Nicholas Spencer – ETH Zurich’s last tribologist?
The materials scientist, chemist and world-renowned tribologist Nicholas Spencer will be retiring soon.
The materials scientist, chemist and world-renowned tribologist Nicholas Spencer will be retiring soon. His departure could signal the loss of a specialist discipline within ETH Zurich.
The professor of materials science greets you by asking whether he should speak English or Swiss German, and then continues chatting in flawless Zurich dialect. He says he learned it so he could understand the secret language his children were using. It’s almost 30 years since Spencer and his family first moved to Switzerland. “Although we spoke English at home, my kids were chatting more and more to each other in Swiss German... so I had to adapt,” he explains. Language is no longer an issue now his children are grown up, but when there is a family get-together the younger generation still tend to speak to each other in the local dialect.
Now Nic Spencer has come to the end of another era. He has been a professor at ETH Zurich for over 27 years, having started out as one of the first five professors of materials science in what was then the Departement Werkstoffe. He has recently retired – although the coronavirus crisis has pushed his farewell lecture back to 2021 – and his departure threatens to leave ETH entirely lacking a specialist discipline: tribology.