bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
David Brunt, 1886-1965
Authors: Sutton Oliver Graham
Published: December 2006

David Brunt was born on 17 June 1886 at Staylittle, Montgomeryshire, a small village in the heart of the Welsh countryside. He was the youngest of the five sons and four daughters of John Brunt, a farmworker, and his wife Mary (
née
Jones). Both his parents were of Welsh farming stock and there is no record of any of his forebears having been in any way connected with or even interested in science. As a child Brunt spoke little but Welsh and until the age of ten was taught in the village school by one master mainly in that language. In 1896 John Brunt moved his family to the mining town of Llanhilleth, in the densely populated Western Valley of Monmouthshire, where he worked as a collier. By then the language of that part of the South Wales coalfield had become almost entirely English. For the next three years David attended the local elementary school, and it must have been a considerable effort for a boy accustomed to being taught mainly in Welsh by one man in a tiny rural school to follow lessons in English in a school of large classes and many teachers. It is clear that he quickly overcame these difficulties for in 1899 he secured first place in the list of entrance scholarships (value £2 5s. 0d. a term) for the Intermediate School at Abertillery, a larger mining town a few miles up the valley. Although he never forgot his mother tongue his facility in Welsh naturally declined as opportunities for speaking it became fewer, and in later years, except for a characteristic use of emphasis in argument, there was little in his speech to reveal that, as he often said, he was born ‘west of Offa’s Dyke’. As a part of his education he had to commit to memory long passages from the Authorised Version of the Bible, which no doubt did much to shape the taut prose of his scientific writings.
George Clarke Simpson, 1878-1965
Authors: Gold Ernest
Published: December 2006

George Clarke Simpson was born at Derby on 2 September 1878, the second son and third of the seven children, three sons and four daughters, of Arthur and Alice Lambton Simpson. Arthur, born at Derby on 25 May 1851 and educated at Derby Grammar School, was the son of a Derby shopkeeper —of a small retail shop—and, until his marriage, helped in his father’s shop. Alice was the daughter of a well-to-do wharfinger, Thomas William Clarke, of Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, whose business was ruined through the silting up of the port. She was born on 25 March 1853 and died on 22 December 1937. On marriage Arthur and Alice started a business of their own and slowly and laboriously built up a wholesale business, hardware, drapery and toys, one of the best in Derby at the end of the century. Arthur was an active church worker, a particularly successful teacher of young men in the Sunday School and, later in life, Councillor, Alderman and Mayor of Derby. He died on 27 June 1917. Arthur’s brother, George, was the father of David Capell Simpson, Oriel Professor of Interpretation of Holy Scripture, Oxford, 1925-1950. In the early years of their marriage Simpson’s parents lived over their warehouse in Bag Lane, later East Street, in the centre of Derby and there Simpson was born. About twelve years later his parents bought a house in a better locality where the family lived the typical life of the Victorian middle class. It was a happy family and, as the business continued to grow, there was never any real shortage of money; but there was no extravagance and certainly no waste.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965
Authors: Jones Reginald Victor
Published: December 2006

No man has been better known throughout the world than Winston Churchill; no man has had a life more faithfully documented; and no man’s memory less needs a re-statement of his words and deeds. The fullness of his life has many facets; so many, indeed, that some may be missed in the brilliance of those for which he is most admired—leadership, language, courage, humour. While in biography proper these must command the highest place, there are some special facets—science, technology, education, philosophy—which are natural to the context of this Memoir, and which I therefore hope to trace through the wide, unfolding pattern of his thoughts and actions. The character of the Memoir changes as it approaches 1940. Up to that time, drawing in the main on his own comments and writings, it deals with episodes that illustrate his character or which helped to form the experience that matched him so uniquely to 1940. After that time, drawing in addition on personal knowledge, it deals at closer range with the fewer facets of special relevance. Personal knowledge can easily be overdrawn, for the difference in our ages was nearly forty years and the difference in our backgrounds no less marked. But his qualities transcended the gaps of age, society and education, and it was easy to talk to him for what he was. Even so, I am reminded of his own regrets that he had not had more chance to know his father—there are so many things that in retrospect the younger man would like to have asked the older but which he has barely realized before the older man is borne away beyond questioning. So it is with this Memoir.
Neil Hamilton Fairley, 1891 - 1966
Authors: Boyd John Smith Knox
Published: December 2006

