Fanchon Fröhlich obituary
Fanchon Fröhlich was a highly talented artist who exhibited in Liverpool and Paris. Photograph: Gerard Hyland
The life of my friend Fanchon Fröhlich, who has died aged 88, was dedicated to both art and science.
Fanchon (nee Aungst) was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in the US, the only child of Joseph Aungst, an estate agent, and his wife, Helen. She studied philosophy of science at the University of Chicago under Rudolf Carnap. Then, on the way to Oxford to study linguistic philosophy at Somerville College, she arrived in Liverpool by boat in 1949, and at a meeting of the local German circle was introduced to the theoretical physicist Herbert Fröhlich; they married the following year, after which she continued her studies in Oxford until 1953, gaining a BLitt degree.
She then took up painting, first at Liverpool art school and then with Peter Lanyon in St Ives, and in 1972 went to Kyoto to study ink painting. She was a highly talented, innovative artist, and exhibited in galleries in Liverpool and in Paris, where she painted and etched at SW Hayter’s famous Atelier 17 for a number of years. Fanchon was also a friend of Erwin Schrödinger, and often visited him in Dublin during his directorship of the Institute of Advanced Studies.
In 1961, her husband gave her name to a group of sub-atomic particles he had just predicted, which were later discovered experimentally, and together they devised a ballet based on the interaction of fundamental particles, which they proposed to Covent Garden, but which was never performed.
She met Maurice Marois, professor of medicine at the Sorbonne, in 1965, and together they persuaded her husband to investigate how theoretical physics might lead to a better understanding of living systems; in this she actively participated, writing numerous articles.
After her husband’s death in 1991, Fanchon founded Collective Phenomena, a group of painters who collaborated on a single surface, one continuing or contradicting the lines of the other in a kind of visual counterpoint.
She espoused Buddhism, loved travelling, the theatre, cinema and dancing, and was a keen supporter of the Great George Community Arts Project in Liverpool, her home from 1949 until her death.