Accession UAA-2019-006 - UAA-2019-006

Dr. Gordon R Freeman retired as professor emeritus from the University of Alberta Department of Chemistry. He was born in 1930 in Hoffer, Saskatchewan. He obtained an M.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, a Ph.D. from McGill, and a D.Phil. from Oxford. For ten years, he was Chairman of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Alberta, and Director of the Radiation Research Centre there for thirty years. In 1964, he designed the first Centre for Interdisciplinary Science in Alberta (Radiation Research Centre). He was director of the centre (built in 1965) until his retirement in 1995. Throughout his career, Dr. Freeman's areas of research included radiation chemistry and physics, electronics, astrophysics, radiation zoology, botany and genetics, and medicine and food science.

Dr. Freeman spent his career teaching and researching in radiation chemistry, authoring more than 450 publications in chemistry, physics, and other subjects. He was editor and major contributor to the book "Kinetics of Nonhomogenous Processes". Throughout his career professor Freeman became a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada and member of the American Physical Society. He expressed strong interest in art, cartrography and archaeological research with memberships in the Canadian Association of Physicists Epigraphic Society and Canadian Rock Art Research Associates. At a very young age, Dr. Freeman was intrigued with historic artefacts, which later became a strong area of interest and research. In 1980 he discovered a 5000-year-old Sun Temple near Majorville, Alberta. In 1989 he took observation techniques he had developed in Alberta to England, to resolve the controversy that surrounded a possible calendar in Stonehenge. His research on this site culminated in two books: "Canada's Stonehenge" and "Hidden Stonehenge: Ancient Temple in North America Reveals the Key to Ancient Wonders".