bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
William Henry Lang, 1874-1960
Authors: Salisbury Edward James
Published: December 2006

The subject of this memoir did not leave any personal record with the Royal Society, but I have been fortunate in having the assistance of his niece, Mrs Margaret E. Franklin; Professor T. B. L. Webster, who was a close friend for the last 25 years of W. H. Lang’s life; the late Lord Stopford, who was also a close friend and was Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University during the last seven years of Lang’s tenure of the Chair of Cryptogamic Botany, and Professor Wardlaw, who succeeded to that Chair when Lang retired. To all these I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness for their unstinted help which was the more valuable since Lang was not one who talked about himself and, indeed, was rather uncommunicative about his private life. W. H. Lang’s father was Thomas Bisland Lang, the son of William and Joan Lang who were married in 1825 and lived at Bridge-of-Weir, Renfrewshire. This couple had a typically large nineteenth century family of eleven children of whom Thomas Bisland was the youngest but one. A brother and a sister died in infancy, as was so frequent at that epoch, but Thomas’s sister Margaret lived to the age of 89 whilst his sister Mary lived to be 80, which, despite the fact that all but one of William Henry’s brothers died before they were 30, indicated that the stock was not potentially deficient in physical stamina. Nevertheless Thomas himself died at the age of 34, only two years after the birth of William Henry. The Baptismal Register records that our subject was born on 12 May 1874 at Withyham, Groombridge, Sussex. It was to this place that William’s father had come as a doctor with his young wife to establish a medical practice. After the untimely death of his father, the young baby and his mother returned to live at Bridge-of-Weir. Thus William was brought up in what must then, nearly 90 years ago, have been quite rural conditions for, even to-day, Bridge-of-Weir has a population of only just over 3000 inhabitants. The nearest city to their home was Glasgow, 14 miles away, a long distance when the only alternative to walking was a horse-drawn conveyance, since bicycles were a rarity till the close of the century.
John Henry Constantine Whitehead, 1904-1960
Authors: Newman Maxwell Herman Alexander
Published: December 2006

Henry Whitehead was at the height of his powers and of his mathematical influence when he died suddenly on 8 May 1960 after a heart-attack. In the last months before his death he had written several important papers, which showed how much he had still to contribute, and how keenly alive he was to the value of the newest work of young contemporaries. His life was a happy one, with little for the biographer to chronicle. He was born in India on 11 November 1904, the son of the Right Reverend Henry Whitehead, for twenty-three years Bishop of Madras and sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford; and of Isobel Whitehead daughter of Canon Duncan of Caine in Wiltshire. She was one of the early mathematical students of Lady Margaret Hall. There were many clerics and teachers among earlier generations of Whiteheads; the philosopher A. N. Whitehead was Bishop Whitehead’s brother. At the age of one and a half the young Henry was sent back to England and saw little of his parents until their retirement to England in 1920. At Eton, and as a Balliol undergraduate, his high spirits and convivial habits and his many-sided successes at games gave little grounds for expecting him to excel on the academic side. He boxed and played billiards for the University, and just missed winning a blue for cricket. Even after his rather easily won First Classes in both Moderations and Finals, it seemed quite natural to his family, and to his College tutor, that he should go off to the City to start on a financial career. But after little more than a year he broke away and returned to Oxford to do more work in mathematics (1928-1929).
Owen Thomas Jones, 1878-1967
Authors: Pugh William John
Published: December 2006

Owen Thomas Jones was born on 16 April 1878 at Plasnewydd, Beulah, near Newcastle Emlyn in South Cardiganshire. He was the only son of David Jones and Margaret Thomas, who later lived at Blaen-ffynon, Newcastle Emlyn; their other child, a daughter, died at the age of six; the son spent a rather solitary childhood but was greatly interested in the countryside and he retained throughout his life a deep affection for his native land. He attended the British School at Trewen near Newcastle Emlyn until he was about 15 years old. During this period, he came under the influence of Dr D. S. Davies, who had been a Medical Officer of Health in Bristol, and then lived in retirement near Newcastle Emlyn. Amongst other things, Davies encouraged Jones to learn English, and perhaps rather surprisingly French, before going to Pencader Grammar School in 1893. Until this time, Jones spoke only Welsh; and of course to the end of his life he spoke and wrote Welsh with equal facility. At his Grammar School, he was awarded a first class in the College of Preceptors examination in 1894 and attained the same standard at matriculation in 1895.
Reginald Crundall Punnett, 1875-1967
Authors: Crew Francis Albert Eley
Published: December 2006

