bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lewis Leigh Fermor, 1880-1954
Authors: Crookshank H. , Auden J. B.
Published: December 2006

Lewis Leigh Fermor died on 24 May 1954, at his home in Horsell, Surrey. He was born on 18 September 1880, the eldest of six children of Lewis Fermor and his wife Maria James. His father, a bank clerk in the London Joint Stock Bank, was obliged to retire prematurely due to ill health, and as a result the education of the family was a major problem. The young Fermor was taught by his mother up to the age of seven but was sent to the Goodrich Road Board School when the family moved to Dulwich. During the first term his education cost 4d. per week but by the following term elementary education had become free, and from this time his parents had nothing more to pay towards the education of their eldest son. From this school, to which Fermor always paid high tribute for the excellence of the teaching, he obtained a scholarship to Wilson’s Grammar School, Camberwell, and here he was fortunate in having the late Sir Percy Nunn as science master. It was largely due to the encouragement given by Nunn and Sir Thomas Kirke Rose (a cousin of Fermor who was at that time Chemist and Assayer at the Mint) that Fermor decided to try for a National Scholarship to the Royal College of Science and thereby to enter the Royal School of Mines, and work for an Associateship in Metallurgy. The competition for these scholarships was severe, and Nunn warned him that he would have little chance of success unless he was prepared to undertake a special course of additional reading which would have to last two years. A scheme was drawn up whereby he was to rise at 5 o’clock each morning, take a cold bath, do two hours’ work before breakfast, work another two hours in the evening, and always be in bed by 9.30 p.m. In his later years in some autobiographical notes which he wrote for the interest and amusement of his wife, he mentions that there was no hardship in this. The hardship was in the summer, turning into bed whilst the brothers and sisters were still out in the garden. Fermor kept to this regime loyally and was rewarded for his perseverance by obtaining his scholarship and entering the Royal School of Mines in October 1898. Here he obtained a first class in each year’s course and won the Murchison Medal for Geology, a prize of books to the value of £15, and secured his Associateship of the Royal School of Mines in metallurgy.
William Joscelyn Arkell, 1904-1958
Authors: Cox Leslie Reginald
Published: December 2006

W. J. Arkell, the youngest of a family of seven, was born at Highworth, Wilts., on 9 June 1904. His father, James Arkell, was junior partner with his brother Thomas in Arkell’s Brewery, Kingsdown, near Swindon, a prosperous business founded by their father, John Arkell. Thomas Arkell died in 1919 at the age of 84, and James (the youngest of a family of 13) then became head of the firm until his death in 1926 at the age of 74. The family is believed to have immigrated at the time of William of Orange, and to have taken its name, from Arkel, in Holland; and until John Arkell started the brewery business its members had been mostly farmers. W. J. Arkell’s mother, Laura Jane Arkell, was one of four children of a London solicitor, Augustus William Rixon, all of whom attained the age of 85 or more. She was an artist of considerable ability, as was also her brother, W. A. Rixon, of Northleach. A deeply rooted love for the English countryside influenced Arkell from an early age. Alone or with a brother he explored every land, spinney, hedge and ditch around Highworth, collecting insects, snails, plants and fossils. The Diptera were his special interest. The family summer holidays, always spent at Swanage, afforded opportunities for the Dorset coast and interior to be explored with equal thoroughness, on foot or by bicycle.
Arthur James Ewins, 1882-1958
Authors: Dale Henry Hallett
Published: December 2006

Arthur James Ewins was born in Norwood in 1882, his father being a signalman on what was then the South Eastern Railway. The increasing value of the estate of the old Dulwich College (‘Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift’) had enabled its Governors to found, in addition, a modern secondary school, Alleyn’s School, in that neighbourhood. Ewins obtained his first important educational opportunity by winning a scholarship giving him entry to this school, at a time when its Headmaster was Dr H. B. Baker, F.R.S., who later became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the University of Oxford. By the time Ewins left school, therefore, in 1899, he had had a better opportunity than most lads of 17 in those days, to obtain a good grounding in chemistry, making him ready for a career in that subject. He left school, in fact, to accept such an opportunity at The Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, which had then recently been established in that part of London, at Brockwell Hall—a former manor house of which most of the estate had already become the public Brockwell Park, leaving the house and a few acres of land available to the Wellcome Laboratories for the remaining years of the lease.
Henry Lewis Guy, 1887-1956
Authors: Stanier William Arthur
Published: December 2006