Neil Hamilton Fairley, an outstanding figure in the world of tropical medicine during the period which spanned the two world wars, was born in Australia, and spent his early years in that country. He was of Scottish extraction, as his grandfather was one of a group who emigrated to Australia from a small village in the environs of Hamilton, in Lanarkshire, a fact which accounts for the grandson’s middle name. His father, James Fairley, was a bank manager with strong country interests who spent most of his life in Victoria. Of his mother, nee Margaret Louise Jones, Neil writes with affection, and much admiration. She bore six sons, four of whom reached adult life and took up medicine as a career. One, having qualified M.D., Melbourne, and F.R.C.S., England, specialized in surgery, but died on service during World War I. A second, also M.D., Melbourne, and later F.R.C.P., London, and F.R.A.C.P., ultimately became senior physician to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, while the third, who contracted tuberculosis as a student, did not specialize and entered general practice. Neil had his schooling at Scotch College, where in his last year he was ‘dux’ in the matriculation class. He went on to study medicine at Melbourne University, and had a distinguished career, gaining many awards and qualifying M.B., B.S., with first-class honours in 1915. In these early years he was an athlete of no mean calibre and won, first the public school open high jumping championship, and later the inter-varsity high jumping championship of Australia.
Louis Harold Gray, 1905-1965
Authors: Loutit John Freeman , Scott O. C. A.
Published: December 2006

Louis Harold (Hal) Gray was not a product of his times; that is to say he was no opportunist who cleverly adapted his talents to the current circumstances. Rather he was a maker of scientific history and his genius would have been as apparent in any other age. Particularly would he have been at home in London three centuries earlier. It has been recorded (1) * that the beginnings of the Royal Society stemmed from the urge in ´a small group of learned men who were interested in the Experimental, or New Philosophy as it was then called . . . to meet occasionally in London for talk and discussions at the lodgings of one of their number’. The urge to meet with his fellow men for their mutual benefit by discussion of matters of science was characteristic also of Hal Gray. The New Philosophy which some would now equate with the scientific method owed much in England to Francis Bacon (one time of Trinity College, Cambridge) and would have delighted a seventeenth-century Gray. It was the natural revolution of the Renaissance period against medieval dogma and the confinement of formalistic scholasticism. Further the New Philosophy was not subject-limited, and its exponents considered and discussed Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Statistics, Magnetics, Chymicks and Natural Experiments (2).
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, 1892-1964
Authors: Pirie Norman Wingate
Published: December 2006

Few families have their history so well documented as the Haldanes. J. B. S. Haldane, writing of his father (1961g), says: ‘He was born with a historically labelled Y chromosome. That is to say, his ancestors in the putative direct male line since about A. D. 1250 are known. There are, I believe, about fifteen similarly labelled sets of Y chromosomes in Britain. Their possession is generally a handicap, but may help to protect the possessors against the voice of the Establishment.’ There is no need to detail Haldane’s ancestry because much of it can be found in the historical novel
The bull calves
by his sister, Naomi Mitchison, and in his mother’s autobiography
Friends and kindred
. It is clear from these three publications that energy, enterprise and outstanding intellectual achievement have, for many generations, been features of the family environment and, insofar as they have a hereditary origin, have been contributed as much by the female as the male line. Haldane was born in Oxford on 5 November 1892. His intelligence and prodigious memory were recognized early. Before he was five he could read newspaper reports of British Association meetings at a pace that was ‘deliberate, but not exasperatingly slow’ and memorized poetry with unusual ease.
William Richard Morris, First Viscount Nuffield, 1877-1963
Authors: Holder Douglas William
Published: December 2006

Lord Nuffield’s contributions as an industrialist and benefactor are so great that it is impossible to do justice to them, or even to mention them all, in an article of this length. A full account of the growth of the great companies which he established would be equivalent to a history of the motor industry in this country, and a survey of the outcome of his benefactions would necessarily cover recent developments in major areas of medicine and science. Fortunately an excellent biography (Andrews & Brunner 1955) covering most of his career already exists, and the reader must be referred to this for fuller details. There is also no doubt that further full accounts will be prepared to survey not only Lord Nuffield’s personal achievements, but also the continuing work of the Nuffield Foundation and the other great institutions and trusts established through his generosity and foresight.
Francis John Richards, 1901-1965
Authors: Porter Helen Kemp
Published: December 2006

Frank Richards was a modest and somewhat shy man with a diffident manner which gave little hint at a first meeting of his remarkable talents. He was one of the ablest plant physiologists of his generation but owing to his habitual reticence his influence was restricted largely to those privileged to work in close contact with him. He lived a quiet domestic life appearing sometimes at scientific meetings in London and elsewhere. He travelled abroad only two or three times to international gatherings of botanists and could only with difficulty be persuaded to present a paper himself. He appeared to be extremely self-sufficient and because of his unfailing habit of setting out to help others his personal contacts rarely brought out his own personal needs. Probably only his family knew him really well. Colleagues of many years standing all say they never got to know him intimately but their feeling is expressed in the words of one of them : ‘Although I never got to know him I became well aware that he was a marvellous person with the highest standards of integrity.’ In
Who’s Who
Richards recorded his hobby as ‘scientific dilettantism’ but this is only accurate in so far as his spare time was occupied by a variety of scientific activities which included astronomy, archaeology, natural history and stereo photography. To these hobbies he brought, not the attitude of the dilettante, but profound knowledge, manual skill and meticulous care. He made a reflector telescope, patiently grinding the parabolic mirror himself, and many will remember star gazing with him, during the second world war, using this telescope. He made a collection of Lepidoptera to which his friends contributed by collecting caterpillars for him. He would wait for emergence of the moth, so that in his beautifully set specimens not a single scale was disturbed.
Albert Cherbury David Rivett, 1885-1961
Authors: Marston Hedley Ralph
Published: December 2006