Reginald Crundall Punnett, the eldest of the three children (♂, ♂, ♀) of George Punnett and his wife Emily Crundall, was born at Tonbridge in Kent on 20 June 1875. Both of the parental families were of Kentish stock. The name Punnett is a fairly common one in Kent and Sussex and is frequently to be encountered in the parish registers of the 16th and 17th centuries. There is a hamlet called Punnett’s Town near Heathfield in Sussex. In the 18th century a member of the family, a grower of strawberries, among other things, invented and gave his name to the small chip basket in which he sent his produce from Bromley to the London market. Punnett’s paternal grandfather settled in Tonbridge in 1827 there to found a building firm which is still in existence. This firm built much of Tonbridge School as well as many of the fine houses in the town. His maternal grandfather was the founder of a timber merchant’s firm, William Crundall & Son, in Dover, of which town his eldest son, Sir William Crundall, was mayor for no less than thirteen years. The family probably had its origin in the little village of Crundale, near Wye, and some 10 miles from Charing. It is recorded that the Charing Cross was fashioned by one Richard de Crundall and his son Robert.
Gordon Roy Cameron, 1899-1966
Authors: Oakley Cyril Leslie
Published: December 2006

Gordon Roy Cameron was born in Australia on 30 June 1899 at Echuca, a small town on the Victoria side of one of the bends on the Murray River. His father, George Cameron, was then a Methodist minister at a small village called Wamboota. George Cameron’s parents (Grandfather Cameron and his wife, earlier a Miss Miller) who came of hard-working farming stock in Dyce, Aberdeenshire, with forbears in Inverness and Fort Augustus, had left Aberdeen for Australia the day after their marriage early in the 1870’s and taken up land in Minlaton in St Vincent’s peninsula, South Australia. They had eleven children, of whom George Cameron was the eldest; he seems to have had a hard life on the farm. When he was twelve years old the Government of Victoria began opening up the Mallee area in northern Victoria, and he and his father each drove a wagon containing members of the family and their few goods over the 500 miles trek—much of it over uncleared scrub, desert and hill country—from Minlaton to the Mallee area, where they took up about a hundred acres of scrub to make a farm, later extended to some two thousand acres. There they and their neighbours built the mud house that still survived in 1920. Some fourteen years later the farm was going well, the younger children were growing up, and George Cameron, who had recently taken part in Bible Christian services and had developed a reputation as a local preacher, decided to join the Bible Christians as a candidate for the Ministry. In due course he was appointed to a circuit as a probationer in Horsham, North Victoria, where he met Emily Pascoe, whom he later married.
Max Born, 1882-1970
Authors: Kemmer Nicholas , Schlapp R.
Published: December 2006

Max Born was born on 11 December 1882 at Breslau, the capital of what was then the Prussian province of Silesia. His paternal grandfather, Marcus Born, was the first Jewish physician to be appointed district medical officer by the Prussian State. His father, Gustav Born, was a well-known embryologist who occupied a Chair in the University of Breslau, and whose contributions to embryology anticipated some modern developments in our knowledge of sex hormones, His mother, Margarete Kaufmann, came from a Breslau family in the textile business; she died when Max was only four years old. It was probably from her that he inherited his life-long love of music, and one of his treasured possessions was an album that had belonged to his mother, containing autographs of Brahms, Clara Schumann, Scharwenka, Sarasate and many other celebrated musicians. During the following four years Max and his younger sister were under the care of governesses; in 1890 his father married again, and although his second wife proved an admirable stepmother, no close bond developed between her and her two stepchildren. However, the Born home, with its atmosphere of scientific and general culture, provided a stimulating environment during Max’s formative years. His father’s friends at this time included Paul Ehrlich, the founder of chemotherapy, and the bacteriologist Albert Neisser.
Harold Davenport, 1907-1969
Authors: Halberstam H. , Burgess D. A.
Published: December 2006

Harold Davenport’s father, Percy Davenport, worked in the office of Perseverance Mill, a cotton mill in Huncoat, near Accrington. At first a clerk, he became the company secretary. He married Nancy Barnes, one of the daughters of John Barnes, the owner of the mill. Their first child, Harold, was born on 30 October 1907, their only other child Grace was born a few years later. When 10 or 11 years old, Harold started at Accrington Grammar School, and later he wrote that he had had on the whole a very happy and enjoyable time there. He discovered the Public Library, and read every work of Dickens that he could obtain. He maintained and extended his interest in the English classics throughout his life. He was much inspired by his chemistry master, Mr Ackroyd, and by his mathematics mistress, Miss Heap, ‘a lady with enthusiasm for mathematics, who paid no attention— thank God—to any regular syllabus or curriculum there may have been’. He specialized in these two subjects, and in 1924 obtained scholarships from Lancashire County and from Manchester University that enabled him to spend the next three years, from the age of 16 to 19, at Manchester University.
William Harold Pearsall, 1891-1964
Authors: Clapham Arthur Roy
Published: December 2006