Sir Henry Lewis Guy was born at Penarth, near Cardiff, on 18 June 1887, and died on 20 July 1956, aged 69 years. He began his career as a pupil of the late T. Hurry Riches, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Taff Vale Railway Company, in 1903. Studying at the Technical School, he obtained a scholarship to the University of Wales and Monmouthshire and for three years he studied under Professor A. C. Elliott, who was the head of the Engineering Department. Guy took a triple course of Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering and he obtained the University Diploma in all three branches, which was a feat indicative of his diligence and capacity for study. In his early days, he concentrated so much on technology that he did not matriculate and this prevented him from taking the University of Wales degree of engineering. This was made good in later years when he was honoured with a Doctor of Science degree. Guy was one of the outstanding engineering students at Cardiff. Each year he carried off many of the high prize awards. He was a deep thinker and absorbed in technical progress and although attracted to locomotive engineering he realized, even as a student, that the steam locomotive and even reciprocating engines did not offer a great future for more than a limited number of mechanical engineers and even as a student he made up his mind that the prime mover of the future was the steam turbine.
Douglas Rayner Hartree, 1897-1958
Authors: Darwin Charles Galton
Published: December 2006

Douglas Rayner Hartree was born in Cambridge on 27 March 1897, and he died also in Cambridge on 12 February 1958. His genealogy furnishes an admirable illustration of the principle of heredity in ability, for he could claim to inherit many of his gifts and his scientific tastes from one or other of his parents. His father, who was a grandson of the famous Samuel Smiles, was for many years on the teaching staff of the Engineering Laboratory at Cambridge. He had retired from these duties in 1913, but on the advent of war in 1914 he took up work in the team led by Professor A. V. Hill which was studying anti-aircraft gunnery and cognate matters. This brought his son Douglas into the same team, and started him on the lines of doing numerical computation. After the war William Hartree co-operated with A. V. Hill in physiological experiments for a time, and then joined his son in numerical work. This he continued almost till his death in 1943, but the relationship was an exceptional one, because the son was the leader and the father ranked as the junior in this work. His mother, originally Eva Rayner, was daughter of a prominent physician in Stockport, and sister of E. H. Rayner who for many years was Superintendent of the Electricity Division of the National Physical Laboratory. She herself was active in public service and in various women’s organizations. She was at one time Mayor of Cambridge and she also served for a time as President of the National Council of Women.
George Barker Jeffery, 1891-1957
Authors: Titchmarsh Edward Charles
Published: December 2006

George Barker Jeffery was born on 9 May 1891. He came from a Quaker family, and remained a Quaker all his life. He was educated at Strand School, King’s College, and Wilson’s Grammar School, Camberwell. In 1909 he entered University College, London, to begin a course, common at that time, of two years at the college to be followed by one year’s training as a teacher. He was not an entrance scholar, but his work in mathematics showed so much promise that he was elected to a scholarship in mathematics at the end of his first year. In 1911 he entered the London Day Training College for his teacher’s training. It was there that he met Elizabeth Schofield, whom he married in 1915. However he had already commenced mathematical research, and he read his first paper (1)* before the Royal Society in June 1912, the month following his twenty-first birthday. His later career showed how great an impression had been made upon him by his year’s training as a teacher. However, after it was over he returned to University College as a research student and assistant to L. N. G. Filon, who was then Professor of Applied Mathematics. He always had a great admiration for Filon, though this was not uncritical, as is shown by the obituary notices which he later wrote for the Royal Society, the London Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association. In 1914 Filon went away on active service, and Jeffery, aged 23, was left in charge of the Department of Applied Mathematics. In 1916 he was elected a Fellow of University College. However, as a Quaker he had a conscientious objection to performing military service, so that he could not do this, nor was he allowed to remain at the college. In 1916 he spent a short time in prison as a ‘conscientious objector’, though later he was allowed to undertake ‘work of national importance’. In 1919, when the war was over, he returned to the college, again as an assistant to Filon. In spite of all the difficulties of the war period he had, as the list of his publications shows, maintained a steady output of original work. In 1921 he was promoted to the grade of University Reader in Mathematics.
Ernest Laurence Kennaway, 1881-1958
Authors: Cook James Wilfred
Published: December 2006

The Personal Record which the subject of this memoir deposited with the Royal Society consisted of little more than a brief statement of his qualifications, appointments, and distinctions, and an incomplete list of publications, such as might have been submitted as part of an application for a post. This is characteristic of the self-effacement which marked the whole career of a very remarkable man. Few knew him well; those who did felt a great affection for him. For some brief information about his childhood and youth I am indebted to his sister, Mrs Ethel Kay, and his fellow-undergraduate, Dr H. C. Squires. His major scientific contributions have had a decisive and far-reaching influence on the history of cancer research. During much of his life he was handicapped by ill-health. In fact, nearly 30 years ago, his then chief had already written him off, and was casting around for a possible successor, at a time when Kennaway’s most important work was only beginning. Few can have achieved so much under such adverse conditions. Kennaway was born in Exeter on 23 May 1881, the son of Laurence James Kennaway. His grandfather, William Kennaway, who was twice Mayor of Exeter, played a leading part in combating the cholera epidemic in that city in 1832. William Kennaway sent all his four sons and two of his five daughters to New Zealand, beginning in 1851. In 1869 the two sisters sailed for home in a ship which met with an unknown fate; the youngest son, Charles, was washed overboard and drowned in a voyage from New Zealand in 1872; some details of this voyage are given by Sir Ernest in a short article published in
St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal
in 1947.
Cecil Henry Desch, 1874-1958
Authors: McCance Andrew
Published: December 2006

