Allan Harvey Reddoch passed away on Oct. 10, 2023 at 92. He was the beloved soulmate and husband of Joyce Dunston and the cherished son of Scottish immigrants Lt Cdr (E) Allan Reddoch and Mary Love Harvey.
The family arrived in Ottawa in 1942 following his father’s Second World War posting there. Allan was an award-winning graduate of Lisgar Collegiate and then of Queen’s. In 1952, he – as part of three-member team – was the winner of the William Putnam Mathematical Competition. This competition is widely considered to be the most prestigious university-level mathematical competition in the world.
Following his studies in chemical physics at the University of California, Berkeley (PhD’60), he returned to Ottawa as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Research Council of Canada. He subsequently became a research officer there until his retirement in 1991. His work involved the application of electron spin resonance spectroscopy to a variety of studies in physical chemistry and solid state physics.
Allan’s interests were widespread and included astronomy, physics, history, woodworking, and eastern art and architecture. His memberships in Sigma Xi, The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (of which he and Joyce were made Honorary Members), The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and similar organizations covered many decades.
Allan and Joyce’s long-term population studies of the native orchids of the Ottawa area spanned half a century and resulted in many publications, including their classic 1997 monograph The Orchids in the Ottawa District: floristics, phytogeography, population studies and historical review.
Allan and an Australian cousin traced their rather uncommon surname back to Glasgow and then to Linlithgow, Scotland, where their ancestors lived at least as far back as 1600, when the parish records began. Many of their ancestors were tailors.
Kind, considerate, and quiet to the end, Allan is survived by Joyce and by Reddoch first cousins, Joan and Doreen, and by Harvey first cousin, Fay, as well as more distant kin.