William Harold Pearsall was born on 23 July 1891, at Stourbridge in Worcestershire. He came of an old Worcestershire family, some of whom ran into trouble in Cromwellian times because of their Royalist sympathies. He is said to have been the fourteenth bearer of the name William H. Pearsall. His father, William Harrison Pearsall, was a schoolmaster who moved to Dalton-in-Furness when Harold was quite a small boy to become headmaster of Broughton Road School. W. H. Pearsall senior was an excellent teacher, and Mrs T. G. Tutin writes: ‘When I was a schoolgirl in Barrow I knew people who had been pupils of the elder Pearsall in Dalton, and they still spoke of what a kind man and wonderful teacher he had been and how he had made them look at plants.’ He had very definite views on the way to bring up his own and other children. It was his belief that one should ‘never do for a child what a child can with reasonable effort do for itself’, and the playroom in the Pearsall house had a large printed notice bearing the three words THINK TRY ASK. Apart from his competence as a teacher he was also a good organist and trainer of choirs, a Methodist laypreacher and a first-class naturalist who devoted all his spare time to an intensive study of the natural history of the English Lakes. He was a member, and for a time Honorary Secretary, of the Botanical Society and Exchange Club (now the Botanical Society of the British Isles) and became a leading British expert on several genera of aquatic flowering plants and especially on the pondweeds, starworts and water buttercups, publishing many descriptions and keys. His key to British grasses was recently still in use at the Brathay Field Centre near Ambleside.
William Bertram Turrill, 1890-1961
Authors: Hubbard C. E.
Published: December 2006

The sudden death of William Bertram Turrill at his home in Richmond, Surrey, on 15 December 1961, at the age of 71, came as a great shock to his many friends and colleagues. Although his health during the previous two years had given some cause for anxiety, he appeared to be endowed with perpetual youth and enthusiasm, and tackled his daily burden of work without apparent signs of weakness. He was born on 14 June 1890, in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, the eldest of four brothers, children of William Banbury and Mary Turrill (
née
Homan). His father was the leading provision merchant and, for a long period, Alderman and sometime Mayor of Woodstock. Several of his ancestors had occupied positions of public service, but so far as is known, none was noteworthy in science. Turrill was brought up in this small country town, situated in most attractive surroundings, rich in rare and uncommon plants, an area well known to Sibthorp and many early Oxford botanists. Here he spent his boyhood, searching the woods, fields, broad green lanes, ponds and watercourses for natural history specimens, drawing inspiration and delight from each fresh discovery, and studying them in greater detail over the years, with an increasing specialization on plant-life. This bent for natural history and botany in particular was much encouraged by his mother who came of farming stock. She taught him to prepare botanical and other biological specimens and, being a good gardener, gave him a plot in which to grow a variety of flowers and vegetables. In these early days he discovered new localities for several uncommon British plants, one at least,
Helleborus viridis
, being recorded in the second edition of G. C. Druce’s
Flora of Oxfordshire
(1927).
Francis William Rogers Brambell, 1901-1970
Authors: Oakley Cyril Leslie
Published: December 2006

Francis William Rogers Brambell was born on 25 February 1901 at Combridge House, Sandycove, Co. Dublin. His family tree is best set out in diagram (see the table on the next page). As he said himself, he could not remember a time when natural history was not his chief interest, nor did he know who inspired this interest, unless it was his maternal grandfather, F. W. Rogers, who certainly encouraged it. Rock pools on the shore, the rubbish brought in by fishing boats, insects, birds and other animals absorbed much of his attention after he was five or six years old. When Brambell was eleven T. P. Le Fanu introduced him to R. M. Barrington of Fassaroe, whose influence was probably decisive in developing his bent for natural history. Brambell went with Barrington and his children on ornithological expeditions, had the free run of Barrington’s collection of bird skins, and through him got to know most of the Irish naturalists of the time. He was, Brambell says, a grand field naturalist with an extraordinary gift for inspiring young people. At thirteen Brambell started seriously collecting bird skins. He never, he says, ever had any encouragement in biology or any other branch of science from his school.
Harold Brewer Hartley, 1878-1972
Authors: Ogston Alexander George
Published: December 2006

Harold, as he liked to be called and was called by his innumerable friends, students and associates, was born on 3 September 1878, the son of Harold T. Hartley, a partner in the publishing firm of Emmot, Hartley & Co. He died on 9 September 1972, only a few days after celebrating his ninety-fourth birthday. Though he never became a public figure in the popular sense, his highly individual manner, his obiter dicta, his vast range of interests and knowledge, activities and influence, his self-confidence and drive, and his charm, combined to make him a legendary figure to the many who knew him. To judge only from the many anecdotes about him (‘Oh, what’s his name ? Begins with a G—Windaus!’) one might think him to have been a figure of comedy. Yet these were always told with affection and with respect, sometimes almost with an element of fear: he knew always so clearly what ought to be done, argued it so cogently, persuaded, almost forced, his hearer into undertaking it (a process that came to be known as ‘Hartling’) that one always wondered with what undertaking one would leave an inteview with him.
Louis Joel Mordell, 1888-1972
Authors: Cassels John William Scott
Published: December 2006

Louis Joel Mordell was born on 28 January 1888 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). His parents were recent immigrants from Lithuania. His father Phineas Mordell (1861-1934) had come over in 1881 at the age of 20 and, according to family tradition, his first task was to earn the passage money not only of his bride-to-be (Annie née Feller, 1865-1938) but of his sisters as well. Phineas Mordell had taught Hebrew in Lithuania and was later to acquire a wide reputation as a Hebrew scholar but during his first years in Philadelphia he worked at various trades while industriously pursuing his studies. Later, according to one account, he worked partly as a teacher and partly as a night watchman so as to have time for his researches: it was only in middle age that he could devote himself entirely to teaching and study. Louis was the third of a family of eight (four sons and four daughters). His oldest brother Albert was to become a member of the Philadelphia Bar and a well-known literary critic. His brother Maurice also became a member of the Philadelphia Bar and was for many years Assistant City Solicitor. The remaining brother, David, never fully recovered from gassing in the 1914-18 war.
Francis John Worsley Roughton, 1899-1972
Authors: Gibson Quentin Howieson
Published: December 2006

