Professor Peter Saraga had a distinguished career in applied physics research culminating in his directorship of Philips Research Laboratories UK, where he was responsible for major research programmes in displays, wireless communications and interactive digital television.
He was born in 1942 in St Paul’s Cray in Kent and educated at Eltham College. He obtained an MA degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) at the University of Cambridge and an MPhil in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London before joining Philips Research from 1964 to 1992 to work in the fields of optical character recognition, machine vision for industrial robots, high-definition television, liquid crystal display systems, and artificial intelligence. This led to him joining the international management team to become Director of Philips Research Laboratories UK from 1992 to 2002.
He went on to hold numerous non-executive and advisory roles in STEM outreach, higher education and science policy, helping to shape the future of physics and engineering education in the UK as well as informing international policy in technology and training.
He was a Board member of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) from 2002 to 2008 and chaired their Advisory Group on Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects, and their assessment panel for the UK Research Partnership Innovation Fund. He also chaired the industry advisory panel for the Cockcroft Institute, and an International Science benchmarking review at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
Peter’s wider contributions to physics in the UK came via his engagement with HEFCE, where he led the pilot study into Impact for Physics for REF2014, which shaped how impact would be assessed in that exercise and went on to be a member of the Physics Panel for REF2014.
He served as President of the Institute of Physics from 2006 to 2008 and was awarded Honorary Fellowship in 2017. Peter continued to support the work of the IOP and contributed much to the agenda of the organisation, most recently through membership of the board of IOP Enterprises.
A strong advocate for applied physics and engineering, he was awarded an OBE in 2002 and a CBE in 2009.
As well as being a member of Loughborough University Council, Peter was a visiting professor at Imperial College London, a Vice-Chair of the University of Sussex Council from 2005 to 2011, and chaired advisory boards at the University of Surrey, where he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2002. In 2019 Peter joined the Council of Royal Holloway, University of London, where he also served on committees, bringing his great wealth of experience to the development of the research strategy.
Peter was Vice President and Honorary International Secretary of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2003 to 2009, having been elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1996. He served as a judge for the MacRobert Award, the most prestigious prize for UK engineering innovation, from 2013 to 2016. As Chair of the Academy’s International Committee, he oversaw its initial policy work on engineering and international development, which culminated in the organisation working in more than 90 countries. He also built a strong relationship with Euro-CASE, the European network of national engineering academies. As Treasurer, Peter set Euro-CASE on a sustainable financial footing and helped it focus on its core mission of informing EU policy.
He also served as Chair of the Advisory Board of the Active & Assisted Living (AAL) Programme, a public partnership of over 20 countries and the EU Commission, since its inception in 2008 until 2018. He was elected President of the Executive Board of the AAL Association in 2018, which he served until his illness.
He was a natural mentor and those who worked with him described him as one of the kindest and most inclusive leaders they came across. He won friends around the world for his warmth, humility and excellent judgement. His many travels with the Royal Academy of Engineering ranged from Hollywood to Beijing, where he arrived in mid-December direct from playing golf in Australia and the delegation immediately headed off to visit the engineering marvel that is the Great Wall of China, where Peter tried to keep his hands warm with just one golfing glove. An Academy colleague remembers a snorkelling trip on the Great Barrier Reef during downtime from a conference, which ended with them racing to recover Peter’s wedding ring, which had slipped off his finger into the crystal clear depths.
Social and gregarious, he loved opera, playing golf whenever he could and he was an obsessive Arsenal fan, holding two season tickets since 1987. But his greatest passion was his family. He was so proud of his children, Becca and David from his first marriage to Jessica and a loving Grandad to his three grandchildren. He is also survived by his sister Esther “Etty”. After his first marriage ended in divorce in 1996, Peter married Ann Coffey in 1998. They became estranged in 2021 shortly after his cancer diagnosis.
Peter Saraga, physicist and engineer, was born on 22 September 1942. He died on 23February 2023 at St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, London, aged 80.