bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, 1897-1967
Authors: Thompson Harold Warris
Published: December 2006

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was born in London on 19 June 1897, the only child of Norman Macmillan Hinshelwood, a chartered accountant, and EthelnéeSmith. His father was of Scottish origin, and once he remarked jokingly that some of his ancestors must have been well enough known because a street in Glasgow is named after them. His mother came from the west country. Several members of his family had artistic leanings but none appears to have had associations with science. As a small child he was taken by his parents to Canada, his father having some business there, and for a short time he was at a Montreal kindergarten, and later at a national school in Toronto for a few months. His health was not good, however, and at his father’s wish, his mother brought him back to England. His father died soon afterwards in 1904. Many years later, sailing back from Montreal down the St Lawrence River past Rimouski, he recalled with obvious emotion his childhood memory of how the pilot had been put off there. He went to Westminster City School, where there were two good science masters, H. F. Brand and E. B. Fisher, with whom he remained life-long friends. The Headmaster, too, E. H. Stevens, was scientist with wide interests who helped him a great deal. Here he won a Brackenbury Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, but was unable to take it up immediately because of the war. From 1916-18 he worked at the Department of Explosives, Queensferry Royal Ordinance Factory, where his remarkable ability was quickly noticed. Before leaving, at a very early age, he became deputy chief chemist of the main laboratory. His work there on the slow decomposition of solid explosives by measuring the gas evolved stimulated his interest in the mechanism of chemical change, which was to be the main theme of nearly all his subsequent scientific research.
Basil Ferdinand Jamieson Schonland, 1896-1972
Authors: Allibone Thomas Edward
Published: December 2006

In the long list of scientists who have contributed to our knowledge of lightning Basil Schonland’s name will stand forth for ever. Benjamin Franklin’s name was the first; C. T. R. Wilson and G. C. Simpson were protagonists in the early years of this Century and from their work came knowledge of the electric fields and the field changes associated with thunder-clouds and lightning flashes, but Schonland was the first to use successfully the camera with rotating lenses by which the complex nature of the flash and the time-sequence of its component strokes were elucidated. With collaborators in the Transvaal he wrote a score of scientific papers on lightning, revealing discoveries of the utmost importance to science and engineering, and in no other country have comparable contributions been made to our knowledge of the subject. In the midst of this work came World War II in which he played an important part, and at the end of his extremely vigorous life of scientific experimentation came his life and work at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell but it is as the leading authority on lightning that his name can truly be classed, alone, with Benjamin Franklin.
Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman, 20 May 1902 - 18 February 1974
Authors: Stubblefield Cyril James
Published: December 2006

Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman, who died on 18 February 1974 at his home in Cambridge, was born on 20 May 1902 at Wandsworth, the second of three children of Henry Herbert Bulman, R.B.A. (1871-1928), and his wife, Beatrice Elizabeth Boone (1870-1950). The Bulmans were a Cumberland family and the Boones had come from Staffordshire to Kent. Henry Bulman was born at Carlisle and took his art training in Antwerp and London. Against a trend of the times, he developed a strongly naturalistic style in working, particularly in watercolour but also in oils, tempera, crayon or pencil. He specially enjoyed painting people in their home surroundings. Portraits by him were exhibited at the Royal Academy and landscape paintings, flower studies and other of his works are to be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum or in various galleries at home or overseas. There was also artistic skill in Oliver’s mother’s family for her father, W. A. Boone, A.R.C.A., was an art master at King’s School, Canterbury; but of the three Bulman children, it was Oliver who inherited the outstanding graphic ability that he was to use so effectively in making the hundreds of drawings and diagrams that illustrate his papers, books and lectures; some people even collected his ‘doodles’ after committee meetings.
James Wilfred Cook, 10 December - 21 October 1975
Authors: Robertson John Monteath
Published: December 2006

James Wilfred Cook, eminent chemist and university administrator, was born in South Kensington, London, on 10 December 1900.* His father, Charles William Cook, who died in 1947, aged 82, was one of a large family from Hitchin in Hertfordshire. His mother (nee Frances Wall) was the daughter of Aaron Wall of Kimbolton, Herefordshire. Neither parent had much education, and the family of two boys and a girl living in London were never affluent. The father’s weekly wage did not exceed thirty shillings until the first World War, when it was increased to forty-two shillings. But they were well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed. Cook mentions that his main childhood influence was his mother who was highly intelligent and entirely devoted to her family. She died in 1962 at the age of 88. It was certainly a remarkable achievement for a boy and a great tribute to his parents that in these circumstances, without family or financial influence, he should attain such eminence in science that he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society at the early age of 37.
Francis Arthur Freeth, 2 January 1884 - 15 July 1970
Authors: Allen Peter
Published: December 2006