Francis John Worsley Roughton was born on 6 June 1899 at Kettering, and died suddenly at Cambridge on 29 April 1972. His only sister died in 1933. His father was the fifth consecutive Roughton to practise medicine in Kettering, and his family had numerous connexions among the merchants and farmers of the area Perhaps the most colourful of his forebears was Thomas Sturgeon, footman to the Duke of Rockingham who, about 1775, eloped with the Duke’s daughter, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth. Using her fortune, he set up a china factory in Rouen, in which he introduced the use of coal for firing his products (the local industry had used wood), but the venture was not a financial success and became insolvent two or three years before the beginning of the French Revolution. Sturgeon, however, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, applied for a large sum in compensation for the loss of the business, and did in act receive some £6000, a small fraction of his original claim for £40 000, but still a stately sum in those times. He showed great perseverance in pressing the claim and the papers show that the matter finally engaged the attention of the Duke of Wellington who suggested settlement to be rid of the affair. The connexion with Sturgeon was that a daughter of his was one of Roughton s great-great-gran mothers. There was an oral family tradition, roughly as described, and about 1955 it occurred to Roughton to pursue the story. The project expanded into a continuing hobby which occupied his leisure hours for some years, and led to expeditions to Rouen to consult the voluminous French archives, as well as to many hours of library work with the English papers, much of the correspondence of Sturgeon and Henrietta with the Duke of Rockingham having survived.
Satyendra Nath Bose, 1 January 1894 - 4 February 1974
Authors: Mehra Jagdish
Published: December 2006

S. N. Bose was one of India’s most eminent scientists. Bose’s achievements in scientific research were not as sustained or as numerous as those of his contemporaries like C. V. Raman,(1)Meghnad Saha(2)and K. S. Krishnan,(3)together with whom he became a pioneer of education and research in modern physics in India. But the circumstances of Bose’s intellectual development were unusual and he was destined to play an inspiring role in the scientific and cultural life of his country. Bose’s novel derivation of Planck’s radiation formula, the only significant contribution which he made to physics, came at a turning point between the old quantum theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld and the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Dirac and Schrodinger. Bose sent his paper early in June 1924 to Albert Einstein who recognized its merit, translated it into German, and had it published in theZeitschrift für Physik[6]. During the summer of 1924 Einstein also received, from Paul Langevin in Paris, a copy of the doctoral thesis of Louis de Broglie(4)dealing with the wave aspects of matter. Bose’s work became the point of departure for Einstein’s investigation on the quantum theory of monatomic ideal gases and ‘gas degeneracy’, leading to his prediction of the condensation phenomenon.(5)Einstein recognized the importance of de Broglie’s ideas and also made use of them in his investigation.(5)In turn, these papers of de Broglie and Einstein stimulated Schrodinger(6)to develop his wave mechanics. The ‘Bose-Einstein statistics’ immediately fitted into the framework of quantum mechanics and enshrined Bose’s name in physics for ever. Bose lived the legend of this fateful encounter with Einstein throughout the rest of his life.
William Brown, 17 February 1888 - 18 January 1975
Authors: Garrett Stephen Denis
Published: December 2006

William Brown died peacefully after a short illness in Manchester on 18 January 1975, aged 86 years. A man of small physical stature, he had been richly endowed with both mental and physical energy, though these and his other exceptional attributes were never flaunted; he disliked self-revelation and despised self-aggrandisement. All of his major experimental work, on fungal physiology and on the physiology of parasitism of plants by fungal pathogens, was published within a period of 14 years, from 1915 to 1928; thereafter he continued to influence the development of this subject, partly through the work of his research students in the Department of Botany at the Imperial College (University of London) and partly through a series of presidential addresses and reviews. Although his personal research on these problems had covered a period of not more than 17 years, his output both of experimental data and of new concepts has influenced, more powerfully than those of any other mycologist, the thinking of his successors in mycological plant pathology. The foundations of this subject had been laid by the renowned German mycologist, Heinrich Anton de Bary (1831-88), who died in the year that William Brown was born. Brown was de Bary’s natural heir in this country, and the influence of his work is likely to be acknowledged as equally powerful and equally as long lasting.
Hans Arnold Heilbronn, 8 October 1908 - 28 April 1975
Authors: Cassels John William Scott , Fröhlich Albrecht
Published: December 2006