At the beginning of this century the study of metals and their alloys was given a new interest and direction by the work of Floris Osmond in France and Roberts-Austen in this country.
Thomas Lydwell Eckersley, 1886-1959
Authors: Ratcliffe John Ashworth
Published: December 2006

Thomas Lydwell Eckersley was born on 27 December 1886 in London. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Henry Huxley who was at one time President of the Royal Society. From the age of 2 1/2 to 6 Eckersley lived in Mexico where his father, who was a civil engineer, was engaged in building a railway. In his early life Eckersley was interested in engineering and in scientific devices and he had a desire to emulate his father and to build bridges. At the age of 11 he went to Bedales School where he came under the influence of an able teacher of mathematics who laid the foundations of his life-long interest in the subject. He left school at the early age of 15 and went to University College London, to read engineering, but he found he was not really as interested in the practical aspects of the work as he had at one time supposed, and he achieved only a Second Class degree. On leaving the University he went to the National Physical Laboratory where he found himself working under Albert Campbell on the behaviour of iron under the influence of alternating magnetic fields. Through this work he became interested in magnetic detectors for radio waves, and he did a good deal of experimenting with radio apparatus at his own house. His first paper was published, jointly with Campbell, on the effect of Pupin loading coils on waves travelling along transmission lines.
Alexander Gibb, 1872-1958
Authors: Harrison G. P. , Pippard Alfred John Sutton
Published: December 2006

Alexander Gibb was one of those fortunate men in whom family tradition, natural gifts and personal bent appear to have agreed from the beginning as to the choice of a career. His great-great-grandfather, William Gibb of Gartcows, belonged to that first great generation of civil engineers which included James Brindley and John Smeaton. His great-grandfather, John, was one of Thomas Telford’s most trusted deputies and a founder member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His grandfather, Alexander, was a pupil of Telford and associate of Robert Stevenson. Elis father founded the contracting firm of Easton Gibb & Son and was engaged on railway construction in Scotland when the subject of this memoir was born at Broughty Ferry on 12 February 1872, the fourth of eleven children. Even at his preparatory school Alexander showed signs of unusual capabilities. Gardening was encouraged; and young Gibb’s operations, assisted by a system of forced labour among his juniors, were such as to enable him to sell gravel to his schoolmates for making paths, and later to supply water for irrigation. Ultimately they provided a means of egress outside the school boundaries.
Claude Dixon Gibb, 1898-1959
Authors: Hinton Christopher
Published: December 2006

Unlike most of the men whose lives and work are recorded in these biographical memoirs Claude Gibb was not primarily a scientist; he was an engineer, a business man and an administrator. Claude Dixon Gibb was born in Adelaide on 29 June 1898; throughout his life he had a trace of Australian accent and his boundless energy, his self-confidence and his amiable pugnacity were typically Australian. He loved speed both in business and in movement; in his own notes for the Royal Society he thought it worthwhile to record that he was riding horses at the age of three, motor-cycling at the age of fourteen, motoring at sixteen and flying at nineteen! Gibb went to Alberton School until he was eleven years old, when he won a scholarship to the Lefevre High School. From there another scholarship took him to the South Australian School of Mines where he studied mechanical and electrical engineering from 1914 to 1917. While working there he got workshop experience on the outside staff of Gibb & Miller, a firm of constructional engineers in which his elder brother was a partner.
John Jackson, 1887-1958
Authors: Spencer Jones Harold
Published: December 2006

John Jackson was born on 11 February 1887, the fifth of eight children born to Matthew Jackson and Jeannie (
née
Millar). His father was a skilled mechanic, a craftsman who could have risen if he had not preferred practical work to directing and supervising other workmen. His parents were keen on education and encouraged their children to take advantage of such opportunities for higher education as were available. Jackson’s elder brother, Robert, after obtaining the M.A. degree at the University of Glasgow, became classical master at Paisley Grammar School. Jackson’s early education was at the North Public School, Paisley, 1892-1899, and then at the Camphill Public School, 1899-1900. At the age of 13 he entered the Paisley Grammar School, where he took a curriculum including French and German as well as science subjects, but not including Latin or Greek. There had evidently at that time been no intention of proceeding to the University, as Latin (or Greek) was then compulsory for the entrance examination. When Jackson left school in 1903 at the age of 16, he had done well in the science subjects and in particular in chemistry. He decided to try for the entrance examination at the University of Glasgow despite his ignorance of the classics. He had done a little Latin before entering the Paisley Grammar School, and during the summer holidays of 1903 he studied hard to improve his knowledge of the subject. He managed to pass the entrance examination for the University sufficiently well to be awarded a £25 bursary. At that time the Carnegie Trust for Scottish Universities provided funds to pay the class fees which made it financially possible for Jackson to enter the University. He had considered chemistry to be his best subject and had intended to continue its study as his principal subject at the University.
Douglas Mawson, 1882 - 1958
Authors: Alderman A. R. , Tilley Cecil Edgar
Published: December 2006

