The Physicist was Stephen Hughes. One of his papers is here...
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/31098/8/31098a.pdf
Some of it was a total surprise to me. Here is an extract...
Another seeming ubiquitous misconception is that the maximum height of a siphon is dependent on atmospheric pressure. The maximum height of a water siphon actually depends on the tensile strength of water – i.e. the maximum weight that hydrogen bonds are able to support.