Father Thomas Leo van Winkle was born in 1922. He entered the Portsmouth Priory School eleven years later and was graduated in 1939. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemical engineering from Yale University. Later he took part in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico where he helped in the construction and operation of the plant to produce the first atomic bomb. He later worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on disposal of radioactive waste, and at the University of Pennsylvania developing an air scrubbing system now in use in all nuclear submarines. In 1949 he entered the community at Portsmouth and was ordained a priest in 1956.
His first term as Headmaster (1957-1973) was a time of considerable expansion and development of the School. The student body increased from 170 to more than 225 boys and the physical plant was greatly enlarged.
In 1973 Father Leo returned to Yale University as visiting lecturer in the Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He was appointed Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Catholic University of America in 1975 and became Head of that Department in 1981. While teaching at Catholic University he lived with the community at Saint Anselm’s Abbey.
In 1983 Father Leo returned to Portsmouth Abbey and resumed work in the School. At the same time he began the treatment for the cancer with which he had been found to be suffering. In 1986 he was reappointed Headmaster and worked hard at this assignment until he was overtaken by his disease and died in hospital on April 30th.
Father Leo’s considerable intellectual gifts were always at the service of the Church and monastic community he loved.