The history of the development of experimental research in Australia over the past fifty years is intimately interwoven with David Rivett’s activities. The bright thread of his mind tightly laces and strengthens the whole of its fabric, appearing only occasionally on the surface, sometimes to illuminate a shadow, sometimes to enliven an existing pattern, sometimes to introduce an entirely new motif. Armed with an exceptional intellect and a never failing appreciation of scientific spirit, he worked continually to establish an environment in which free enterprise of the mind would flourish. In this and other tasks, his genes and early training guided him with inflexible resolution. He died on 1 April 1961, after a long illness imposed by a series of midbrain lesions which sapped his intellectual vitality and gradually robbed him of his exceptional memory during the last few years of his life. In a national acknowledgement of esteem, the Prime Minister of Australia,1 expressed a widespread sentiment in the words: ‘Sir David Rivett was one of the great Australians of our time. He combined an absolutely first class mind and great scientific attainments with a generous outlook and a quiet but pervading enthusiasm. His death is a national and personal loss.’
Edward John Russell, 1872-1965
Authors: Thornton Henry Gerard
Published: December 2006

Edward John Russell was born on 31 October 1872 at Frampton-onSevern into a large but poor family. His father Edward Thomas Russell was at first a schoolmaster and later became a Unitarian Minister. His mother came from a west country family and her father Captain Samuel Hallet owned a wharf at Lambeth and ran a coastal shipping service. The family in fact had no scientific or agricultural background, but John Russell’s father was a man of wide culture, which included physics, chemistry and biology. He read widely in these subjects, made experiments in his home and gave lectures in popular science. So great was his enthusiasm that he gave up a teaching post he later held in Sheffield on obtaining a small bursary to attend a week’s course under T. H. Huxley. The young Russell was undoubtedly influenced by his father’s interests and help; the schools available to him as a child did not, however, teach scientific subjects. In 1885 the family moved to Birmingham where he went to the recently opened Technical School. Here he was taught mathematics and also some chemistry, in which subject he became so keenly interested that he decided to take it up as a career. Unfortunately, after only two years the family moved to London and at the age of 14, John Russell was obliged to give up his school education and find work. In his book
The land called me
he recalls that ‘thinking that chemistry was practised in chemists’ shops I decided to try to get into one, and save up money to go to college’. He obtained employment at a homoeopathic chemist in Threadneedle Street, at a salary of 7 shillings a week, but to his intense disappointment, he soon found that no chemistry was done at the shop, nor did any of the assistants have any knowledge of it. His duties were to label bottles of pills and to run errands.
William Arthur Stanier, 1876-1965
Authors: Hartley Harold Brewer
Published: December 2006

The Staniers were a Staffordshire family and Stanier’s father, W. H. Stanier, joined the Great Western Railway at Wolverhampton in the early 1860s. In 1871 he moved to Swindon to become confidential clerk to William Dean, the future Chief Mechanical Engineer. He was able and versatile and he soon became Dean’s right-hand man. He initiated technical education at Swindon by introducing evening classes for apprentices at the Mechanics Institute which he conducted himself for twenty years until they were taken over by the Wiltshire County Educational Committee in 1891. Among his responsibilities was the chemical testing of materials which, in the absence of a works laboratory, he carried out in the back parlour of his home in Wellington Street, Swindon, where his son William was born on 27 May 1876, the year in which G. J. Churchward, whose footsteps the young Stanier was to follow, came to Swindon from Newton Abbott when the G.W.R. took over the South Devon Railway. So Stanier grew up in a railway environment at a time of great activity in preparation for the change from the broad to the narrow-gauge. He went as a boarder to Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, in Gloucestershire, until he was fifteen, when he entered the service of the G.W.R. as an office boy until on his sixteenth birthday in 1892 he could be enrolled as an apprentice in the Swindon Works, when William Dean was at the height of his achievements as a locomotive engineer. In May he had seen the last broad-gauge train pass through Swindon.
Thomas Wallace, 1891-1965
Authors: Slater William Kershaw , Kearns H. G. H.
Published: December 2006