Douglas Mawson, Antarctic explorer, geologist and a leading scientific figure in the Australian Commonwealth, died in Adelaide on 15 October 1958 in his seventy-seventh year. He was born at Shipley, near Bradford, on 5 May 1882, the son of Robert Ellis Mawson and Margaret Ann Mawson of Otley, Yorkshire. With his parents he moved when very young to Australia and entered the University of Sydney as a student in mining engineering. He graduated B.E. in 1901 and was appointed to a demonstratorship in chemistry in the University in 1902. His early interest in scientific exploration was shown by his first expedition to the New Hebrides in 1903 where, under the auspices of Capt. E. G. Rason, R.N., he spent six months in geological investigations in almost virgin country. This proved no easy task and included dangers not only from hostile natives but from the inhospitable jungle as well. During his years as a mining student in Sydney, Mawson had been greatly influenced by Professor T. W. Edgeworth David and after completing his assignment in the New Hebrides he returned to the geology school of the University from which he graduated B.Sc. in 1905. The early influence also of Professor A. Liversidge under whom he had served as demonstrator is reflected in Mawson’s enduring interest in the chemical aspects of geology. He could be regarded as one of the Australian pioneers in the field of geochemistry. In 1905 he was appointed Lecturer in Mineralogy and Petrology in the University of Adelaide which he served in various capacities until his death in 1958.
Robert Muir, 1864-1959
Authors: Cameron Gordon Roy
Published: December 2006

If Thomas Carlyle’s dictum be sound that ‘Sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic’, then, indeed, Robert Muir was a man of heroic stature. ‘A silent great soul, he was one of those who cannot but be in earnest, whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere.’ This is the testimony of many of Muir’s intimate friends who were privileged to penetrate his armour of decent pride and modest reserve and learned that the key to his life was unrelenting honesty of purpose.
Owen Willans Richardson, 1879-1959
Authors: Wilson William
Published: December 2006

Owen Willans Richardson, one of the most outstanding men of science of this century, was born on 26 April 1879 at Dewsbury, Yorkshire; the son of Josiah H. Richardson and Charlotte M. Richardson. Most of his early childhood was spent at the little mining village of Askern near Doncaster and both his parents are buried there. He was a very precocious boy and gained so many scholarships and exhibitions that his education cost his parents nothing at all. He was a pupil at Batley Grammar School till about 1897 and there is an entry at the school, in the Register kept for the ‘Department of Science and Art’, which, as many older men will remember, used to hold examinations all over England: ‘O. W. Richardson, age last birthday 13, date of entering school September ’91. Address Victoria Crescent, Dewsbury. Father’s occupation: Traveller. Signed O. Richardson.’ According to the present Headmaster, Mr F. W. Scott, Batley Grammar School was founded in 1612 and built beside the Parish Church, but moved up the hill in 1878 to new buildings. It has produced many learned men and scientists; but like many other schools (or indeed most schools) it suffered severely from the tyranny of examinations, that bane of education in England.
John Lionel Simonsen, 1884-1957
Authors: Robinson Robert
Published: December 2006

John Lionel Simonsen was born in Levenshulme, Manchester, on 22 July 1884. His father, Lionel Michael Simonsen, was a merchant of Danish origin, who became a naturalized British subject. His mother, Anna Sophie, daughter of J. M. Bing of Copenhagen, had academic relations. Her brother was Professor of Medicine in the University of Copenhagen, and her uncle was Professor Carl Warburg, Professor of Literature in Gothenburg and later in Stockholm. Simonsen had one sister, his senior by two and a half years; it was generally supposed that one or both of his parents were of Jewish race. He married on 30 December 1913, Jannet Dick Hendrie (M.B., Ch.B., Edinb.), daughter of Robert Hendrie of Nairn. Lady Simonsen was at the time Superintendent of the Caste and Gosha Hospital, Madras. She was an exceptionally brilliant surgeon and during the first World War acted as Professor of Pathology at the Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi and later as head of the Malaria Research Station in the Simla Hills. The late Sir Harry Lindsay was a close friend of the Simonsens and wrote as follows: ‘I first met John Simonsen and his wife Jannet at Dehra Dun in 1920; our friendship was founded upon a joint interest in the future of the Indian lac industry and was cemented when Mrs Simonsen’s (as she then was) medical skill diagnosed an attack of influenza-cum-pneumonia, from which I was suffering when I joined them—a poor introduction to their hospitable house! However, they and the civil surgeon saw me through and it is no exaggeration to say that I owe my life to their skill and care.’ It may perhaps be anticipated and interpolated here that Simonsen had many later contacts and joint interests with Sir Harry Lindsay; Indian scientific affairs, Colonial Products, The Royal Society of Arts, of which he became a Fellow in 1943 with service on the Council from 1949 until his death.
William Thomas Astbury, 1898-1961
Authors: Bernal John Desmond
Published: December 2006

