Derrick William Ovenall (QM 1942-49)

Died December 2017

Wilmington, DE - Derick William Ovenall, died on December 26, 2017, after a long illness. He was born in 1930, the only child of Miriam and Frederick Ovenall, in the town of Walsall in the industrial West Midlands of England. He attended Queen Mary's School, Walsall, and in 1949, he was awarded a State Scholarship to study Chemistry at the University of Manchester (UK), where he graduated with a B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1952. He transferred to the Chemistry Department of the University of Birmingham (UK), where he was awarded a PhD in Chemistry in 1955.

He remained at the University of Birmingham as a Research Fellow, and then in 1957 he moved to the USA as an exchange student to work as a Research Associate in the Physics Department of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He returned to Great Britain in 1959 to work as a Senior Scientific Officer in the Basic Physics Division of the (British) National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, near London. He remained there for a year, and then moved to the Physics Division of the Battelle Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, where he worked and published with K. Alex Muller, Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1987.

In 1962, he returned to the USA as an immigrant to join the DuPont Company in Wilmington at the DuPont Experimental Station, first as a member of the Plastics Department, and later as a member of the Central Research and Development Department until his retirement at the end of the 1990's. During his career as a Research Chemist, he was the author or co-author of over 50 scientific papers, many of which continue to be referred to in the scientific literature.

Derick is survived by his wife of 52 years, Fay, and his two daughters, Sarah Ovenall and her husband Georg Patterson, of Durham, North Carolina, and Laura Ovenall of Wilmington, Delaware, as well as a niece, Patricia Scubelek and her husband Henry, and stepsister, Hazel Borton and her husband, Charles, and two cousins, Jean Fawcett and Joan Thomas, all of Great Britain. He became a US Citizen in 1998.

In the 60's he was the proud owner of a Porsche Roadster and took part in many rallies, both as a competitor and as a checkpoint crew member. He also worked as a flagman at sports car races in Vineland, New Jersey. He was a member of the Brandywine Motorsport Club, where he served as program chairman for two years.

He had a lifelong interest in electronics that began with his construction of vacuum tube radios as a teenager in wartime Great Britain. In 1985, he was licensed as an amateur radio operator, and moved up to the highest license level, the Amateur Extra, in 2000. He made many radio contacts with amateur stations and particularly enjoyed talking to amateurs in the UK and in Switzerland.

He loved listening to classical music, and for several years, he was a member of the board of directors of the now defunct Wilmington Community Concert Association. Over the years, he put together several high fidelity sound systems.

Obituary courtesy of Legacy.com and Fay Ovenall