Thomas Wallace was the eighth child of a family of nine, three sons and six daughters. His father, also Thomas, was a blacksmith and agricultural engineer carrying on a family business at Newton-on-the-Moor, near Alnwick. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the Wallace smithy had served the needs of the local farming community, shoeing their horses and mending their simple agricultural machinery. Two of Thomas Wallace’s sons showed the family bent for engineering, but the third, who bore his father’s name and who is the subject of this memoir, had, as he often said himself, no skill in engineering nor any liking for the work; his interests were in scholarship, catholic at first, but soon to be canalized in the study of pure science. Thomas Wallace senior had married Mary Thompson, also of a Northumberland country family. Before their eighth child was born on 5 September 1891 he moved to Burradon, where he expanded his business by undertaking work for the collieries. Thomas junior’s childhood was spent in his native village, where although the country was still pleasant and highly farmed, mining activities had already begun to bring about those changes which later were to take away so much of its beauty. Wallace as a boy was attracted to the farms and he spent many happy days on them, playing and watching the men at work. As he grew older he began to share in the work of haymaking and harvest. It is to this country background that can be attributed the ease with which he later became absorbed in the agricultural community he served.
George Neville Watson, 1886-1965
Authors: Whittaker John Macnaghten
Published: December 2006

George Neville Watson was born at Westward Ho! on 31 January 1886. His father, George Wentworth Watson, taught mathematics and geography at Westward Ho! school and was later an army coach. But his absorbing interest was in genealogy. He took a large part in preparing both editions of
The Complete Peerage
and Vicary Gibbs, who edited the second, ‘found it quite impossible to overstate the sense of obligation. The special articles which he has re-written are duly acknowledged in their place but they do not represent a tithe of the assistance which he has rendered, for he has scrutinized every word, nay, every comma, of the proofs with a minuteness which could not have been surpassed’. His son was to exhibit these same qualities in mathematics. Watson was educated at St Paul’s, where he held the Campden Exhibition and the Keen Scholarship. The staff included F. S. Macaulay, later F.R.S., a famous teacher of Senior Wranglers and Smith’s Prizemen and among his contemporaries was J. E. Littlewood, some eight months his senior. Watson was already a dedicated scholar. His sister’s chief recollections are of long hours closeted with his father in his study and of occasions when he was so absorbed that he could pass his mother and sister in the street without recognizing them. His first paper, a note on a method of extracting square roots, dates from these days.
Walter Frederick Whittard, 1902-1966
Authors: Bulman Oliver Meredith Boone
Published: December 2006

Walter Frederick Whittard was born in Battersea on 26 October 1902 and died at his home at Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol on 2 March 1966. His father, Thomas W. Whittard, was a prosperous grocer in Clapham, London, whose wife Sarah (Cotterell) bore him four children, of whom Walter Frederick was the youngest. Little is known of the early history of the family; the surname is said to be derived from Whiteheart or Wytard and to mark a connexion with the Stroud region of Gloucestershire, while his mother’s family were associated with Stockton-on-Tees. He attended the County Secondary School at Battersea and as a boy his interests outside normal school activities were mainly zoological. He was an enthusiastic beetle collector (and in later life would still take note of the water-beetles to be found in a flooded quarry) and became a founder member of the school Natural History Society. Through a mutual friend of his elder brother Tom, however, he was introduced to T. Eastwood, of the Geological Survey, and it was Eastwood who aroused and fostered his interest in geology and induced his father to launch young Whittard on a geological career. Thus it came about that on Eastwood’s advice he attended A. J. Maslen’s evening classes in geology at Chelsea Polytechnic (now Chelsea College of Science and Technology) while still a schoolboy and it was here that Stubblefield and I first met him. Maslen’s gifts as a teacher were widely recognized and his classes attracted a number of well-known amateurs as well as a few schoolboys and many London External students in various stages of their careers. I remember in particular at this time Whittard’s enthusiasm for any geological excursions and the innumerable collecting trips that he made on his own to localities around London and the Home Counties and even as far afield as the Cotswolds.
William George Fearnsides, 1879-1968
Authors: Bulman Oliver Meredith Boone
Published: December 2006

The unique position which Fearnsides occupied among the great Cambridge geologists of this century arose from his eminence in both the academic and applied fields of geology. Throughout his long life, he combined a vital curiosity in everything around him, acute observation, a quite exceptionally retentive memory and an unusual flair for the correlation of observation and knowledge in diverse fields. His exuberant personality and his remarkable physical and mental vigour had already made him something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime.
Frederic Charles Bartlett, 1886-1969
Authors: Broadbent D. E.
Published: December 2006

Frederic Charles Bartlett was the first Professor of Experimental Psychology in the University of Cambridge. As such he exerted a crucial influence over the development of the subject throughout the whole country: his students staffed the newer departments which have since arisen, and his approach has coloured all subsequent research in England. His role in the subject was therefore unique.
Edward Ettingdean Bridges - Baron Bridges, 1892-1969
Authors: Winnifrith John
Published: December 2006