With the death of William Thomas Astbury on 4 June 1961, there passed one of the most characteristic figures of what may be called the heroic age of crystal structure analysis—the first generation to follow the Braggs—but he was more than this. He was a founder of what is now one of the most exciting growing points of science,molecular biology. Known to all as Bill Astbury, he was one of the great characters of British science in the twentieth century. Although always associated with Leeds where he worked for thirty-three years, he was born on 25 February 1898, the fourth of seven children, at Longton in the Stoke district where his father, W. E. Astbury, was a potter’s turner. Bill Astbury retained to the end of his life the directness and simplicity of the Five Towns. But he early showed his intellectual gifts as well, encouraged by his mother and by a succession of schoolmasters who recognized his promise. He received all his education by scholarships, a difficult achievement in those days. He won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, in chemistry, physics and mathematics. He went up in 1917 but his stay in Cambridge was interrupted by the war; he served in the R.A.M.C. in Cork where he met his future wife. In 1919 he returned to Cambridge and completed his course, reading chemistry, physics and mineralogy in Part I and physics in Part II, achieving first classes in both.
Charles Galton Darwin, 1887-1962
Authors: Thomson George Paget
Published: December 2006

Charles Galton Darwin, born 19 December 1887, was the eldest son of Sir George Darwin, F.R.S., Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, whose best known work was on the early history of the moon. His mother, whose maiden name was Maud du Puy, was an American lady. A grandson of the great scientist whose first name he bore, two of Darwin’s uncles were Fellows of the Society and his ancestors included Erasmus Darwin, author of the Loves of the plants in verse, as well as of more conventional scientific writings, and the first Josiah Wedgwood. Among his cousins was Francis Galton who with Lord Kelvin was his godfather. The life of his family when he was a child has been recorded by his elder sister Gwen Raverat in her admirable Period piece which describes inimitably their life interwoven with that of the other Darwin families then in Cambridge and to a lesser extent with a few other Cambridge children. One of the latter recalls Charles as ‘a big cheerful energetic boy, humorous and scornful of nonsense’. He impressed his young contemporaries by discussing prime numbers and electricity with his father, he is also remembered as being pursued furiously by a sister round the garden with a fork! Newnham Grange, which since Charles’s death is to become Darwin College for postgraduate students, is a charming but rather rambling house on the banks of the branch of the Cam leading from Newnham Mill. There are bridges across from the garden leading to two islands; with a boat and a canoe and a tree house, it made an ideal home for a young and energetic family. Until he was about 10 years old, when his grandmother died, the family spent some time each year at Down House
William Bernard Robinson King, 1889-1963
Authors: Shotton Frederick William
Published: December 2006

William Bernard Robinson King died on 23 January 1963 as a result of a thrombosis following a comparatively minor operation. To his many friends the obituary notice which appeared in
The Times
three days later was a tremendous shock, for it notified the death of a man vigorous in mind and body for whom many more years of constructive work seemed to lie ahead. Bill King was a Yorkshireman who never boasted of that fact but who certainly had no regrets about the circumstances of his birth and his association with the Yorkshire Dales. Born on 12 November 1889 at West Burton near Aysgarth, he had both parents and three grandparents who could claim Yorkshire as their native county. His maternal grandmother was a descendant of Dr Hey who founded Leeds Infirmary, but it was on his father’s side that the Yorkshire connexion was so strong. Certainly from as far back as 1640 there is record of the Kings as yeoman farmers in Wensleydale and after his retirement in 1955, King went to live permanently on the land of his ancestors at the hamlet of Worton. As a boy, young King must have been shy and rather lonely, with few companions of his own age and happy to wander alone on the fells pursuing the study of natural history. He had a brother nearly four years his senior but he was accidentally killed at the age of 21. Eventually Bill King went to Uppingham from a local preparatory school, and of his time there he has written that, being of little use at Latin, the authorities had small interest in him; being no good at ball games, the boys had little use for him; and he learnt nothing of importance. Certainly he achieved the School VIII in rifle shooting, but what he enjoyed most were the outings of the Natural History Society and his solitary walks in Wordley Woods.
John Read, 1884-1963
Authors: Hirst Edmund Langley
Published: December 2006

