From Harlech to Russia – a physicist from Meirionnydd who recently received an honorary degree from Swansea University has spoken about his prolific science career and the places it has taken him.

Professor Dewi Meirion Lewis was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Swansea University, his alma mater, in July, which he said he felt “deeply honoured” to receive.

Spending his life in Harlech – “a truly superb location in which to grow up” – up until the age of 20, Prof Lewis attended Ysgol Ardudwy, where his teachers “worked hard to provide us with a grammar school type education”.

He said: “For me – both my parents were teachers, my next-door neighbour and his wife were teachers - nothing was more important than academic success.

“I can honestly say that I probably would not have been better prepared and coached had I gone to a high performing grammar school or an expensive public school with the result that the county gave me, the Lady Catherine James scholarship for the highest A Level marks in Meirionethshire.”

Lewis was first intrigued by physics after having frequent discussions with the headmaster at Ysgol Ardudwy, his next door neighbour who also happened to be a physics graduate.

It was these conversations that informed Dewi’s decision to pursue a degree in Physics at Swansea University, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in 1969.

He spoke highly of his six years of education at Swansea, an institution which “has propelled itself to be one of the best universities in the country”, with a Physics department recently ranked 7th in the UK overall.

After his undergraduate degree he became the first PhD student at Swansea to research positrons, the antimatter of electrons.

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