Francis Arthur Freeth died on 15 July 1970 in his eighty-seventh year, having been a Fellow of the Royal Society for 45 years. He was born on 2 January 1884 in Birkenhead and, as he was fond of telling, ‘The Irish doctor who was assisting at my birth and celebrating the New Year—to put it mildly—held me out of the window on the frosty night for luck’. Freeth’s father was a well-known Liverpool master mariner with a Commission in the Royal Naval Reserve who took his son five times across the Atlantic before he was 6 years old. There was a strong military tradition in the family; his great-grandfather was a Peninsular War veteran, General Sir James Freeth, who became Quartermaster General from 1851 to 1854; three of his sons became Major-Generals, including F. A. Freeth’s grandfather. Freeth, who sometimes liked to say that he ‘was descended from a long line of Major-Generals’, was in the Territorial Army, was mobilized on 4 August 1914 and remained on active service until summoned home in March 1915 to solve some grave problems in the supply of munitions. In the years after World War I Freeth was well pleased to be known as Major Freeth, only becoming known as Doctor Freeth 20 years later. To complete the military story, Freeth’s son became a naval officer and it was always his cherished wish that he would live to see his grandson commissioned. On his mother’s side his descent was from a Lancashire family called Hinde which died out at the beginning of this century.
Harry Ralph Ricardo, 26 January 1885 - 18 May 1974
Authors: Hawthorne William Rede
Published: December 2006

Harry Ralph Ricardo was born at a time when mechanical engineering was developing from a craft into a technology. The steam engine, the prime mover of the day, was only beginning to be threatened by the steam turbine, and the internal combustion engine was in its infancy. This engine was to become his lifelong interest. He brought to it not only the skill of an outstanding designer, which was soundly based on personal craftsmanship, but also a long lasting curiosity and originality in engineering research. His contributions to the understanding of the ignition, combustion and detonation processes in spark- ignition and diesel engines were of the greatest importance; he gave the world the concept of the octane number as a means of rating the tendency of fuels to detonate. His application of this knowledge and his ability in design is seen not only in his early engines, for example in the two-stroke cycle Dolphin and the four-stroke cycle engine for the tanks in 1917, but in his light high speed diesel engines, the prime mover of the modern truck, and the sleeve valve aero-engines which were the last and best of the large British piston engines for aircraft.
Gilbert Smithson Adair, 21 September 1896 - 22 June 1979
Authors: Johnson P. , Perutz Max Ferdinand
Published: December 2006

Gilbert Smithson Adair was born in Whitehaven of Quaker parents, Harold and Anna Mary Adair (
née
Jackson). The Adair side of the family hailed from Scotland, several members coming south to settle in Cumberland after the 1745 rebellion in which they had been involved. Harold Adair was manager of an iron ore mine in West Cumberland and one of his brothers was also involved in mining in South Africa. Anna Adair, who came from Garstang, was very influential in the education of both Gilbert and his one younger sister, Lucy, to whom Gilbert was devoted throughout his life. Both children were taught privately at home by a governess in their early years. From both parents as well as from his grandfather, Joseph Adair, Gilbert inherited a lasting love of all forms of natural history, particularly botany. Joint expeditions with his father must have been frequent for they amassed considerable collections of both pressed flowers and grasses which are in the museums of Carlisle and York respectively, where they are ultimately to be joined by his relevant notebooks. From his father, Gilbert also inherited a lasting interest in geology.
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, 8 August 1902 - 20 October 1984
Authors: Dalitz Richard Henry , Peierls Rudolf Ernst
Published: December 2006

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the century, whose work made a profound impact on modern physics. Although he took note of the work of others, his inspiration was always his own. Although he influenced many others, he had few pupils and he did not engage in team work.
Donald Holroyde Hey, 12 September 1904 - 21 January 1987
Authors: Cadogan John Ivan George , Davies D. I.
Published: December 2006

Donald Holroyde Hey was born in Swansea in September 1904, the second of three sons born to Arthur Hey and his wife Frances. Arthur Hey (1865-1952) had been born and brought up in Batley, near Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He attended Batley Grammar School and his scientific ability is evidenced by the award of the Queen’s Prize (established by order of the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education 1861) for the Examination of Science Classes of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education. However, his main interest was music which he was taught in Leeds; studying as an external student he obtained his B.Mus. from Durham.
Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt. 24 March 1903–18 January 1995
Authors: Akhtar Muhammad , Akhtar Monika E.
Published: December 2006

In the period up to the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany had dominated most branches of natural sciences, and in particular chemistry. Of the 39 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry awarded between 1901 and 1939, 18 were won for discoveries in which German chemists had made exclusive or substantial contributions. Adolf Butenandt belongs to that era of Germany when its scientists were at the forefront in confronting technically challenging problems, in the solution of which their traditional Teutonic thoroughness and determination played as important a role as flair and inventiveness.
Geoffrey Sharman Dawes, C. B. E. 21 January 1918–6 May 1996
Authors: Liggins Graham
Published: December 2006

