The Buchanans' story
A legacy gift can become many things. This one is helping protect us from asteroids.
When Richard Buchanan’s father died in 2021, Richard and his wife Julie were in the unusual position where they could give a legacy gift during their lifetime. They chose to vary the terms of Richard's father's Will via a Deed of Variation to make a generous donation supporting the study of physics at Queen’s in memory of their daughter Catherine, a keen physics enthusiast.
A part of the legacy gift was used to support the Catherine Buchanan Scholarship that Richard and Julie had established in 2019 to support young women in physics. The rest of the legacy gift was used to help refurbish the University’s Astrophysics lab with 14 screens and a high-quality audio-visual system.
The new lab equipment funded by this legacy gift supports the collaborative work between Queen’s and Oxford University to scan the sky on a daily basis, searching for hazardous asteroids, planets around other stars and the most energetic explosions in the cosmos.
This generous legacy gift is not only supporting female physics students with an aim to increase representation of women in science, but is also helping to monitor our skies keeping us safe from asteroids.
If you have any questions about leaving a gift in your Will to Queen's, or about how your gift can help, please contact our Legacy Manager at l.carey@qub.ac.uk or on +44 (0) 7727 234 282.