Oxford shocked by suspected murder of physicist
The body of Professor Steven Rawlings, 50, was found on Wednesday night at the home of Dr Devinder Sivia, 49, after a neighbour called police to report an incident.
"The entire university community has been profoundly saddened and shocked by the tragic and untimely death of Professor Steve Rawlings," said Oxford's Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton, the university's senior officer.
Sivia was arrested on Wednesday night. He is a lecturer in mathematics for the sciences at Saint John's, one of the 38 colleges that make up the university.
"The college is shocked and distressed by this tragic event," said Sir Michael Scholar, president of Saint John's.
A police spokeswoman declined to comment on British newspaper reports that the two scientists had been friends for many years.
An autopsy conducted on Rawlings' body on Thursday was inconclusive, police said in a statement.
Rawlings was based at another of the university's colleges, Saint Peter's. He lectured on vector calculus to first-year undergraduates and had been head of Oxford's astrophysics department from 2006 to 2010.
"He was a much-liked and admired tutor and colleague within the college and will be greatly missed," said Mark Damazer, master of Saint Peter's, in a statement.
Rawlings was one of the lead scientists in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international project to create the world's largest radio telescope.
"The SKA will give astronomers insight into the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, the role of cosmic magnetism, the nature of gravity, and possibly even life beyond Earth," says the project's website.
Sivia teaches maths for natural sciences to physics and chemistry undergraduates.
"My research interests revolve around the application of Bayesian probability theory to all sorts of data analysis problems, mainly in the physical sciences," he says on the Saint John's College website.
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