Geoffrey Dawes spent almost his entire research career as Director of the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research, which he transformed into the best–known and respected centre for research in foetal physiology. Carrying on where Sir Joseph Barcroft left off with the outbreak of the First World War, Dawes became the doyen in the field. Although his experiments were made on animals, his eye was always on human applications. His work laid the basis of many important advances in the care of the human foetus and newborn.
Norman Leslie Falcon. 29 May 1904–31 May 1996
Authors: Martin A. J. , Lapworth P. B.
Published: December 2006

Norman Falcon was a man of intellect, integrity and reserve. His skill, at times almost intuitive, in his chosen profession of petroleum geology was greatly admired and his judgement greatly respected by both colleagues and contemporaries alike. He had an understanding of his subject that reached out beyond the given wisdom of the day, which in turn could lead him to innovation and boldness in his self–confident application of his science, qualities wanting in workers of lesser calibre. His paramount interest was in the practical application of science, yet he always held a strong interest in and gladly supported the research of others. His work therefore was characterized by the application and use of his expertise and by giving direction to and supervising others, rather than by the pursuit of research into new realms of geology.
Roger John Tayler, O. B. E.. 25 October 1929–23 January 1997
Authors: Mestel L. , Pagel B. E. J.
Published: December 2006

Roger John Tayler was born in Birmingham on 25 October 1929, the elder son of Richard Henry Tayler and his wife Frances Florence Bessie (nee Redup). His father was a commercial traveller, his mother an elementary school teacher. Both he and his brother Clive (now a circuit court judge) received strong encouragement from their parents to develop their respective academic talents. At Solihull School Roger's interest in science was stimulated by the mathematical staff, especially by B.M. Peek, a well-known amateur astronomer who served as President of the British Astronomical Association and on the Council of The Royal Astronomical Society. In 1946, Roger won a state scholarship, and then a major open scholarship in mathematics to Clare College, Cambridge. In 1949, he became a wrangler, and in 1950 passed part III of the mathematical tripos with distinction, sharing the Mayhew Prize awarded for the best performance in applied mathematics. Clare College awarded him the Robins Prize and the Owst Prize.
Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards, C. B. E.. 4 July 1906–5 January 1997
Authors: Newton Ian
Published: December 2006

Vero Wynne–Edwards–or Wynne as he was affectionately known to his friends and colleagues–died in his sleep on 5 January 1997, in his 91st year. His life had thus spanned most of a century, his only marriage had lasted 68 years until his death, his scientific publications had appeared over a period of 68 years, and he had held the Regius Chair of Zoology at Aberdeen for 28 years, until his retirement in 1974. Only one person, among his early biological colleagues, has outlived him.
Bryan Randell Coles. 9 June 1926 — 24 February 1997
Authors: Caplin David
Published: December 2006

Bryan Coles's background and career reflect in microcosm the enormous changes that occurred in the British educational system in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Hisparents, Charles and Olive (née Randell) Coles had both come from families that migrated from Somerset to Cardiff, attracted by the expansion of the docks in the 1880s, one grandfather having been a plumber and the other a carpenter. Charles received no formal education beyond elementary school, despite doing exceedingly well in the scholarship examination, because his parents were unable to afford his attendance at high school; he started work as a book-keeper. Olive's formal education also had been curtailed; she went to work as a milliner until their marriage in 1923.
Alexander George Ogston. 30 January 1911–29 June 1996
Authors: Smithies O.
Published: December 2006

For science is more than the search for truth, more than a challenging game, more than a profession. It is a life that a diversity of people lead together, in the closest proximity, a school for social living. We are members one of another.

A.G. Ogston, 1970 lecture to the Australian Biochemical Society

In 1984, at the age of 73, Alexander (‘sandy’) Ogston, with the gentle encouragement of Professor R.B. (‘David’) Fisher, F.R.S.E., as an interviewer, recorded a videotape of his life and science (now in the Biochemistry Society Archives). A few years later in 1988 he completed a more comprehensive written account in his ‘Reminiscences, 1911–1988’ (now in the Royal Society Archives). These eloquent records and a published lecture given in 1970 to the Australian Biochemical Society (17)* have provided much of the material for this memoir and are quoted or paraphrased extensively. Unannotated ‘quote's’ are from Sandy's own accounts or his papers.
Colin Patterson. 13 October 1933—9 March 1998
Authors: Fortey R.A.
Published: December 2006

