dan and Lisa Ernsberger, and Gail Ernsberger Mathabane and husband Mark; six step-grandchildren, Tim, Bianca, Nathan, Stanley, Henry, and Scott. A second memorial service will be held on August 5, 2007, in Randolph, NH. Memorial gifts are suggested to the Randolph Mountain Club, P.O. Box 279, Gorham, NH 03581 or to Mount Washington Observatory, P.O. Box 2310, North Conway, NH 03860. Visit our guestbook at www.charleston.net/deaths.