In 1961 he moved to the United States and worked as a research physicist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

Besides first observing cyclotron resonance in metals, Fawcett is credited with discovering the Hall effect in type-II superconductors.

He and other physicists from the West helped these "refuseniks" to keep up in current research by organizing seminars in the living rooms and kitchens of cramped apartments in Moscow.

At various times the family lived in Mellor, in Longridge and on East Park Road and then finally at 2 Tarbert Crescent, Shadsworth, Blackburn.

His hard work paid off, as he won a full scholarship to study physics at University of Cambridge.

In 1956 they returned to England, this time moving to Malvern, where their children Clare (1956), Andrew (1958) and Ruth (1961) were born.

In September 1961 the family relocated to New Jersey, where they lived for ten years before moving north to Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1971, where Eric would spend the rest of his life.