Colin Patterson was a distinguished ichthyologist and palaeontologist; no matter where his wider studies led him, he always returned to his fishes. His colleagues will recall him bending rapt over a dissecting microscope even while the tea ritual and three different conversations continued around him. His reflections upon the problems of fish taxonomy led him to examine the theory and practice of biological classification in general, and it was this work that secured his international reputation. He was one of the first to espouse cladistic methods in rationalizing the subjective techniques hitherto employed in systematics. He made important contributions to the development of the theory and practice of phylogenetics. He was an eloquent and convincing champion of the new discipline, persuading many, and alienating rather fewer, with his charismatic manner and impeccable facility for reasoning. When molecular sequence evidence became a practical source of data, Colin Patterson was among the first to realize its potential for casting light on recalcitrant phylogenetic problems. He was central to a transformation of perceptions of how, and why, we classify animals. His legacy will be that the methods he championed are now customarily employed by most systematists; he left a substantial body of scholarship on the classification and morphology of fish, and essays that will continue to stimulate thought. His lifelong work at the Natural History Museum is preserved in unparalleled collections.
Tadeus Reichstein. 20 July 1897 — 1 August 1996
Authors: Rothschild Miriam
Published: December 2006

Tadeus Reichstein was born on 20 July 1897 in Wloclawek (in Russian Poland), the eldest of five sons of Jewish parents, Isidor Reichstein and Gustava Brochman (7)*.

In Russia, in those days, only a small number of Jews were allowed to study at the technical high school in St Petersburg, and Tadeus's father, Isidor, considered himself extremely fortunate to have been selected. He received virtually no financial support, and in order to survive embarked on an austere self-disciplined routine, limiting his daily meal to one herring, black bread and water. After a while, he managed to earn a meagre pittance giving lessons in physics and mathematics to children of wealthy citizens. Despite hard times, he won a medal for his brilliant examination papers. After leaving school, Isidor moved to Kiev in the Ukraine, where he succeeded in founding his own business as a sugar-processing engineer and was able to marry.

In 1904 the youngest brother, Paul, was born and the flat in Kiev proved too small to accommodate five boys, so Tadeus, as the eldest, was sent to live temporarily with his aunt, who was married to a Lublin pharmacist. Although only eight years old, Tadeus took a lively interest in the chemist shop, and his uncle encouraged him to assist in making pills, by rolling them by hand. On rejoining his family he turned his sleeping quarters into a ‘laboratory’ and he and a young friend spent all their spare time attempting to create silver from iron filings. It was his first attempt at alchemy.

In 1905, violent pogroms occurred in Russia and the little boy heard the screams of the victims outside in the street and saw the wounded and dying, streaming with blood, dragged into their shop, while the mounted cossacks galloped past heedlessly. Tadeus recalled the atmosphere of terror, but he had never seen blood before and he remembered he found that very interesting.
William Wilton Douglas. 15 August 1922 – 2 July 1998
Authors: Ritchie J.M.
Published: December 2006

Professor William Wilton Douglas was an outstanding scientist, known particularly for his seminal work on elucidating the mechanisms underlying secretion within the endocrine system. In 1967 he became the first recipient of the John Gaddum Memorial Award from the British Pharmacological Society. The second such award was given in 1968 to J.R. (later Sir John) Vane (F.R.S. 1974) who, at the time of a memorial celebration of Douglas's life in 1998, remarked that: ‘We had a running joke about him being number one and me number two’. In 1975 Douglas received the Harry van Dyke Memorial Award from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1983 he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. In honouring him, the Society specifically cited his seminal contributions to our knowledge of the physiology and pharmacology of the endocrine systems. He was a man of great insight and splendid humour and will be missed by all who knew him.
David Chilton Phillips, Lord Phillips of Ellesmere, K.B.E. 7 March 1924 — 23 February 1999
Authors: Johnson L.N.
Published: December 2006

David Phillips was born on 7 March 1924 in Ellesmere, Shropshire, a small country town with a population then of 2000, on the border between England and Wales. His father, Charles Harry Phillips, was a Master Tailor and a Wesleyan Methodist local preacher. His mother, Edith Harriet Phillips (née Finney), was a London-trained midwife, the organist at Ellesmere Methodist Church and a member of the Ellesmere Urban District Council. She was the daughter of Samuel Finney, who was one-time secretary of the Midland Miners' Federation, a Member of Parliament 1916-22, and also a Primitive Methodist local preacher. David's unusual middle name is the maiden surname of his mother's great-grandmother and it was a reminder that the family was supposed to be related to the Pilgrim Father James Chilton, who sailed on the Mayflower. David was known as Chilton Phillips in Ellesmere. There was one sister who was four years older than David. She left home at fourteen to train as a child nurse, later became a telephonist and married. Tragically, she died in 1942 from diabetes.
Herbert Marcus Powell. 7 August 1906 – 10 March 1991
Authors: McLauchlan K.A.
Published: December 2006

