Joe Moyal was one of Australia's most remarkable scientists. His insight into the interaction between mathematics, physics and statistics led him to make contributions to these subjects which have had far-reaching ramifications in all three fields. The Moyal formalism which he introduced in 1949 is being developed today in physics as the Moyal Quantum Mechanics.
Born and raised in Palestine under the British mandate, he went to France to study and then work in electrical engineering. He moved to Cambridge to study mathematics, and then returned to Paris to study statistics and theoretical physics.
During the first years of the Second World War, he worked for the British on a secret project together with French scientists in Paris. As the Germans were invading Paris, he could see that this material would come under enemy hands, so co-opted some French troops who were passing by to help him destroy the equipment and records, with the exception of some which he smuggled back to London. Following this he worked for De Haviland on aircraft design, taking frequency measurements aloft, squashed in the cockpit of developmental fighter planes.
After the war, he started an academic career as a mathematical physicist in Belfast, and then as a statistician in Manchester. At this time he made fundamental contributions to both fields, introducing the "Moyal bracket" into physics, and developing the foundations of stochastic processes.
Moyal came to Australia in 1958, and worked for 6 years in the Department of Statistics at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. There he trained several graduate students who are now eminent professors in Australia and the USA, and also made fundamental contributions to the theory of population processes, allowing researchers to track population size as well as the characteristics of individuals.
He extended this work at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where he worked from 1964 to 1973 on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Following this, he returned to Australia to spend five years as a Professor of Mathematics at Macquarie University. In his retirement he went back to Canberra, where he maintained his interest in the fundamental questions of science. In 1997, the Australian National University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science, stating that "He is one of a diminishing breed of mathematical scientists working in a broad range of fields, in each of which he has made fundamental advances".
Moyal was also an adventurous scuba-diver and an avid wine connoisseur. A more detailed picture of him appears in the book "Breakfast with Beaverbrook" by the distinguished historian of science, Ann Moyal, whom he married in 1963. He is survived by two children from his previous marriage.
Alan McIntosh
2006 biography by Ann Moyal,
Maverick
Mathematician: The Life and Science of J E Moyal
Review thereof, in the
CERN Courier, March 2007 issue,
v47, no 2.