John Read was born at Maiden Newton in the county of Dorset on 17 February 1884. His father John Read (1814-1889) was a yeoman farmer whose ancestors had lived on the land in South Somerset for many generations. His mother, Bessie Gatcombe (1854-1904), came of an old Dorset family, engaged mainly in agriculture, and, down to the period of his parents, no member of their families thought of leaving the land. John Read, the subject of this memoir, was the first to become a ‘scholar’ and he himself ascribed this to the insistence of his schoolmasters and the fact that he gained in succession three of the newly founded Somerset County Scholarships. At the time of his death in 1889 Read’s father occupied the Hall Farm at Sparkford in Somerset, which his mother and her brother continued to carry on until about 1898. John’s early experiences were of life in a large family— he was twelfth in a series consisting of five half-brothers, six half-sisters and one full sister—in rural Somerset. He was proud of his West Country origin, upbringing and education and he maintained throughout his long life a profound interest in the West of England, which his deep affection for St Andrews, gained later in his life, did nothing to diminish. During his boyhood at Sparkford, broad dialect was spoken, and each villager was a distinct personality possessing a wise compound of country lore and practical skill. Read mingled freely with all, from farmers and dealers to carpenters and labourers, with the result that at an early age he became bilingual, and for the rest of his life he was able to think, speak and write in the South-east Somerset dialect as readily as in English. His mother, who had received no more than a simple old-world education confined to the three R ’s, nevertheless had a flair for history and literature and this was passed on to her son. In those days books were hard to come by, but the few available were familiar from cover to cover. Amongst these were Hume’sHistory of Englandand the poetical works of Sir Walter Scott. So great was his interest in Scott that Read records that by the age of seventeen he had read the whole of Scott’s works including the introductions and notes.
George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1876-1962
Authors: Adrian Edgar Douglas
Published: December 2006

George Trevelyan was not a scientific historian. Though he knew so much about the period when the Royal Society was founded, it could elect him a fellow as in those days it had elected Clarendon and Dryden. It was the poetical aspect of the past which appealed to him and as a freshman at Cambridge in 1893 he had boiled with rage when Seeley, the Regius Professor, told him that history was a science and had nothing to do with literature. Ten years later one of his reasons for leaving Cambridge was his feeling that the atmosphere there was too critical for the kind of history he wanted to write. He wanted to write literary history: he was concerned with the form as well as the substance and had the example of his great Uncle Macaulay to show the power of good writing. He knew its dangers but he had no great confidence that even the scientist could be completely impersonal in the field of human history, and so he wrote the kind of history which gave him the outlet for his personal aesthetic feelings. He wrote so honestly that there is never a doubt of his own preferences, his love of freedom and toleration, his desire to think well of his own country and his pleasure in stories with happy endings. He ranks with our finest historians. In his own estimation his best books were those on Garibaldi and on
England under Queen Anne
, though he was delighted to find that so many of his countrymen enjoyed his
English social history
. He allows it a certain vigour because it represented an interest which he had felt all his life in the social aspects of the past.
Kenneth Bailey, 1909-1963
Authors: Chibnall Albert Charles
Published: December 2006

Kenneth Bailey died on 22 May 1963, just a couple of years after his old friend and collaborator W. T. Astbury, and by their passing protein chemistry has lost two devoted followers who first joined forces in 1934, when Kenneth was a research student of mine at the Imperial College. In those days the protein world as we know it today was but being made, and these two men— each in his own different way—did more than their share of the pioneer work which helped to fashion the striking advances witnessed in more recent years. It was my privilege to stand very near Bailey in the early stages of his career, when his life was an expression of mental and moral integrity. Unlike Astbury, who was open-hearted and never tried to hide his feelings, Bailey was always somewhat reserved, and in social intercourse he made an impression, especially upon the young, which those who did not know him well may not have fully understood. Both men had been moulded in youth by their environment on the fringe of the Potteries, and when Bailey was paying tribute at Astbury’s memorial service in Emmanuel Church, Leeds, on 15 June 1961, his eloquent words illuminated his own upbringing as vividly as that of his friend.
Claude Gordon Douglas, 1882-1963
Authors: Cunningham D. J. C.
Published: December 2006

Claude Gordon Douglas was born in Leicester on 26 February 1882, the son of Claude Douglas, F.R.C.S., Honorary Surgeon to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, and Louisa Bolitho Peregrine of London. His elder brother, J. S. G. Douglas, D.M., was Professor of Pathology at the University of Sheffield. Douglas was unmarried and for the last part of his life he lived with his younger sister, Miss Margaret Douglas, who died in 1960. Besides his father, both grandfathers and one great-grandfather were in medical practice and another great-grandfather was a keen student of natural history. From Arlington House, his preparatory school in Brighton, he won open scholarships in classics to Radley College, which he did not accept, and to Wellington College, which he accepted. He left Wellington College at the age of sixteen in order to study science at Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester. In 1900 he went up to New College, Oxford, with an open exhibition in Natural Science (Biology) but in his first term won an open demyship in the same subject at Magdalen College, whither he migrated for the remainder of his time as an undergraduate. As an undergraduate he owed much to the personal friendship and encouragement of Professor Francis Gotch, F.R.S., and from an early stage he was especially influenced by the teaching of Dr J. S. Haldane, F.R.S. His undergraduate friendships with G. R. Girdlestone, later the eminent orthopaedic surgeon, and with A. S. (later Sir Arthur) MacNalty, were maintained throughout his life. MacNalty recounts how he provided notes on the professor’s five o’clock lectures for Douglas and Girdlestone when they were delayed on the golf course.
Reginald Ruggles Gates, 1882-1962
Authors: Roberts John Alexander Fraser
Published: December 2006