Marcus Powell was a secretive man blessed with genuine curiosity. Myths abound concerning him, many of which cannot be verified given the long interval since his death, and a problem for his biographer is to separate myth from reality. Maybe it is a mistake to try because its mere existence provides insight into the person he was. He was an observer of life and a sympathetic and amusing commentator on it, and he wrote unusually well. What of his personal writing remains reflects his sense of humour and his humanity, and quotations from it are provided without further attribution throughout this memoir. He was not a tall man (5 ft 2 in; 1.57 m) and ‘when he went to Oxford he was unimaginatively called Tiny. This stuck and was used within the University and in the scientific world. Marcus, the name he liked, was kept for the few.’ Where any confusion might arise we shall presume to use this name. Those who knew him outside his laboratory have only the fondest memories of him, but some academic colleagues occasionally found him difficult.He was born in Coventry, the youngest child of Henrietta and William Herbert Powell, to whom a daughter, Christina, had been born two years earlier. William was born in Kidderminster. His profession was given on Marcus's birth certificate as a bicycle machinist. It was printed by use of a rubber stamp, which reflected the prevalence of the industry in Coventry at that time, bicycle manufacture having superseded the sewing machine industry to the extent that in 1906 a single company produced 75 000 bicycles.William and Henrietta had married in Calne, Wiltshire, in August 1902. William was the sixth of eight children born to Charles and Eliza Powell, who registered a cross on the birth certificate. Charles was variously described as a gamekeeper and a farm labourer, and he died at the age of forty–seven, leaving his wife to bring up the seven children still at home, ranging in age from two months to twenty–one years. Eliza became a dressmaker, and the two elder remaining children a laundress and a housemaid. The eldest daughter, Annie, had left home by this time and had married at some time; she attended his deathbed as Annie Shill, and possibly the wedding of William and Henrietta twenty-two years later as Annie Blackman.
Vladimir Prelog. 23 July 1906—7 January 1998
Authors: Arigoni Duilio , Dunitz Jack D. , Eschenmoser Albert
Published: December 2006

Vladimir Prelog, one of the truly influential organic chemists of the past century, died in Zurich after a short illness on 7 January 1998. For his contributions to stereochemistry, he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with J.W. Cornforth. In his 1991 autobiographical sketch (53)* Prelog told what he wanted to tell about himself and his work. The present memoir borrows heavily on this, but we have also drawn on our own perceptions gathered over many years of companionship and communion.
Alexander Robertus Todd, O.M., Baron Todd of Trumpington. 2 October 1907 — 10 January 1997
Authors: Brown Daniel M. , Kornberg Hans
Published: December 2006

Alexander Robertus Todd (Alex to his friends), was born in October 1907 in Cathcart, to the south of Glasgow. His father, Alexander Todd, of southern Scottish descent, was at first a clerk in the Glasgow Subway Railway Company and later its Secretary; subsequently he was the Managing Director of the Drapery and Furnishing Co–operative Society Ltd in Glasgow. He was ambitious to better himself and his family and although his formal teaching had ended at thirteen he held a strong regard for education and was determined, as was his wife Jane (née Lowry) that it should not be denied to their children. As their affluence increased they moved to the village of Clarkston, whence Alex had to trudge one and a half miles each day to the public school in Cathcart. One should recall that this was during wartime: life was hard and boots were of poor quality. At the age of eleven he passed the entrance examination to Allan Glen's school, the Glasgow High School of Science in the centre of the city. Among the teachers was Robert Gillespie, who taught chemistry and fostered Alex's growing interest in that subject. This gave him the impetus, after passing the Higher Leaving Certificate examination in 1924, to enter the University of Glasgow to read for an honours degree in chemistry. Once there, he was recognized by his teachers as a highly talented student, taking the James Black Medal and the Roger Muirhead Prize in his first year, which also gave him a scholarship for the rest of his course. Alex graduated BSc with first class honours in 1928 and was awarded a Carnegie Research Scholarship of €100 a year to work with Professor T.S. Patterson. He and his predecessor, G.G. Henderson, F.R.S., had strong interests in alchemy and the history of chemistry. The latter subject was even compulsory in the final year. Alex was interested in this and, much later in life, spoke and wrote knowledgeably on several aspects of the history of organic chemistry. Patterson's research interest was optical rotatory dispersion and, although Todd's first two papers were published jointly with Patterson in 1929 (1, 2)*, it was clear that a subject in which theory and practice made little contact was not for him. With encouragement from Patterson, Alex transferred to the University of Frankfurt to work in the laboratory of W. Borsche.
Eugene Paul Wigner. 17 November 1902 — 1 January 1995
Authors: Seitz Frederick , Vogt Erich , Weinberg Alvin M.
Published: December 2006

Eugene Wigner was a towering leader of modern physics for more than half of the twentieth century. Although his greatest renown was associated with the research–article of symmetry theory to quantum physics and chemistry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1963, his scientific work encompassed an astonishing breadth of science, perhaps unparalleled during his time.

