Physicist.
Born at Elmira, Ontario on 2 February 1874, son of John McClung and Maggie Ann Kenning, he attended the Hamilton Collegiate (1889-1893) and McGill University, graduating from the latter in 1898 as a gold medalist in mathematics and physics. He worked as a physics demonstrator until 1901 when he was awarded a three-year 1851 Exhibition Research Scholarship, during which he studied xrays at Cambridge University.
He returned to McGill in 1904, taking up a three-year appointment as a physics lecturer, after which he was appointed Professor of Physics at Mount Allison University. He came to the University of Manitoba in 1909 as a Physics Lecturer, and was later promoted to Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and ultimately Professor. He retired in 1940. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1911, he was later a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
On 24 June 1913, he married Edith Elizabeth Samson (1881-1964) at Winnipeg and they a daughter, Eleanor Margaret McClung (1916-?, wife of Frederick Chandler Jewett). He was a member of Knox United Church and the Scientific Club of Winnipeg.
He died at Winnipeg on 27 April 1960 and was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery at Brighton, Ontario.
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: McClung House (88 Chestnut Street, Winnipeg)
Ontario birth registration, Ancestry.
Marriage registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Birth registration [Eleanor Margaret McClung], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
“Former professor Dr. R. K. McClung,” Winnipeg Tribune, 28 April 1960. [Manitoba Legislative Library, Biographical Scrapbook B12, page 11]
“Former professor, Dr. R. K. McClung, dies at age 86,” Winnipeg Free Press, 28 April 1960. [Manitoba Legislative Library, Biographical Scrapbook B12, page 12]
Obituary [Edith Elizabeth McClung], Winnipeg Tribune, 6 February 1964, page 17.
Obituary [Frederick Chandler Jewett], The Globe and Mail, 29 November 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 15 July 2022
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