Edward Ettingdean Bridges was born on 4 August 1892, at Yattendon Manor in Berkshire, a house which had been acquired by his father, Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, and in which the family lived until they moved to Boars Hill, outside Oxford, in 1905. Family background The Bridges had long been established in Kent. The Rev. John Bridges was Rector of Harbledown, near Canterbury, from 1579 to 1589, and the family remained there until about 1640. Later they are recorded, first as yeoman farmers and later as small landowners, at St Nicholas-at-Wade in the Isle of Thanet. Robert Bridges’s father succeeded to the family property but died when his son was only nine and provided in his will that most of it should be sold. As a result, Robert Bridges inherited sufficient money to enable him to devote himself to writing and research in literature, although he qualified in medicine and for some time practised it.
Stanley Melbourne Bruce - Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, 1883-1967
Authors: Menzies Robert Gordon
Published: December 2006

The public life of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia, a Viscount of the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was one of the most paradoxical in the history of his native country. Bruce was born in Melbourne on 15 April 1883, of a well-to-do mercantile family. 1893 saw the collapse of a great land boom, the failure of some banks and an acute general depression. The family business, Paterson, Laing and Bruce, was in difficulties. Stanley Bruce’s father sold his mansion in the fashionable suburb of Toorak. Stanley himself had to leave his preparatory school—the fees were not available. His father, who appears to have been a singularly determined man, then proceeded to restore the fortunes of the business. In 1896 the young Stanley went to the well-known Melbourne Grammar School, where he was a most successful all-round student. It has been given to few boys at a great school to be not only captain of football, of cricket, of athletics, and of rowing, but also Senior Prefect (i.e. Captain) of the School.
William Edward Curtis, 1889-1969
Authors: Rochester George Dixon
Published: December 2006

William Edward Curtis was a Londoner by birth, but he spent much of his life in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he took a leading part in the educational life of the university and the city. He was born in Islington, North London, on 23 October 1889, and was the son of a gilder, of Horsham in Sussex. His mother, Emily Sarah (
née
Haward) came from Ipswich. There is little evidence of interest in science on either side of the family, and indeed it seems that Curtis came to physics via astronomy. The drive and energy which in later life were among his most striking features seem to have been manifested to a marked degree in his mother, and in several uncles on his mother’s side, who were successful master founders. Curtis had one sister, Edith, five years older than himself. He had few young friends and read avidly and widely. At school he was outstanding, and made his way by scholarships from his primary school, Ecclesbourne Road, Islington, to Owen’s School, Islington, and thence to the Imperial College. At Owen’s he held a Drapers’ Scholarship and then an L.C.C. Intermediate Scholarship. He was a fine all-rounder, taking prizes in a wide range of subjects, and he excelled at several games, especially cricket. He was head boy in his last year at school and studied, mainly privately, for a National Scholarship in Science. A Royal Exhibition followed from the results of the Common Examination, and he entered Imperial College as a physics student in 1907, the year in which the old name, The Royal College of Science, was changed to the now more familiar one.
Vincent Charles Illing, 1890-1969
Authors: Falcon Norman Leslie
Published: December 2006

Vincent Charles Illing was an internationally distinguished petroleum geologist who exemplified in his career the advantages of integrated academic and industrial work. His name will always be linked with the Royal School of Mines, London, where he created and developed over forty years the only department of petroleum geology in this country and one of the foremost in the world. His studies of the occurrence of oil and gas were no mere academic exercise. He was unique in British geology in combining the duties and responsibilities of a professor with those of guiding petroleum exploration and exploitation in various parts of the world. He never relinquished his consultant’s role. His biography is of particular interest now that pragmatism in scientific work has regained much of its former respectability.
Robert Thomson Leiper, 1881-1969
Authors: Garnham Percy Cyril Claude
Published: December 2006

Robert Thomson Leiper was described by the late Sir Philip Manson-Bahr in 1956 as the world’s foremost helminthologist; this had already been his reputation for practically half a century; at the age of 80 he was referred to as the ‘Father of helminthology of the British Commonwealth’ by Thomas W. A. Cameron, and by others as the ‘Father of modern helminthology’ Leiper was born in Witch Road, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, on 17 April 1881, the eldest of three children of John and Jessie Leiper. His mother’s maiden name was Aird and his maternal grandmother’s Boyd. The family had been settled in the town of Kilmarnock for three generations, but earlier had been farmers in the neighbouring county of Lanarkshire. His great-great-grandfather farmed Stonyhill in the parish of Avondale and his great-grandfather the farm, Drumboy. Some of this land is still in the possession of the family, and Robert Leiper himself bought the original farm, though in 1951 he had to sell it.
Thomas Ralph Merton, 1888-1969
Authors: Hartley Harold Brewer , Gabor Dennis
Published: December 2006

Thomas Ralph Merton, scientist, inventor and connoisseur of the fine arts was born on 12 January 1888, and died on 10 October 1969 after a long, useful and exceptionally happy and harmonious life. He was born at Wimbledon, the only son of Emile R. Merton and Helen, daughter of Thomas Meates, a descendant of Sir Thomas Meutas, Secretary to Sir Francis Bacon. E. R. Merton was for a time in the family metal trading business as a partner in Henry R. Merton & Go. which was started in London by his eldest brother in 1860. Another brother, William, founded the Metallgesellschaft in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1881, which became at one time the second largest company in Germany. The two companies worked closely with each other and also with the American Metal Company in New York.
Stanley Peat, 1902-1969
Authors: Hirst Edmund Langley , Turvey J. R.
Published: December 2006