In preparing this memoir, we have the impression we are attempting to record the monumental achievements of half a dozen scientists. There is the Wigner who demonstrated that symmetry principles are of great importance in quantum mechanics; who pioneered the application of quantum mechanics in the fields of chemical kinetics and the theory of solids; who was the first nuclear engineer; who formulated many of the most basic ideas in nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry; who was the prophet of quantum chaos; who served as a mathematician and philosopher of science; and the Wigner who was the supervisor and mentor of more than forty PhD students in theoretical physics during his career of over four decades at Princeton University.

The legacy of these contributions exists in two forms. First, there are the papers–in excess of 500–now included in eight volumes of his collected works (15)*. His legacy also resides in the many concepts and phenomena that bear his name. There is, for example, the Wigner–Eckart theorem for the addition of angular momenta, the Wigner effect in nuclear reactors, the Wigner correlation energy, as well as the Wigner crystal in solids, the Wigner force, the Breit–Wigner formula in nuclear physics, and the Wigner distribution in the quantum theory of chaos. is collection of essays Symmetries and reflections (14) provides an insightful view of the many intellectual matters that concerned him during a busy career. The recollections of his life recorded by Andrew Szanton when Wigner was in his eighties (Szanton 1992) provide a special insight into the circumstances of his life and the incidents that brought him to the fore.
Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. 14 July 1921 — 26 September 1996
Authors: Green M.L.H. , Griffith W.P.
Published: December 2006

Geoffrey Wilkinson was one of the most influential chemists of the postwar era, a major contributor to the renaissance of inorganic chemistry and probably the most influential founder of modern organometallic chemistry. His scientific career spanned more than fifty years and he worked throughout that entire period with undiminished enthusiasm and intellectual vigour. His work covered most of the elements in the Periodic Table, and he made remarkable and highly individual contributions to radiochemistry, organometallic chemistry, coordination chemistry and homogeneous catalysis.
Keith Gordon Cox. 25 April 1933 – 27 August 1998
Authors: Bell J.D.
Published: December 2006

The death by drowning in a sailing accident of Keith Cox on 27 August 1998, just short of his retirement, robbed geology of a distinguished and original investigator at the peak of his prestige and influence.
Charles Edmund Ford. 24 October 1912 – 7 January 1999
Authors: Lyon Mary F.
Published: December 2006

Charles Edmund Ford was distinguished for his outstanding contributions to mammalian cytogenetics, particularly human cytogenetics. He was especially renowned for his part in establishing the number of human chromosomes as 46, rather than 48 as previously believed. However, his contributions to the use of chromosome variants as cell markers in tracing cell lineages, particularly of haemopoietic cells, were of equal importance. He had a great mastery of cytological techniques and his ability to devise suitable methods for mammalian cells was a major factor in his contribution to the explosive advance of human and other mammalian genetics in the 1960s. Equally important were his superb observational powers in interpreting chromosome aberrations under the microscope, and his scrupulous adherence to scientific method.
Sir (Michael) James Lighthill. 23 January 1924 – 17 July 1998
Authors: Pedley T.J.
Published: December 2006

Michael James Lighthill was born in Paris on 23 January 1924, son of Ernest Balzar Lighthill (‘Bal’), a mining engineer who retired and returned to England in 1927 at the age of 59. James's mother, Marjorie, daughter of a Yorkshire engineer, L.W. Holmes, was 18 years younger than her husband; James had a brother, Olaf, 17 years older than himself, and a sister, Patricia, nine years older, who survives him. Bal had changed the family name from Lichtenberg (originally of Alsatian origin) in 1917.
Charles Gorrie Wynne. 18 May 1911 – 1 October 1999
Authors: Maxwell Jonathan , Wormell Prudence M.J.H.
Published: December 2006

Charles Gorrie Wynne dedicated his professional life to optical design and became a principal figure in the international optical design community. When he died, he was optical consultant to the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of Optical Design at Imperial College. Although nearly 90 years old he worked several days a week in the Institute of Astronomy until a few months before he died. He was elected to Fellowship of The Royal Society in 1970.

Wynne's expertise was in the field of optical instrument design, particularly lens design. Among lens designers he is best known for his effective theories of lens design, his elegant and ambitious lens designs, and particularly his invention of a very successful method of computer-assisted lens design, based on the method of least squares. Among astronomers he is known for what is almost a monopoly of designs for field–widening optics for large telescopes, and also for a series of scientifically elegant spectrographs and atmospheric dispersion correctors. With microcircuit manufacturers he is famous for his work on the Wynne–Dyson catadioptric relay printer for microcircuit production. By high–energy physicists he is known as the designer of bubble–chamber optics; finally, he is known by his assistants and his students as their professional mentor.