Hans Arnold Heilbronn was born in Berlin on 8 October 1908. No doubt, his home and upbringing was one typical for the cultured German-Jewish middle class, which had in those days been thoroughly assimilated into German life. In many small ways Heilbronn’s habits, his directness, his correct manner—in the true sense of the word—his strong, genuine sense of propriety, his apparent stiffness, as well as his accent, bore witness to his German background From 1914 to 1926 the boy attended the Realgymnasium Berlin-Schmargenhof, a school comparable to an English grammar school, the prefix ‘Real’ indicating emphasis on the sciences and on modern languages, rather than the classics. In 1926 he entered university, reading mathematics, physics and chemistry, but evidently his interests veered more and more towards mathematics. As customary in Germany, the young student moved around, first attending his home university in Berlin, then going on to Freiburg and ending up in Göttingen, at that time the undisputed centre of German mathematics. One would suppose that he fitted well into the accepted pattern of student life in the Germany of those days. It was only the rebels who abhorred duelling—Heilbronn carried a duelling scar from his Göttingen days throughout his life.
William Vallance Douglas Hodge, 17 June 1903 - 7 July 1975
Authors: Atiyah Michael Francis
Published: December 2006

Sir William Hodge, formerly Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the University of Cambridge, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Physical Secretary of the Royal Society, was for over forty years a leading figure in British mathematical life. He died in July 1975 at the age of 72.
Roderick Oliver Redman, 17 July 1905 - 6 March 1975
Authors: Griffin R. F. , Woolley Richard Van Der Riet
Published: December 2006

Roderick Oliver Redman was born on 17 July 1905 at Rodborough, Stroud, Gloucestershire, the son of Roderick George Redman and Elizabeth Miriam Annie Stone. He was the only boy in the family, having three younger sisters. His father owned and ran a small outfitter’s shop, normally employing two assistants, in George Street, Stroud. The shop had belonged to
his
father before him, and its speciality was made-to-measure tailoring and especially shirt-making. Redman senior’s interest, however, lay not in his business but in his church work. He was a Nonconformist with a fine faith, which found its greatest practical realization in a lifetime of enthusiastic service through the local Baptist church in John Street, Stroud. His love of music—which he transmitted to his family—was accompanied by an exceptional talent which he placed at the disposal of the church, where he was organist from 1897 to 1907 and choirmaster from 1900 to 1924. Mbreover, he was a teacher at the Sunday School from the age of 17, and Superintendent from 1913 to 1937 5 and he was the church treasurer from 1925 to 1951. Thus Redman was brought up in a strongly religious atmosphere—to quote his own words, ‘in what I can only describe as the best of the Puritan tradition, to which I believe British science owes more than it has ever cared to acknowledge’.
Otto Robert Frisch, 1 October 1904 - 22 September 1979
Authors: Peierls Rudolf Ernst
Published: December 2006

O. R. Frisch brought to physics the approach of a craftsman. He enjoyed, above all, doing experiments with his own hands, preferably on apparatus of his own design, aimed at simple basic questions. This approach required the ability to think about the important problems of physics simply, but deeply, an ability underlying the two contributions for which he was best known: his share in the explanation of the fission process and that in the recognition of the feasibility of an atomic weapon. The craftsman was also something of an artist, not only in his love for music and his skill and taste as a pianist and a violinist, but in the use of language, which made him an outstanding expositor. There were many problems, in physics and elsewhere, which he regarded as interesting, and these he pursued persistently, in depth, until he saw convincing answers in simple terms, and he evidently enjoyed himself in doing so. He equally firmly refused to become involved with matters other than those which he had decided were of interest to him.
Dudley Maurice Newitt, 28 April 1894 - 14 March 1980
Authors: Ubbelohde Alfred Rene Jean Paul
Published: December 2006

The interleaved texture of human growth can sometimes be followed back to more than one kind of early experience, and often stems from more than one genetic element. Subtle and continuous elements affecting the life of Dudley Newitt came from his youthful experience and from his parentage. These had superimposed upon them uncommon events which helped to segment his life into strongly marked periods. In his origins Newitt was basically a Fen-man. His father’s great grandfather was a moderately prosperous farmer in Chatteris on the Isle of Ely, of which he was at one time High Constable. Dudley’s tenacity and toughness were characteristic of the Fens, though he was not without a romantic streak. When we visited Ely and its cathedral together in the 1950s it was not fanciful in me to observe the quickening of his countenance. But his own grandfather had left the Fens in search of his fortune when barely grown up—walking to London, eating vegetables from the fields. He married the daughter of an ironmonger in Ware in whose shop he found his first job on leaving the Fens. In typical Victorian entrepreneurial pattern for the industrious apprentice, he subsequently built racecourses, managed hotels, speculated in land in England and in South Africa, made a small fortune and lost two. Newitt’s maternal grandparents were a craftsman in Windsor who is reputed to have made the leather upholstery for Queen Victoria’s state coaches, and the daughter of a small farmer from the Welsh border country.
Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, 9 November 1897 - 7 June 1978
Authors: Dainton Frederick Sydney , Thrush Brian Arthur
Published: December 2006

Ronald George Wreyford Norrish was born in Cambridge on 9 November 1897 and died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital there on 7 June 1978. He was educated at the Perse School and then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and apart from his service in World War spent his entire life in Cambridge. For nearly 30 years he was Professor of Physical Chemistry in the University. He was one of the pioneers of photochemistry and also carried out much research on chain reactions and polymer chemistry. For his work in developing flash photolysis as a means of studying rapid chemical reactions he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in his seventieth year.
Egon Sharpe Pearson, 11 August 1895 - 12 June 1980
Authors: Bartlett Maurice Stevenson
Published: December 2006

