Peter Stephen Bunclark (1954-2008)

"I am very sorry to have to report that Pete Bunclark passed away last night. As many of you will know, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in May and his deterioration since then has been rapid.

"Pete has worked at the IoA/RGO since 1979. In spite of his ill health he was determined to continue working for CASU and the VISTA project and did so until the end. He has many very close friends here and his jolly sense of humour and camaraderie will be greatly missed." - Paul Aslin's email on 11/12/08

1979 - 1990 IoA APM group
1990 - 1993 Support Astronomer on La Palma
1993 - 1998 RGO
              Head of SysAdmin Group
              INT Wide-Field camera
1998 - 2008 IoA
              Head of SysAdmin Group
	      VISTA
	      Gaia CU5/DU2 manager

A week earlier we had visited him at home and he wasn't able to speak by then, but he was using the speech synthesizer on his Mac to communicate. At the end he started typing a lot. One of us said impatiently, "We're going to get a novel next". What he was doing was writing a perl script to get his Mac to say "B*gger off" repeatedly! We got the hint.

- Dafydd Wyn Evans

I will never forget him falling off his chair backward because he thought Java so bad

- Wil O'Mullane

The spanner incident...

My lasting memory of Pete will be when we were in Madrid earlier this year, wondering around San Lorenzo de Escorial quite pissed after a slap up Spanish meal; we'd all been given a souvenir apron (of all things!) - they must have thought we were tourists.

Pete was wearing his in the bar afterwards...

- Nigel Hambly

• My first meeting was at Pete's APM interview and he went back to St. Andrews with all my keys!
• When he first came here he stayed in the von Kluber flat. We went to a Martin Rees drinks party and before going Pete put his car under cover in Reg's parking space. Pete claims he had never seen so much alcohol and tried to sample it all (so it is all Prof Rees's fault!). When we left we were locked into Kings grounds so had to cross the bridge hanging by our hands! I then left Pete to make his own way home. There he slept soundly until 8am when Reg tried to get him out of bed to move his car.
• He tenderly nursed me through mumps on La Palma on a diet of ginger nuts and bottles of red and white "water".
• He was a liability to have as a partner at either APM table tennis or APM croquet.
  (Pete would say that Mick was the liability - DWE)
• Horningsea: Xmas time. We got there OK, but it started raining while we were drinking lunch. Some chickened out and went back by road, but the remainder went along the tow path. To get to the tow path, you had to go on a "track" across a muddy field first. I think Anna Zytkov and Steve Maddox came seperate croppers there and Steve broke his glasses. Once on the tow path Pete, on Margaret's new bike, tried to force me into the river. At least that was what he said he was doing, but mostly he was grabbing my arse. I think eventually Pete tried too hard, lost control of bike, opted for the muddy path and the bike got a wash and a bit of a bending.
• But, he always got my hardware going, and got the best out of it.
• His greatest asset was that no matter how depressing work could get, it was always fun to work with him.

- Mick Bridgeland

The most vivid memory I have about Pete dates back to the last period of my pregnancy (around July-August 2007). At that time my bump was already quite seizable to say the least but I was still coming to work regularly. One day at tea/coffee break at the Institute Pete came to me and placed an open hand on my bump and smiled. I remember I was struck by the familiarity and spontaneity of his gesture and by the jolly smile on his face. He made me feel really lucky.

- Francesca De Angeli

I first met Pete just before Christmas 1979 when I turned up at the IoA for a job interview to work on the APM project. Standard APM interview practice in those days was to retreat to the pub and assess the finer points of the candidate's glassmanship. This turned out to be the first of many such events interspersed with stunning progress in a whole new area of astronomy. It was great fun and Pete was at the heart of it. Never one to suffer fools gladly, you soon figured out there was no hiding place where Pete was concerned. His sense of humour and penetrating insights were always spot on and he brought such a wide range of experience to bear on a whole host on new problems that he is going to greatly missed.

A keen astronomer at heart, when Pete, along with the rest of the APM group, joined the RGO, he saw a great chance to take his family on a 3 year tour of duty on La Palma. Pete made lots of friends there and was quickly appointed manager of the Jakobus Kapteyn Telescope and later the Isaac Newton Telescope. He always took great delight in giving the observatory a hard time by constantly pushing for improvements in computer hardware and software performance. Furthermore, his unique driving style was perfectly matched to stress testing both car and occupants on the hazardous winding mountain roads.

After arriving back in the UK, Pete worked in the RGO computer support group, and when the RGO closed, moved back to a job at the IoA managing the computing support group. More recently we enticed him to come back and work with us in CASU on the VISTA and Gaia projects, where he rapidly became indispensible to their success.

Over the last few years Pete directly managed the CASU involvement in VISTA and in his usual forthright style dealt with all the myriad issues and problems that cropped up. Sadly, Pete never managed to see VISTA in action on Paranal, but his tenacious adherence to correct procedures and insistence on doing things properly has been crucial in getting it working.

Of many happy memories, a few stand out: observing with him on the JKT and taking a midnight break to drink beer on the edge of the Caldera lit by full moon; defining the rules of, and then playing some truly memorable games of APM croquet and table tennis, plus their associated aftermath; and the numerous pub lunches during which I never saw Pete finish a meal.