During the formative period of Charles Wynne's working life, optical design was performed almost exclusively behind the closed doors of optical factories. The optical designers in those factories traditionally led a monastic working life, closeted with a few close colleagues and assistants, grappling with the extensive numerical calculations that optical design involves. During the period of his career when he worked in this way, he managed to combine this type of working life with creative original research into new types of lens system and new methods of lens design.
George Douglas Hutton Bell. 18 October 1905 – 27 June 1993
Authors: Riley Ralph , Enderby John
Published: December 2006

Douglas Bell was the doyen of British plant breeders. He worked to turn what was previously a craft that made some use of science into a science–based technology.Having taken a first–class honours degree at the University College of Wales (Bangor), Bell went to the Cambridge University Plant Breeding Institute in 1928. There he worked under the supervision of F. L. (later Sir Frank) Engledow (FRS 1946). His PhD research concerned genetic variability in barley varieties, and barley remained his principal interest henceforth. At the height of his powers Bell was able rapidly to assess the agricultural potential of wide arrays of genetically distinct lines. This was based on keen observation and the ability to discriminate among many characteristics simultaneously. It often seemed like intuition. At the same time he was a keen judge of the malting quality of barley grain and was often called on to exercise his skill in competitions.After completing the PhD requirements, Bell continued to work with Engledow in the Cambridge School of Agriculture, first as a demonstrator and then as a lecturer. Generations of students praised the clarity of his lectures. From Engledow he inherited an interest in the components of yield in cereals. Starting with the number of ears per plant, spikelets per ear, grains per spikelet and grain weight he became interested in the physiology of yield. This subsequently led him to promote attempts to use physiological characteristics to predict yielding ability in the selection of new varieties. Also during this period Bell assisted Engledow in wheat breeding, work that resulted in the development of the breadmaking winter–wheat variety Holdfast.Bell's leadership in plant breeding came to its full realization when he became Director of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), Cambridge, in 1947. The government had decided in the immediate postwar period to expand agricultural research in the UK. Numbers of free–standing research establishments were created with the general responsibility for them vested in the Agricultural Research Council. Under these arrangements the PBI was separated from Cambridge University. As Director, Bell together with the governing body set a policy for the institute. It was then his responsibility to choose a site (Trumpington, Cambridge), recruit a staff and plan the buildings and facilities including the farm.
Archer John Porter Martin CBE. 1 March 1910 — 28 July 2002
Authors: Lovelock James
Published: December 2006

We judge the worth of a scientist by the benefits he or she brings to science and society; by this measure Archer Martin was outstanding, and rightfully his contribution was recognized with a Nobel Prize. Scientific instruments and instrumental methods now come almost entirely from commercial sources and we take them for granted and often have little idea how they work. Archer Martin was of a different time when scientists would often devise their own new instruments, which usually they fully understood, and then they would use them to explore the world. The chromatographic methods and instruments Martin devised were at least as crucial in the genesis and development of molecular biology as were those from X–ray crystallography. Liquid partition chromatography, especially in its two–dimensional paper form, revealed the amino acid composition of proteins and the nucleic acid composition of DNA and RNA with a rapid and elegant facility. Gas chromatography (GC) enabled the accurate and rapid analysis of lipids, which previously had been painfully slow and little more than a greasy sticky confusion of beaker chemistry. Martin's instruments enabled progress in the sciences ranging from geophysics to biology, and without him we might have waited decades before another equivalent genius appeared. More than this, the environmental awareness that Rachel Carson gave us would never have solidified as it did without the evidence of global change measured by GC. This instrumental method provided accurate evidence about the ubiquity of pesticides and pollutants and later made us aware of the growing accumulation in the atmosphere of chlorinated fluorocarbons, nitrous oxide and other ozone-depleting chemicals.If all this were not enough to glorify Martin's partition chromatography, there is the undoubted fact that its simplicity, economy and exquisite resolving power transformed the chemical industry and made possible so many of the conveniences we now take for granted.
Frederick Clifford Tompkins. 29 August 1910 – 5 November 1995
Authors: King David , Enderby John
Published: December 2006

Frederick Tompkins was a physical chemist of great distinction whose contributions to the development of two research fields, surface science and solid state reactions, were matched by his long service as Secretary and Editor of the Faraday Society. Throughout his career he had the knack of attracting bright young students into his research group and, through a rigorous apprenticeship, turning them out as scientists who went on to occupy senior academic positions around the world. Thus his influence extended well beyond his own immediate contributions.

Tompkins's early studies of adsorption (the taking–up of gases by surfaces) on solid surfaces were on polar solids but, although this was always maintained as an interest, perhaps his best–known contributions to adsorption studies were on metal surfaces. Work initiated in the 1950s, based on metal films deposited under stringent conditions and covering a range of different physical techniques, established his reputation firmly in the field of chemisorption on metals. Students and postdoctoral workers of his continued the development of this field.