Egon Sharpe Pearson was born on 11 August 1895. Family background is often an important conditioning influence on any subsequent career, and this was obviously so in his case; it is thus very relevant to recall something of his parents’ life and circumstances. His father Karl was born in London on 27 March 1857, of Yorkshire descent, Karl’s father William Pearson being a barrister and Q .C. Karl (in spite of evidence of delicate health during his schooldays) proved to have, like his father before him, an exceptional capacity for hard work, which resulted in his being Third Wrangler at Cambridge in 1879, being called to the Bar in 1881, and spending a good deal of time in the intervening period in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he studied anything and everything. Such activity was not without purpose, and could be identified with Karl Pearson’s passion for what he termed the ethic of free thought, in which scientific enquiry was but one facet.
Harry Hemley Plaskett, 5 July 1893 - 26 January 1980
Authors: McCrea William Hunter
Published: December 2006

H. H. Plaskett, Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford, 1932-60, was a world pioneer in modern rigorous observational astrophysics in a golden age when modern instruments were providing tremendously improved astronomical spectra, and modern atomic theory was making it possible to extract vastly richer information from them. Of course, ‘modern’ here means starting more than 60 years ago. During his long career Plaskett contributed notably and lastingly to astronomy— especially British astronomy— in three important respects: he made his own classical contributions to stellar and solar astronomy; he stimulated early moves for the body of British astronomers to have great large telescopes of its own; he trained and inspired a long succession of young astronomers who went on to hold important positions in astronomy all over the world.
Richard Tecwyn Williams, 20 February 1909 - 29 December 1979
Authors: Neuberger Albert , Smith R. L.
Published: December 2006

The study of foreign compound metabolism is now a well established discipline with important ramifications into pharmacology and toxicology. For its origins one must look to the early part of the nineteenth century and to the work of German organic chemists such as Liebig, Wohler and Keller. They were fascinated by observations that organic substances such as benzoic acid, when introduced into the animal body, underwent chemical reactions similar to those they witnessed occurring in the test tube. The subject rapidly developed during the latter part of the nineteenth century under the influence of German physiological chemists such as Baumann, von Mering, Jaffe and Schmiedeberg. Indeed by 1900 the major pathways of foreign compound metabolism had been described as had been also the concept of ‘Entgiftung’ (detoxication). A factor responsible for this rapid development was the emergence of the new chemical industry manufacturing both heavy chemicals and pharmaceuticals such as acetanilide, aspirin and phenacetin. There was a need to establish a chemical basis to understand the toxic effects of these substances and one adopted approach to this was to study the ‘de-toxification’ of such substances in the animal body. The idea of the importance of metabolic studies in understanding toxic mechanisms is not therefore a new one.
Harry Godwin, 9 May 1901 - 12 August 1985
Authors: West Richard Gilbert
Published: December 2006

Harry Godwin died on 12 August 1985 at the age of 84. His lifetime saw both the transformation of plant ecology to a leading experimental subject in the plant sciences and the related development of Quaternary research as an interdisciplinary science subject to, and contributing to, botany, zoology, geology, archaeology and geography. In both these developments Godwin was a pioneer and took a very major part, providing active and enthusiastic leadership, with valuable discipline, throughout his long career at Cambridge. His work led him to close friendships, both with his professional colleagues and students and with a wider range of researchers he worked with in the field. Few of his associates did not benefit from his readily given advice and help over the years. Godwin greatly relished the life and relationships he found at C am bridge, an enjoyment he mulled over in his last book
Cambridge and Clare
(55)*, an autobiography that celebrates his personal and scientific life, and that greatly enlarges this memoir.
Richard Maling Barrer. 16 June 1910–12 September 1996
Authors: Rees Lovat V. C.
Published: December 2006

Richard Maling Barrer, the founding father of zeolite chemistry and a dominant figure in membrane science, died peacefully at his home in Chislehurst, Kent, on Thursday 12 September 1996 after a six year battle with cancer. The international zeolite community has lost its most important member.

Richard Barrer was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on the 16 June 1910. His father, Thomas Robert Barrer, was born in Ireland in 1863, while his mother, Nina Agatha Rosamond (nee Greensill), was born in Picton, New Zealand, in 1879. Richard Barrer was one of four children: Moyna Ethel, born 1906; Bryan Amherst, born 1908; R.M.B.; and Patrick Roberts, born 1914.
Oscar Victor Sayer Heath. 26 July 1903—16 June 1997
Authors: Mansfield Terry A.
Published: December 2006