Stanley Peat who, over a period of some 40 years, made major contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of the carbohydrate group, died at Bangor on 22 February 1969, shortly before he was due to retire from the Chair of Organic Chemistry in the University College of North Wales. He was born at South Shields in the County of Durham in 1902, the eldest child of John and Ada Peat. John Peat was a mining engineer then stationed at East Bolden in County Durham. At the time of Stanley’s birth, however, Mrs Peat was staying with her sister Alice whose home was at Tyne Dock, South Shields. John Peat’s work as a colliery engineer involved moves from Bolden to Walker and then to East Hetton Colliery. Distances from Newcastle upon Tyne for purposes of education made for difficulties, whereas the journey from South Shields was comparatively easy. As a result the home of Alice Gibson and her husband James Gibson came to acquire a profound importance in the life of Stanley Peat. He was a rather delicate infant, and, when only a few months old, required hospital treatment before his health began to improve. Much credit for his eventual recovery must go to his aunt who nursed him through this difficult period. Unfortunately, as a result of this childhood illness Peat was left with a permanent curvature of the spine. Although he regained his strength and in later life was able to play games and undertake strenuous walks, this disability was to have a deep effect on Stanley’s development, since, denied an outlet for his energies for the more active youthful sports and games, he was thrown back on to his own mental resources for amusement and interest.
Alfred John Sutton Pippard, 1891-1969
Authors: Skempton Alec Westley
Published: December 2006

Alfred John Sutton Pippard was born on 6 April 1891 at Yeovil. His great-grandfather, George Pippard, and his grandfather, John Pippard, both worked as master plasterers at Montacute, Somerset, and other members of the family were masons and stone-cutters. His father, Alfred Pippard, born in 1859, began his career as a carpenter and joiner. He moved as a young man to Yeovil where in 1887 he married Alice Sutton, the daughter of John Sutton, a glover. Shortly afterwards he set up as a building contractor with George Bird, and the firm of Bird & Pippard became well known locally for the quality of its work. Among the buildings carried out by them were a new Post Office for Yeovil, offices for
The Western Gazette
, Yeovil Girls’ High School and a Bank at Weymouth as well as many private houses, some to the designs of local architects and some to Alfred Pippard’s own plans.
Sydney John Folley, 1906-1970
Authors: Parkes Alan Sterling
Published: December 2006

Sydney John Folley was born on 14 January 1906 into a working-class family in Swindon, Wilts. He died on 29 June 1970. His father, Thomas John Folley of 75 Graham Street, Swindon, who died in 1950 at the age of 83 years, was for more than 40 years an engine fitter in the Great Western Railway Running Shed at Swindon. His mother, Katie Folley (née Baggs), died in 1938 at the age of 67 years. John Folley, as he was always known, had an elder sister, but was an only son. He was twice married, first, in 1935, to Madeline Kerr of Altrincham, Cheshire, and, then, when this marriage was dissolved in 1947, to Mary Lee Muntz (née Harnett) of Reading. There were no children of either marriage. Folley was proud of the railwaymen in his family and he was fascinated by trains. His maternal grandfather and his paternal great-grandfather both worked in one capacity or another for the Great Western and his paternal grandfather was a well known passenger driver on that railway. He recalls that his childhood circumstances were those usual in households of the skilled artisan class, but that his parents had a great respect for and were fully aware of the value of education. They were anxious to make it possible for both their children to take full advantage of every educational opportunity and were prepared to make considerable sacrifices to this end. ‘Perhaps the number of books in my home, when I was a child, was unusual for a working class home at that time. Probably, many of them were school books of my sister who was 8 years my senior and had received a secondary education after winning a scholarship. From an early age I had a passion for reading and took full advantage of these books’.
Charles Robert Harington, 1897-1972
Authors: Himsworth Harold Percival , Pitt-Rivers Rosalind Venetia
Published: December 2006

Charles Robert Harington won distinction during his lifetime by his personal contributions to biochemistry, his directorship of the National Institute for Medical Research and the widespread confidence that he inspired among scientists and administrators alike by the natural integrity of his judgement. He was born on 1 August 1897. His father was the Reverend Charles Harington, vicar of Llanerfyl in North Wales, a younger son of Sir Richard Harington, the eleventh baronet, of Ridlington. His mother was Audrey, daughter of the Reverend Robert Burges Bayley. Harington was thus a member, by unbroken descent, of the senior surviving branch of one of the most ancient families of England.
Hildebrand Wolfe Harvey, 1887-1970
Authors: Cooper Leslie Hugh Norman
Published: December 2006