Tompkins was born in Yeovil, Somerset, in 1910, and was pleased to record that his scientific attainment at Yeovil Grammar School, which won him a County Scholarship to Bristol University, was matched by his talent as an essayist and as a pianist. As an undergraduate he was greatly influenced by the teaching of William Garner (FRS 1937) and of John (later Sir John) Lennard–Jones (FRS 1933), and at the age of 20 years he graduated with first–class honours in chemistry and theoretical physics. He completed his PhD at Bristol with Garner, who first introduced him to both surface and solid state chemistry.
David Hardy Whiffen. 15 August 1922 – 2 December 2002
Authors: McLauchlan K.A.
Published: December 2006

David Whiffen is best known for his early work on both infrared (IR) spectroscopy and electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy. But he also made substantial and far-reaching contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and other fields of study. His research encompassed a remarkably wide range of subjects while he delighted in discussing any area of physical chemistry, always in a deeply analytical manner. He combined a sharp scientific mind with an informed religious faith. Although he remained a strong practising Christian throughout his life this was a private matter within the family and many who knew him for long periods were unaware of his commitment.He was born in Esher, Surrey, into a family with strong scientific and religious traditions. His great–grandfather originated in Dorset and moved to London to found a manufacturing company of fine chemicals, Whiffen and Sons. This operated in Southall, then Battersea and next Fulham, before being acquired in 1947 by Fisons Ltd and moving to Loughborough where it was finally completely subsumed into that company. David's grandfather, Thomas J. Whiffen, and his great uncle George followed the founder into the business, and in the next generation three of his sons, Goodman, Stanley and David's father Noël Hardy Whiffen (known as Timothy), were all involved with it. Mr. Noël, as he was known in the company, was born on Christmas day 1894. He became the practical partner on the chemistry side, while Goodman was an engineer and Stanley ran the office.Another brother, Harold, became a fruit farmer, and the eldest, Thomas, roamed the world, including the upper Amazon at the start of the twentieth century; family tradition has it that he originated the World War I poster with the pointing finger that told the onlooker ‘Your Country Needs You’. There were also four sisters, Jessie, Mabel, Olive and Dorothy, none of whom married but who, together with their brothers, were much involved in charitable and good works.
Address delivered by the President, Sir William Huggins, K. C. B., O. M., F. R. S., at the anniversary meeting on November 30, 1905
Authors: Huggins William
Published: December 2006

Memorial Notices of the Fellows and Foreign Members who have been taken from us by death during the past year will appear in due course in the Obituary Notices. Of some of them only, on this occasion, will time permit me to give expression on your behalf, to a few words of appreciation of their work, and of deep sorrow at their loss. Not among the Fellows only, or alone in this country, but throughout the scientific world, the news of the unexpected death of our Fellow, and recent Vice-President, Dr. William Thomas Blanford, was received with deep regret and sorrow. Not only had a distinguished worker in science fallen out, there was lost to us a gentle, kindly friend, who had gained the affectionate regard of all those who had the privilege of having been personally acquainted with him. Only a few weeks before his death, he had been asked by the Council to write an Obituary Notice of our late Fellow, Mr. Medlicott, his old friend and colleague, and collaborator with him in the classic work, ‘The Manual of the Geology of India,' published in 1879. Before the printer’s proofs reached him, Dr. Blanford himself had passed from the ranks of the living. Dr. Blanford was distinguished as a zoologist as well as a geologist. From the time of his appointment to the Geological Survey of India in 1855, on the completion of a very successful course of study at the Royal School of Mines, and at the Mining Academy at Freiberg, to his retirement in 1882, by the publication of a series of works, and by untiring original observations, he greatly enriched our knowledge of the geology and zoology of that country. Besides his published works on the geology and fauna of India, he has contributed important papers and addresses, which are distinguished by great scientific insight and a, masterly grasp of the subjects to which he had devoted his life. His high and kindly qualities were fully recognised. He received the distinction of the Com­panionship of the Order of the Indian Empire, and was awarded medals by the Royal Society and the Geological Society. He was elected into our Society in 1874, and was for many years Treasurer of the Geological Society.
The periodogram and its optical analogy
Authors: Schuster Arthur
Published: December 2006

I have recently applied the periodogram method to the investigation of several fluctuating quantities, and the experience thus gained has led me to modify slightly the original definition. Having always laid stress on the fact that the periodogram supplies by calculation the transformation which the spectroscope instrumentally impresses on a luminous disturbance, I may now enter a little more closely into this optical analogy, and thus lead up to what I hope will be the final definition. Consider a parallel beam of light falling on a grating, the reflected light being collected at the focus of an observing telescope in the usual way. For simplicity of calculation I assume that the grating considered is of a particular type, which, in a former paper, I have called a simple grating. Such a grating only gives two spectra of the first order.