Nathan Isgur

Denied a draft deferment to continue his education at Berkeley he went to Toronto in order to pursue his graduate studies and to avoid serving in a war he disagreed with on moral and political grounds.

This situation continued to inhibit his ability to travel to the United States until President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket amnesty for all draft resisters.

After completion of his doctorate, Isgur was granted a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Fellowship, which allowed him to stay at Toronto as a post-doctoral candidate.

During his 14 years at the University of Toronto, he mentored 13 Ph.D.s: Simon Capstick, Kevin Dooley, Paul Geiger, Stephen Godfrey, Gregory Grondin, Richard Kokoski, Roman Koniuk, David Kotchan, Kim Maltman, Colin Morningstar, Catherine Reader, Eric Swanson, and John Weinstein.

Isgur was one of the leaders of the CHEER project, this envisaged an electron ring to be built at Fermilab by a Canadian group to study electron-proton collisions.

He returned to the USA to the newly built accelerator at Newport News (CEBAF), which eventually became Jefferson Lab, to build an entirely new Theory Group and influence the experimental research of the Laboratory.

He was also involved later on in several Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant selection committees, becoming the chair of the Subatomic Physics GSC in the early 1990s.