Hildebrand Wolfe Harvey came of a family which had for long lived in Essex. His ancestor Sir John Morley of Blue Bridge, Halstead, had found a cure for scrofula, the King’s Evil, more effective than the touch of the sovereign. Sir John’s granddaughter, Dorothy Morley, in the mid-eighteenth century had married the Rev. Bridges Harvey. A later Bridges Harvey, a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, married Ellen Brown of Ipswich in 1846, their second son, Henry Allington, being born at Shenfield in 1849. On 13 January 1885 at St Annes Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, Henry was to marry Laetitia, daughter of Peter Kingsley Wolfe, a descendant of General James Wolfe, the hero of the Battle of Quebec in 1759. Henry was a partner in the firm of Foster, Mason and Harvey of Mitcham, Surrey, later to amalgamate with Hadfields. The firm manufactured high-quality, long-lasting paint. It seems that the firm failed to adapt to the demand from do-it-yourself customers who prefer often to change their colour schemes using cheaper paint at frequent intervals. The firm has now gone out of business.
Christopher Kelk Ingold, 1893-1970
Authors: Shoppee Charles William
Published: December 2006

Christopher Kelk Ingold, the son of William Kelk Ingold and Harriet Walker Newcomb, was born at Forest Gate, London, on 28 October 1893. On account of his father’s health, the family moved to Shanklin, Isle of Wight, while he was still an infant. His father, William Kelk Ingold, died when Christopher was only 5 years old, and his sister Doris, who survives him, was only 2 years old. Christopher Ingold attended Sandown Grammar School, and went on to Hartley University College, Southampton, now the University of Southampton; there he obtained his B.Sc. Honours Degree as an external student of the University of London in October 1913. At school and at college he was better at physics than at chemistry; but at Southampton in those days, physics was taught as a completed subject, very neat and tidy and rather dull, whereas chemistry, under Professor D. R. Boyd, was taught as a living, growing, and exciting subject, and he therefore decided to take up chemistry. He does not seem to have played games at school or college; however, he once told the writer that he could have done better in his degree examinations if he had not devoted so much time to playing chess in the Union.
Hans Kronberger, 1920-1970
Authors: Rotherham Leonard
Published: December 2006

Hans Kronberger lived an all too short life which included periods of high drama, tragedy, joy, great achievement and ultimately despair. He had a capacity to make good friends who were always ready to help and comfort him and who gave him assistance in some of his times of personal difficulty. They did not suspect nor did his medical advisers, just how serious was the situation. Perhaps this was because his presence was stimulating and amusing and it was not easy to think of sombre matters in his presence. He was born in Linz, Austria on 28 July 1920 of Jewish parents and although he only occasionally discussed his early life it is clear that he had a strong family feeling for his parents and for his only sister. Many of his interests in later life originated in the life he led in Austria before he fled the country at the age of 18 at the time of the Nazi occupation. He was in Moscow at the time of the Russian move into Czechoslovakia and had intended to return home via Prague. His comment to a friend was to the effect that he could once again vividly recall the events in Austria of thirty years earlier; events which affected his outlook through life. It is said that his father had a real feeling for engineering and also enjoyed skiing. It is difficult to say whether Hans was best described as an engineer or as a physicist for he certainly had much of the intuitive feeling of the great engineers but equally he had his ideas firmly rooted in physics and mathematics. There were times when he would describe events in mathematical terms which indicated his way of thinking but which proved baffling to commoner engineers who could give equally satisfying descriptions but in earthier terms. Similarly his accounts of his activities on the ski slopes and in climbing had a unique quality but if technically they seemed difficult to the uninitiated they never failed to entertain. Surely his intuitive abilities in engineering and his love of the hills were derived from his father. From his mother he acquired a whole range of other ambitions and abilities.
Leslie William Mapson, 1907-1970
Authors: Hill Robert
Published: December 2006

Leslie William Mapson was head of the Plant Biochemistry Division of the Food Research Institute at Norwich. A career of intensive scientific research came to an end far too early. The Institute at Norwich only recently had been started by the Agricultural Research Council under the directorship of Sidney Elsden. It originated from a part of the Low Temperature Research Station in Cambridge. One of the firmly held ideas of W. B. Hardy at the original foundation was that the Station at Cambridge should operate in close association with the University. At Norwich this idea had been in a sense realized as Mapson had been made Hon. Professor in the University of East Anglia in 1969. In the earlier days in Cambridge Hardy was able to have the co-operation of both F. F. Blackman and the Hon. Mrs Onslow. They were concerned with the physiology and biochemistry of plant respiration in relation to the storage of fruit and vegetables. This work was continued by many others including Mapson until the ending of the Low Temperature Research Station in Cambridge and the transfer of that part of its activities to Norwich. The loss of his guiding spirit and his keen personality with his ingenious approach so soon after the transfer to Norwich was a tragedy for all concerned. He was twice married, firstly to Muriel Dodds in 1932 and there was one son who did not survive to manhood; secondly to Dorothy Lilian Waldock (née Pell) and they have one daughter, Elizabeth, who is entering the medical profession. For many years they lived in the village of Hauxton, Cambridgeshire, and they had a most happy home. They were active members of the Church community in that village where he was much respected. Also he was a governor of the Melbourne Village College from its foundation.
Ronald Sydney Nyholm, 1917-1971
Authors: Craig David Parker
Published: December 2006