O.V.S. ‘Peter’ Heath was born in London on 26 July 1903. In childhood, he encountered many problems, for he was often ill and he found learning difficult. At the time he may well have been regarded as ‘backward’. Now, with hindsight, we would say that his was a case of remarkable late development. His biographical notes (over 130 pages in his precise handwriting, with a note of apology at the front: ‘The notes are intended to assist the unfortunate Fellow who has to write me up‘) describe his early schooling and the subsequent private tuition which became necessary because of undiagnosed illness. He learned to read at the age of seven, but his reading remained slow throughout his life because he frequently needed to re-read passages. However, he did then have accurate recall of much of the subject matter. His father (Sir Frank Heath, 1863–1946, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), 1916–27) had been a professor of English literature at Bedford College, and Peter had access to a vast collection of books, of which he took much advantage. He also took music lessons and learned to appreciate great music from his mother's piano playing, particularly the Beethoven piano sonatas.
Harold Horace Hopkins. 6 December 1918-22 October 1994
Authors: McCombie Charles W. , Smith Joseph C.
Published: December 2006

Harold Horace Hopkins was born in Leicester, the last of the six children of William E. Hopkins, ‘a hand for a small baker’, and Teresa F. Hopkins. Throughout his childhood and youth the family experienced the hardships of the 1920s and 1930s, with his father unemployed for much of the time. But his efforts to get a good, broad education were encouraged, particularly by his mother, whose strong socialist principles incorporated a great respect for education. During his years at a local state elementary school he attended various Sunday schools (attendance was required, but no particular denomination was specified), sang in a church choir, had free organ lessons from the organist, won an adult verse competition when aged nine and went to concerts of the Leicester Symphony Orchestra.
Muhammad Abdus Salam, K. B. E.. 29 January 1926–21 November 1996
Authors: Kibble T. W. B.
Published: December 2006

Abdus Salam was one of the leading theoretical physicists of his generation, the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize for science. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, founding Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, and founder and first President of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He was also a warm and generous man, who cared passionately about the inequities between the rich countries and the poor, and argued tirelessly for the importance of science to developing countries.
John Stewart Bell. 28 July 1928 – 1 October 1990
Authors: Burke Philip G. , Percival Ian C.
Published: December 2006

John Stewart Bell, the second of four children of John and Annie Bell (née Brownlee), was born in Belfast on 28 July 1928. The families of both his parents were Protestant, his father's family coming from Fermanagh and his mother's from Tyrone. Originally, Annie Bell's family had come from Scotland and John Bell's second Christian name was that of her family. At home, John Bell was always known as Stewart, only becoming John when he went to university. John Bell's family were not well off, his father being sent out to work before he was twelve years old to help the family finances. However, John Bell's father and mother always impressed on John, his elder sister Ruby and his two younger brothers David and Robert the importance of education. Later, David, through evening study, became a qualified electrical engineer and a professor at Lambton College in Canada, writing several very successful textbooks; Robert is now a successful Northern Ireland businessman.
Edred John Henry Corner, C.B.E. 12 January 1906 — 14 September 1996
Authors: Mabberley David J.
Published: December 2006

John Corner was one of the most colourful, and controversial, biologists of the century. Edred John Henry Corner was born on 12 January 1906 at 37 Harley Street, London, W.1., son of Edred Moss Corner M.A., M.B., M.C., F.R.C.S. (d. 1950), surgeon and surgical author, and his wife Henrietta,
nëe Henderson
(d. 1966).
Franz Daniel Kahn. 13 May 1926 — 8 February 1998
Authors: Dyson J.E. , Lynden Bell D.
Published: December 2006

Franz Daniel Kahn was born in Nüremberg, Germany, on 13 May 1926. He came of a quite well–to–do German–Jewish family. His parents were Siegfried and Grete Kahn (née Mann) and his father was a successful manufacturer of children's toys. (The influence of his father's occupation seems to have lasted all of Franz's life, although he did try to justify his many visits to Hamley's in London as being for the benefit of his children and, later, his grandchildren.)
Helio Gelli Pereira. 23 September 1918 — 16 August 1994
Authors: Skehel John , Tyrrell D.A.J.
Published: December 2006

Dr Helio Pereira, who was known internationally for his work on the viruses of vertebrates, died on 16 August 1994 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was born on 23 September 1918 in the small town of Petropolis in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where his father Raul Pereira Geronymo had been born. His grandparents were Portuguese and came from the Azores islands to set up a modest grocery business in Petropolis. His mother's family originated from Italy. His maternal grandfather had earned his living from eel fishing but in 1893 came to Brazil and started a cabinet-making business, which grew into a prosperous furniture factory and a chain of furniture shops run by members of the family.

