Professor E. G. S. Paige was an applied physicist who spent the first half of his career at the Radar Research Establishment, Malvern, where he made major contributions to the understanding of transport properties in semiconductors. He is, however, particularly celebrated for his work there on acoustic surface waves and their use in electronic systems. In a later period while at Oxford he developed an innovative class of optical systems based on the use of programmable phase plates. EARLY YEARS

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... E. G. S. (Ted) Paige's career embraced a remarkably wide range of themes within physics. In pursuit of his research objectives he showed equal facility in and sympathy for the pure as for the applied. He was bilingual in theory and experiment-perhaps trilingual if we add his enthusiasm for directing his researches to novel applications. And it all started in a thatched cottage, reputedly of sixteenth-century vintage, in Northiam, a village on the border between Kent and East Sussex. Mains water arrived when Ted was five years of age, and electricity somewhat later. He had a happy family upbringing, with parents who were encouraging and supportive but who had little contact with the world of learning or with intellectual pursuits. His father was the stationmaster at Northiam village-employment by the railway service was a family tradition traced back to the earliest days of rail. Ted was an only child, and in his early years he liked to spend much of his time alone. He developed a passion for bird watching, which he sustained throughout his life. He developed a on July 21, 2018 http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/ Downloaded from * Ted wondered why some bikes had external three-speed gears and others internal hub three-speed gears, and further why not combine them and make a nine-speed bicycle? He did! † This was still during the immediate postwar era, when places were preferentially allocated to returning veterans.