Reginald Ruggles Gates died in London on 12 August 1962, at the age of eighty. He was a remarkable figure, alike in the picturesqueness of his antecedents, in his unusual upbringing, in the variety of his scientific interests, in the vicissitudes of his life, in his contributions to science at times of vital change and in the sheer volume of his published work, the product of a long life of intense industry. It was well said of him in one obituary notice that he was a man who influenced the thinking of his time. He was born on 1 May 1882, near Middleton, Nova Scotia, he and a twin sister being the eldest children of Andreas Bohaker Gates and Charlotte Elizabeth Ruggles. On his father’s side he was a great-great-grandson of Captain Oldham Gates, who was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1716 and migrated to Nova Scotia about 1760. Captain Gates was a half-brother of General Horatio Gates, the well-known leader during the American Revolution, who received the surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga. The Gates family in America was descended from Stephen Gates, who was born at Hingham in Essex and settled in Massachusetts in 1638. Earlier ancestors included Sir John Gates, who was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Henry VIII and a member of the Privy Council of Edward VI. The earliest Gates forbear known is Thomas Gates,circa1327, though through the marriage of a Gates to Alary Joscelyn, the ancestry in that female line can be traced still further back.
Alan Arnold Griffith, 1893-1963
Authors: Rubbra A. A.
Published: December 2006

Alan Arnold Griffith was born in London on 13 June 1893. His father, George Griffith, explorer, journalist and author, was a widely travelled man who had a varied and interesting career. Much of George Griffith’s time abroad was spent in South Africa where, as a special correspondent of the
Daily Mail
, he covered among other events, certain of Rhodes’s journeys. As an author, he dealt with both fact and fiction, the latter including historical novels, a prediction of the coming Russian Revolution, and imaginative ‘science fiction’. In this connexion and in view of the pioneering work on the evolution of jet-lift which Alan Griffith was later to contribute to aeronautical science, it is of interest to recall an article on nineteenth century fiction which was published by
Flight
(21 December 1956). The article pointed out that, following the vogue of Jules Verne, a new movement in English popular fiction by a few of the younger writers, introduced imaginary flying machines.
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, First Baron Hankey of the Chart, 1877-1963
Authors: Schonland Basil Ferdinand Jamieson
Published: December 2006

Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey was born on 1 April 1877. His father, Robert Alers Hankey, had emigrated to South Australia as a young man and bought himself a sheep farm at Warcowie. Maurice Hankey’s mother was Helen Bakewell, daughter of Kenneth Bakewell of Adelaide, who was directly descended from Robert Bakewell (1726-1795), celebrated as the first English scientific breeder of cattle (the Leicestershire longhorn) and sheep, as well as for his successful efforts towards the improvement of grasslands by systematic irrigation. After a series of disastrous droughts, Robert Hankey left Australia and retired to live in Brighton. Maurice was his third son; his fourth son, Donald, to whom Maurice was extremely devoted and whom he called ‘the best man I ever knew’ is remembered by many as a man of the deepest religious conviction and of unselfish social service. Donald Hankey’s books, particularly
A student in arms
, are his memorials; after service in the ranks, he took a commission and was killed on the Somme in 1916. Maurice Hankey, though his career was to lead him along a very different path, had inherited the family tradition of self-effacing service with a strong element of desire for experimentation and improvement in any task he had to perform. He received his school education at Rugby and was commissioned in the Royal Marine Artillery on 1 September 1895.
Edward David Hughes, 1906-1963
Authors: Ingold Christopher Kelk
Published: December 2006

Edward David Hughes was born 18 June 1906 of a farming family in Criccieth, North Wales. His father, Hugh Hughes, was a man of great energy, who, with his wife, Anne (néeRoberts) enlarged their farm from a small to a considerable one, while they built up their family to one of nine children, of whom Edward David was the youngest. When he was born, his eldest brother was aged 20. Their mother, Anne Hughes, was of North Welsh yeoman stock, and was herself well-adjusted, understanding and kind, characteristics which she passed on in full measure to her youngest son. Welsh was the preferred language of the family, though its members were all bilingual, the children becoming so at an early age. To the end of his life, Edward David spoke English with a Welsh accent.
David Keilin, 1887-1963
Authors: Mann Thaddeus Robert Rudolph
Published: December 2006

David Keilin was born on 21 March 1887, in Moscow, where his parents were residing temporarily at that time. Soon afterwards however he returned with his parents to Poland where his father, a successful businessman, had his office and owned some land. He was the fourth child of a family of seven, and the youngest of three sons.
School days in Warsaw
Although afflicted early in his childhood by asthma, an ailment which continued to trouble him in later life, he retained very happy memories of the school days spent in Warsaw. As a delicate boy he was educated up to the age of 10 by a governess at home, and by his mother whose memory he treasured as that of a wise and kind and at the same time highly energetic woman. In 1897 he entered the Gόrski Gymnasium in Warsaw, a private Polish high-school (the state schools at that time were Russian). This establishment directed by Mr Gόrski, achieved distinction in Polish history of that period both for its high standards of education as well as on account of its patriotic spirit, which on more than one occasion brought its teaching staff and the pupils into conflict with the Tsarist government. Nothing unfortunately remains today of the records of that school which, with the rest of the city, was burned and razed to the ground by the Nazis after the Warsaw rising of 1944. In September 1904, three months after his graduation from the Gόrski Gymnasium, David Keilin left Warsaw to seek education abroad, first in Liège and later in Paris, planning eventually to become a doctor of medicine.
Edward Charles Titchmarsh, 1899-1963
Authors: Cartwright Mary Lucy
Published: December 2006