Helio lived for the first five years of his life in Petropolis, the site of the Imperial summer palace, which was then a small summer mountain resort near Rio de Janeiro with a permanent population largely of German, Italian and Portuguese descent. Of that period he remembered mainly the life in his mother's family. This centred on the patriarchal figure of his grandfather and comprised a close-knit family of twelve sons and daughters and their wives, husbands and children. The family followed Italian customs to a large extent but these were influenced by the more easy-going Brazilian way of life, and so the general atmosphere was light-hearted and cheerful.
Martin Schwarzschild. 31 May 1912 — 10 April 1997
Authors: Mestel L.
Published: December 2006

Martin Schwarzschild, theoretical and observational astronomer, was a worthy son to Karl Schwarzschild, the eminent father whom he hardly remembered. Martin was a world leader in the theory of stellar structure and evolution and of galactic structure, and he pioneered the use of space telescopes to obtain sharp photographs from above the Earth's fluctuating atmosphere. His versatility, transparent personal integrity, enthusiasm for ideas and skill in communication made him a very effective advisor on scientific matters, both national and international.
Thomas Stanley Westoll. 3 July 1912—19 September 1995
Authors: Patterson Colin , Fortey R.A.
Published: December 2006

Stanley Westoll was a vertebrate palaeontologist and anatomist, and a geologist. He is best known for important and innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods, but also made substantial contributions in geology, especially on Devonian and Carboniferous stratigraphy in northern Britain.
Sir Ernest Gordon Cox, K.B.E. 24 April 1906 — 23 June 1996
Authors: Cruickshank D.W.J.
Published: December 2006

Gordon Cox, who died in 1996 at the age of 90, had two distinct careers. The first, as a crystallographer and structural chemist, lasted from 1927, when he joined Sir William Bragg's group at the Royal Institution, to 1960, when he left the University of Leeds. He was a pioneer of three-dimensional methods in X-ray structure analysis. From 1960 to 1971 he was the highly regarded secretary of the Agricultural Research Council.

Cox was born on 24 April 1906 at Pretoria Cottage, Southdown, Twerton, in Somerset, where his father was a market gardener. Three years later his sister Christine was born. A third child, Kenneth, died in infancy. His father, Ernest Henry Cox, was born in 1884. He outlived two wives, married a third in 1941 and died in 1987 at the age of 103. Gordon's mother, Rosina Ring, was twelve years older than his father. They had married at Claverton, near Bath, on 29 April 1905. Rosina, one of many children of a chef, had been sent with two of her siblings to Canada to work on a farm in Ontario in the 1880s. She returned in 1895, and her son Herbert Moffat was born on her return to England. Gordon's family consisted of this elder half-brother, whom he worshipped, and the younger sister, with whom he often quarrelled. His mother often told him of the harsh life in Canada but she had also had some enjoyment there. She died in 1931.
Sir (Frederick) Charles Frank, O.B.E. 6 March 1911 — 5 April 1998
Authors: Nabarro F.R.N. , Nye J.F.
Published: December 2006

Sir Charles Frank will be remembered both for his work in Air Ministry Intelligence in World War II in combating the enemy bomber offensive, and for his work in pure science. His most enduring scientific legacy is his work on crystal growth, liquid crystals and on the role of dislocations in crystals. He was also the first to suggest that mesons could cause cold nuclear fusion.
George Rankin Irwin. 26 February 1907 — 9 October 1998
Authors: Wells Alan A.
Published: December 2006

In the search for a criterion for the fracture of brittle materials by crack extension, George Irwin first identified the linear elastic stress intensity as a quantitative measure of the associated mathematical singularity, and then laid the foundation of a relevant stress analysis system. This permitted the significance of increased fracture toughness, section thickness and dynamic effects to be established.

There was much initial scepticism in the engineering and metallurgical communities, eventually countered successfully by sustained research and patient argument. Peer acceptance led in 1957 to the formation of the E24 Committee of the American Society for Testing and Materials, and the subsequent creation of a valuable series of handbooks, so that within a further decade linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) had been additionally and successfully applied to fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. The definition and standardization of measurement specimen shapes and testing procedures opened the way to the development of strong metallic and non-metallic materials with improved fracture toughness properties, thereby leading to safer structures with improved performance. Despite cumulative complexities, fracture mechanics is now associated with a vast published literature and is applied extensively.
Joseph Needham, C.H. 9 December 1900 — 24 March 1995
Authors: Gurdon J.B. , Rodbard Barbara
Published: December 2006

The number of people who are C.H., F.R.S. and F.B.A. can be counted on one finger of one hand. Joseph Needham's death on 24 March 1995 leaves no living person in this category. Not surprisingly, therefore, for someone of his distinction, his life has been reviewed in at least one book, in many articles and in several obituaries. Prominent among these very professional accounts of Needham's life are the following: Abir–Am (1987, 1988) Haraway (1976) and most interestingly Holorenshaw (1973), an account by Joseph Needham of himself. Rather than attempt to précis or summarize these accounts, we have chosen to address this memoir to particular aspects of the life of such an unusual polymath.
Henry George Thode, M.B.E. 10 September 1910 — 22 March 1997
Authors: Clarke W.B. , Crocket J.H. , Gillespie R.J. , Krouse H.R. , Shaw D.M. , Schwarcz H.P.
Published: December 2006

Henry George Thode was one of Canada's most distinguished physical scientists, internationally known for his work in the fields of geochemistry and nuclear chemistry. He did much of the pioneering work on the separation and concentration of stable isotopes, and made seminal studies of the natural variations in the isotopic composition of the elements in nature, particularly sulphur. Morever, he was the principal force behind the development of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, from a small church-affiliated liberal arts college with 600 students to one of Canada's leading universities with a renowned medical school and internationally recognized science and engineering faculties.