Ronald Nyholm died in a motor car accident on the outskirts of Cambridge on 4 December 1971 at the age of 54. He died in full vigour with many important achievements behind him, and ready in what should have been the remainder of his working life for even greater eminence and influence in the public affairs of science. His success came in the scientific community through the combination of great natural ability with personal qualities at least as distinguished. He could have excelled in any field of activity calling for leadership, political skills, warmth and sympathy and boundless energy.
Frank Edward Smith, 1876-1970
Authors: Goodeve Charles Frederick
Published: December 2006

Frank Edward Smith died on 1 July 1970 in his ninety-fourth year. He was
astonishingly active in mind and body up until about six years before his death.
Unfortunately like many busy people, he left practically no records of his life
and work. The author of this biographical memoir was 28 years his junior and
never knew him except by sight and reputation. Accordingly he has had to rely on
the generous help of others, mostly those who worked under Sir Frank in one or
other of his various activities. F.E., as he was affectionately known at the
Admiralty, was a remarkable example of a scientist who successfully turned to
administration. He was an outstanding builder of scientific organizations,
leaving his impact on the Admiralty, the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research, on the Royal Society, on Anglo-Iranian Oil, on Birmingham Small
Arms—the list is almost endless. Fortunately there were periods of
responsibility which are identifiable and these form a framework for the
appreciation of his career as set out in the sections which follow.
Richard Vynne Southwell, 1888-1970
Authors: Christopherson Derman Guy
Published: December 2006

Richard Vynne Southwell was born on 2 July 1888 at Norwich. He was the son of Edwin Batterbee Southwell, of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, who became General Manager and Director of J. and J. Colman Ltd of Norwich, and of Annie, daughter of Richard Vynne, a farmer and corn merchant of Swaffham. He was an only son, but had two sisters, one older and one younger than himself. Thomas Southwell, F. Z. S. of Norwich was a second cousin of his father. The family was believed to be descended from the Southwells of St Faith’s, near Norwich, which included Robert Southwell, the Catholic poet, and Richard Southwell, a courtier and official of Tudor times. In a characteristic note about his family, R. V. Southwell described the latter as a '(? fraudulent) paymaster’. As a child he was delicate and he did not go to school until the age of nine. In May 1898 he entered King Edward VI’s School, Norwich, where he was a pupil for nine years, leaving in July 1907. In later years he regarded the Headmaster, E. F. Gilbard (of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge) as ‘one of the finest characters I have known: self-sacrificing, with a real zeal for classical scholarship’. His own studies were almost entirely classical up to the age of sixteen, when he changed to mathematics. The teaching of that subject, he recognized afterwards, was not up to scholarship standard, but he was successful in winning an exhibition of £30 to Trinity Hall. However, on the advice of James Stuart, the first Professor of Mechanical Science at Cambridge, who became associated with his father’s business in 1898, he resigned his exhibition and entered Trinity College as a commoner in October 1907.
Muriel Robertson, 1883-1973
Authors: Bishop Ann , Miles Arnold Ashley
Published: December 2006

Muriel Robertson was born on 8 April 1883, in Glasgow. Although she grew up in that city and spent the greater part of her professional life in London, she had a deeply rooted affection for Limavady in Northern Ireland and it was there that she died. The history of her family suggests the sources from which she derived her versatility, her vitality and her keen intellect. She was the seventh child and the fourth girl in a family of twelve, who all grew up. Her father, Robert Andrew Robertson, was born in London in 1842, the son of Andrew Robertson of Kelso who, after studying for the ministry in Scotland, became a schoolmaster in London. Her paternal grandmother, Isabella Riddell, of a Border family in the south of Scotland, died before Muriel was born, but she believed that her father must have inherited his quick, lively temperament from her, for he was entirely different from his inhibited and dour father. Muriel’s mother, Elizabeth Ritter, was born in Australia in 1851 where her parents had settled immediately after their marriage. They prospered rapidly and the family returned to England after five years and settled in London. The history of Muriel’s mother’s family is well documented by a set of family letters and papers stretching over one hundred and fifty years. Nevertheless there is a certain legendary element in the history of Muriel’s maternal grandfather. Elizabeth Ritter, Muriel’s mother, was the first child of Edward Frederick Christian Ritter and Jane Alexander of Limavady. Ritter can be described as a somewhat romantic figure and, according to the family tradition, was the son of a Prussian officer in the German army that entered France at the time of the fall of Napoleon and of a French lady of Toulouse.