Edward Charles Titchmarsh was born on 1 June 1899, at Newbury; he was the son of Edward Harper and Caroline Titchmarsh, and he had an elder sister, and a younger sister and brother. His father was a Congregationalist minister and an M.A. of London University; his father’s people were tradesmen at Royston, never more than fairly prosperous, and on both sides of the family there was a strict religious tradition. Titchmarsh himself wrote an eminently readable account of his family background for his own family; it begins with the derivation of the name from the place Ticcea’s marsh and contains a record going back to the eighteenth and even seventeenth century, and ending with his own schooldays. It is written with the clarity which was characteristic of his mathematical work, and recounts his school days and the somewhat restricted background of his early years with a critical and often humorous detachment. I have used this and the notes which he made for the Royal Society in what follows, in addition to other material supplied by Mrs Titchmarsh and many mathematical friends, especially A. E. Ingham, J. L. B. Cooper and J. B. McLeod. His father was chosen later as minister of Nether Chapel in Sheffield (partly because he was a non-smoker as well as, of course, a teetotaler), and so Titchmarsh was educated at King Edward VII School, Sheffield, from 1908-1917. He wrote that they had far too much homework, and that in the upper part of the school he went on to the classical side, giving up science, and learned ‘enough Latin to pass Higher Certificate and enough Greek to fail.’ After that he specialized in mathematics, and did some physics, but experiments always baffled him and he maintained that he knew no chemistry.
William Ernest Stephen Turner, 1881-1963
Authors: Douglas R. W.
Published: December 2006

William Ernest Stephen Turner was born on 22 September 1881 at Wednesbury, Staffordshire. He was the second of seven children and the eldest son of William George and Emma Blanche Turner. His father was self-educated and shared in the precariousness of employment of those times being successively railway porter, signalman, iron works labourer, morning postman and industrial insurance agent. Throughout these varying hardships he served as deacon and elder in a community known as the Church of the Baptist Brethren in Smethwick. At the age of 12 Turner was awarded a Staffordshire County minor scholarship from the Crocketts Lane Board School, Smethwick, and when he was 13 gained admission to King Edward VI Grammar School, Five Ways, Birmingham. Tremendous sacrifices must have been demanded of the family to make it possible for Turner to continue his education. He was, apparently, a brilliant pupil and won many prizes while at school. He entered the then Mason University College in 1898 with a school leaving scholarship and graduated with the London degree of Bachelor of Science with honours in chemistry in 1902. He was awarded a Birmingham University Research Scholarship and began research work under Dr Alex Findlay. He became M.Sc. (Birmingham) in 1904 and was awarded the Erhardt Research Prize.
Leonard Bairstow, 1880-1963
Authors: Temple George Frederick James , Fage Arthur , Nayler J. L. , Relf Ernest Frederick
Published: December 2006

Leonard Bairstow was born at Halifax in Yorkshire on 25 June 1880 and began his education in the elementary and secondary schools of Halifax. In 1898 he obtained a scholarship at the Royal College of Science, London, where he was a fellow student of H . E. Wimperis, who declared in later years: ‘I remember that, for several decades there, the most brilliant student that had been produced by the College was Professor Bairstow. He had an uncanny faculty of making himself acquainted with and making completely original suggestions on subjects which we did not think he knew anything about.' He became a Whitworth Scholar in 1902 and took prizes in mechanics and astrophysics. In 1904 he entered the Engineering Department of the National Physical Laboratory. There he worked under Dr T. E. (later Sir Thomas) Stanton on problem s of fatigue and of aerodynamics. In 1909 he was appointed to the staff of the new section of Aerodynamics (later called the Aerodynamics Division), of which he became the Assistant (or Principal) in charge. During this period he carried out some pioneer investigations into wind-tunnel design, and made important developments and practical applications of the theory of aircraft stability due to G. H. Bryan. This theory he illustrated by the use of small mica models of aircraft, and the necessary measurements of aerodynamic derivatives were made in the wind tunnel. In 1917 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and made a G.B.E. Glazebrook had offered him the post of Superintendent of the Aerodynamics Department at the N.P.L. but Bairstow resigned and was appointed to the Air Board to work for Sir David Henderson on the design of aircraft and on aerodynamics research. There Bairstow worked at the Hotel Cecil as deputy to Alec Ogilvie and, with his wide experience, was able to co-ordinate the departmental work on structural strength, aerodynamics, performance and air screws.