So, adios and thanks for all the fish.

- Mike Irwin

One of Pete's emails (contributed by Sue Cowell) showing his sense of humour and quickness in spotting a typo.

Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:19:06 +0100 (BST)
From: Peter Bunclark
To: Pat Stewart
Subject: Re: Undergraduate urge has taken place

The Subject line promised so much more than the content delivered...

Pete.

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Pat Stewart wrote:

> The undergraduate purge has taken place and more than 3000
> undergraduate sets of accounts accounts have or are in the process of
> being cancelled.
>
> Pat

Although I first met Pete in 1986 when I arrived in Cambridge as a post-doc, our real working relationship begin in the early 1990s when he returned from his tour at La Palma, was made the head of the system adminstration group at RGO and was assigned to my office. I instantly took to the guy and worked very closely with him from that point onwards on many different projects.

Sometimes having to share an office is a trial, but not with Peter. If he was around, whether you were working on something together or not, your day just seemed to go better. His sense of humour and huge grasp of technical issues were not just assets for day to day work, they were absolutely essential in situations where we were working under time pressure. There have also been many times in my life when issues have arisen, whether technical or personal, where either I've felt I couldn't cope or I've mistrusted my own judgement. In such instances I could always rely on Pete for good common-sense advice and total discretion when it was needed.

Peter gave me his best piece of advice one day when some now forgotten crisis was seriously getting me down. He gave me some ideas about how I could sort things out, and then said "Jim, you've got to laugh. Because if you don't you'll cry." Looking back now I realise that laughter and Pete's ability to lighten a situation with it was one of his greatest gifts, and it is this that I think I will miss most. His high-pitched chuckle was infectious to the point where, you'd find yourself laughing with him even if you'd missed the punch line.

Once during our time at RGO our then line manager, Ralph Martin, walked in to have a word with Pete. During the course of their conversation I decided to get some coffee, so naturally I filled Pete's mug too. I set it down on his desk saying "there you go, sweetie". Without missing a beat Pete replied "thank you, darling". At this point Ralph turned and headed out the door muttering "Bloody hell, I'm splitting you two up...". The door closed and we creased up.

"You've got to laugh...".

You're absolutely right, mate, you do have to laugh. And thanks to you, we all did. A lot.

It's been a blessing to know you.

- Jim Lewis

I will always remember him as the jovial computer guy from my student days.

- Coryn Bailer-Jones

Your email has just been forwarded to me and I was devastated to hear the news. I've usually seen Pete whenever I travelled through Cambridge, but I didn't notice his absence when I was at the Fabianfest back in July, nor did I hear of Pete's illness. Indeed I remember Pete well and fondly from our time together on La Palma - he was a lively, energetic and extremely positive person to have around. I'm therefore very sorry to hear this news, and hope you will be able to pass on mine and Anne's condolences to his family.

- Phil Charles

Pete was a good friend and a valued colleague, especially on La Palma as it is such a close community. He always set about any task with enthusiasm as well as ability. My memories are particularly his role with the INT, sorting out many of the problems with the instruments and detectors. He was someone who would take control of a problem and wouldn't rest until it was sorted out.

He was also union rep for some of the time I was on La Palma, and he did a lot to improve conditions, and to represent the staff during a difficult time.

He was also very enthusiastic in his approach to driving on the mountain road, too much so at times. Driving down with him was the worst, because he would want to explain some issue which had arisen with the telescopes during the day, when you really did want him to concentrate on the road. The Malaga (I think it was a Malaga, though it could have been a Mercedes) which he wrote off was displayed as a warning to the rest of us outside the INT for months.

I am thankful and privileged to have known and worked with Pete, and though our paths had hardly crossed for the last 10 years, I will miss him very much.

- Dave Carter

A possible contribution to Gaia People

Peter Stephen Bunclark (1954-2008) Institute of Astronomy University of Cambridge

Peter Bunclark worked at the IoA/RGO at Cambridge since 1979, apart from a 3 year tour-of-duty as support astronomer on La Palma. Over the years he worked on many projects including the APM measuring machine, the INT Wide Field Camera and more recently the VISTA and Gaia data flow systems. For the Gaia project he was manager of DU02 within CU5 and responsible for the hardware of the Cambridge DPC where the photometric processing will be carried out.

The benefits of his wide range of experience and firmly held views were always delivered in a spirit of good humour and no matter how difficult the problem, or how heavy the workload, he was always great fun to work with. Many people will remember him discussing his forthright views on Java with Wil O'Mullane late at night after the banquet at the London ADASS. He got so animated that he fell off his chair backward because he thought Java so bad! This was typical of Pete. He was always adamant about doing things properly.

In spite of his ill health he was determined to continue working for the Gaia and VISTA projects and did so until the end. His jolly sense of humour and camaraderie will be greatly missed.

Peter passed away on 10 December 2008. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in May and his deterioration since then was rapid. He was 54 and is survived by his wife, 4 children and 1 grandchild.

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Published by Dafydd Wyn Evans / IoA / dwe @ ast.cam.ac.uk
Last update 3 January 2009