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Professor McKellar’s early work in the 1960s and 1970s on parity violation in nuclei, were an important ingredient in early attempts to understand the weak interaction. As shown by Miller and McKellar in the 1980s showed that the standard model of particle physics has too many parameters to have significant predictive power.

At the same time he developed with his collaborators the "Tucson-Melbourne Potential", a three body interaction which defines the long range component of the three nucleon force. It has become apparent that nuclei can not be quantitatively understood on the basis of nucleon-nucleon interaction alone, and the Tucson Melbourne interaction is the starting point for attempts to use the three body force to quantitatively understand nuclei. Although over 25 years old, the Tuscon-Melbourne paper is receiving more attention now than it did in its youth.

His work on weak interactions in the nucleus led in a number of directions. His work with Gibson on the nuclear decays of has been the basis for the modern development of this subject. His work, with He and Pakvasa on the electric dipole moment of the neutron settled a long running controversy about the magnitude of this parameter in the standard model and showed how this and other data could be used to rule out some models of CP violation.

In the 1990s, with Thomson, he developed the kinetic equations describing neutrinos interacting with other neutrinos, a situation which is important in the early universe, and in supernovae. Neutrino transport in supernovae drives the explosion, and the new kinetic equations are now being introduced into calculations.

It is characteristic of McKellar’s work that it develops new trends and new techniques, and attracts most attention some years later. Such consistent leading research demands recognition by the award of the Massey Medal.

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