In Loving Memory of
Philip John Holmes
1945 – 2026
Philip John Holmes was born on May 24, 1945, in North Lincolnshire, England, to Catherine Ann and Robert Montague Holmes, and grew up in the market town of Brigg. He studied engineering at Hertford College, Oxford, and then trained at Rolls-Royce. In 1969 he set out on foot from Salzburg with a walking stick he had cut himself, planning to hike and hitchhike to India. He crossed Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, then went to spend the winter as a volunteer at Kibbutz Zikim in Israel. Phil never made it to India. At Zikim, in January 1970, he met Ruth Lazarus. They married that November in Yorkshire.
Phil earned his PhD at the University of Southampton, where his work on vibrating structures led him into mathematics. He joined Cornell University in 1977 and then Princeton University in 1994, where he was the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and directed the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. His research helped shape the modern understanding of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, and his textbook with John Guckenheimer became a standard in the field. Later Phil turned to neuroscience, studying how animals move and how the human brain makes decisions. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as an honorary member, and in 2025 to the National Academy of Engineering, and he was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society. He supervised 37 doctoral students and mentored 26 postdoctoral fellows, and he delighted in helping them build careers of their own.
All his life Phil wrote poetry. He published five collections, from 3 Sections (1971) to Joining the Steps (2024). A Place to Stand (1977) won an Eric Gregory Award, and The Green Road (1986), drawn from the old lead mines of Swaledale, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His poems reflect an endless curiosity about and enjoyment of life, art, nature and science.
Phil and Ruth raised four children, traveled the world, and built a life around a shared love of the outdoors, literature, art and music. His life reflected a rare breadth of intellect, imagination and compassion. He loved to hike, from the mountains of Turkey to the canyons of the American West. At home he was happiest in his basement workshop, where he built tables for his house and for each of his children. He is survived by Ruth, his wife of more than fifty years; daughter Maya (Chad) Schultz (grandchildren Samuel, Cara, and Garrett); son Avram (Trinity Urban) Holmes (granddaughters Adiya and Akira); son Ben (Anna Dziechowski) Holmes; and daughter Ilana (Michael Lorefice) Holmes (grandson Amitai).
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions in Phil’s memory be made to curealz.org or arminarm.org or a charity of your choice.
Memorial Services are Friday, November 13th at 10:30am at Orland’s Ewing Memorial Chapel, 1534 Pennington Road, Ewing Township, New Jersey 08618.
Shiva will be observed on Friday following the burial, Saturday at 6 pm (minyan at 6:30 pm) and Sunday at 4 pm (minyan at 5 pm).