bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Allan Watt Downie, 5 September 1901 - 26 January 1988
Authors: Tyrrell David Arthur John , McCarthy K.
Published: December 2006

Allan Downie was bom on 5 September 1901 and brought up on Mid Street in Rosehearty, Aberdeenshire, a village on the coast where his father, William, and grandfather had been fishermen. His mother, Margaret, was the daughter of a fisherman from Fife. He and his identical twin brother, Richard, were fifth in a family of eight boys and one girl. William John, the eldest brother of the twins, continued in the fishing tradition, sailing his own steam drifter till his retirement half way through this century. Allan recalled his childhood as being relatively happy and carefree, and, not surprisingly, many of his activities were linked up with the sea, such as sailing, fishing, swimming and exploring the rocky shoreline. He continued these interests through life and went bird-watching and fishing whenever he could. He was also a sportsman, representing Aberdeen University at football, water polo and golf, and played club football until middle age, tennis when opportunity offered and golf almost up to his death. Indeed he treasured the headline in a local newspaper when he left the University ‘Noted local golfer retires’. The twins were educated first at the local elementary school and their mother recognized their ability at an early stage. The dedicated headmaster gave them extra tuition in Latin and mathematics outside school hours. He also recognized the talent of Allan and his brother, and visited their parents to urge them to send them on to Frazerburgh Academy for secondary education. They were there from 1915 to 1918 and then went on to Aberdeen University Medical School. It is recorded that the two of them took many of the prizes for their year, Allan in Physiology, Obstetrics and Operative Surgery and his brother in Anatomy and Surgery, and in 1923 they both graduated with first class honours, but it is believed that they swept up other prizes as well.
Arnold Ashley Miles, 20 March 1904 - 11 February 1988
Authors: Neuberger Albert
Published: December 2006

Arnold Ashley Miles was born in York on the 20 March 1904. He was the second child and only son of Harry and Kate Miles. Both his father and mother were the youngest of large families, but there is little known about their backgrounds. His father’s family came from Dorset, where they were farmers in the last century. Ashley’s father was the son of a shoemaker resident in Shaftesbury, Jeremiah Miles, and was put early to an apprenticeship with drapers in London. He moved to Sheffield where he met Ashley’s mother, Kate Elizabeth Hindley, at the Wesleyan Sunday School, and saved up enough money to start up a draper’s shop in York, which he ran until he retired. The most notable of Ashley’s relatives was his father’s brother, George, who went as a missionary to China, lived through the Boxer Rebellion, and translated Wesley’s sermons into Chinese. Ashley had little knowledge of his mother’s family with the exception of an older brother, William Hindley, who went to Australia as a Methodist preacher, transferred to the Church of England and eventually became Archdeacon of Melbourne. This uncle spent many leaves with Ashley’s parents, smuggling comics for the children into the house in his coat-tails. He was adored by the Miles children and Ashley kept in contact with him throughout his life.
Harold Everard Monteagle Barlow, 15 November 1899 - 20 April 1989
Authors: Cullen Alexander Lamb
Published: December 2006

Harold Barlow’s distinguished career was almost entirely spent at University College London (UCL), an institution that he dearly loved and within which he made a major contribution to the revitalization of electrical engineering education in Britain, especially in the years from 1945 onwards. His longest absence from UCL was from 1939 to 1945, most of which period he spent at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Famborough working on radar, or radiolocation, as it was known in the U.K. at that time. He was particularly impressed by the tremendous contribution to the war effort of microwave radar and communications systems, and he returned to academic life at UCL with two thoughts uppermost in his mind; the immense potential of the microwave frequency band for peaceful applications, and the need for electrical engineers to have a far deeper understanding of electromagnetic theory than had traditionally been the case, if they were to play a full part in the exciting developments that he so clearly foresaw. He was very successful in turning these ideas into reality, and he soon established for himself and for his Department a leading position in microwave engineering education. However, Harold Barlow believed very strongly in the interplay between teaching and research, and the microwave research school, which he established, not only illuminated and stimulated the thorough teaching of fundamentals to undergraduate engineers, but provided a first class environment for graduate students, who came from all over the world to carry out research under his inspiring and kindly guidance. The present international renown of the Department has its origins in the sound foundations laid down by Harold Barlow over four decades ago.
John Herbert Humphrey, 16 December 1915 - 25 December 1987
Authors: Askonas Brigitte Alice
Published: December 2006

John Herbert Humphrey was an outstanding immunologist and a most remarkable person in every way. His broad knowledge of the immune system was unparalleled, and there were few aspects of immunology that his own experiments did not touch on. John was a pioneer in cellular immunology who exerted a powerful influence on modem thinking; he was always prepared to share his time and ideas with students and colleagues throughout the world. In his work he was guided by the realization that knowledge in basic immunology was essential to further our understanding of disease processes. He was also passionately concerned in socio-political issues of his time and campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the voice of science and medicine would be heard. Throughout his life he was regarded with the greatest respect and affection not only for his science but equally for his personal qualities.
Nikolaas Tinbergen, 15 April 1907 - 21 December 1988
Authors: Hinde Robert Aubrey
Published: December 2006

Nikolaas Tinbergen was born in 1907 in The Hague. There must have been something very special about his family, for it produced two Nobel Prize Winners (Niko, in Medicine and his eldest brother in Economics), the Director of Energy in The Hague, another zoologist, who died just as a potentially distinguished career was unfolding, and a sister who became, like the father, a grammar school teacher. Certainly there had been primary and secondary school teachers on both sides of the family, with his father a teacher of Dutch language and history and a scholar of mediaeval Dutch. Perhaps more important, the Tinbergens were a warm and happy family, where each child was given loving encouragement to follow his or her own bent, coupled with the modicum of discipline necessary for the happiness of the whole. Tinbergen (in his Notes for the Royal Society) described the context of his boyhood thus: Our family was the natural centre of a wide circle of friends with greatly varied interests. We had the example of hardworking parents, who managed, before the days of many scholarships, to give all of us a University education. There was a tradition of interest in the arts, in nature and in politics. All my brothers and I had from our father the inclination and a certain ability to draw and paint; during our many happy holidays in the country we would all carry our sketching pads and spend hours sketching. Regular visits to theatre, concerts and art galleries ... But Niko’s interest in nature, already apparent when he was five years old, did not come primarily from family members: they enjoyed the open air, but they were more concerned with the arts and social problems. In an autobiographical article (Tinbergen (1985) to which this memoir is much indebted) he ascribes his fascination with wildlife to the general interest in nature which had been growing in The Netherlands since the late 19th century. There were newspaper articles and popular books on animal life, and, appealing to the collector in every child, excellent reproductions of the paintings of natural history subjects by 19th century artists were given away in biscuit packets. Elsewhere (Notes) he has mentioned the importance to him of the writings of Jac. P. Thijsse and ‘the now forgotten American author William Long’
Thomas George Cowling, 17 June 1906 - 16 June 1990
Authors: Mestel Leon
Published: December 2006

Thomas George Cowling was born in Hackney, east London, the second son of George and Edith Eliza (née Nicholls). Several years ago, at his request, my wife did some genealogical research into his ancestry. She found that his grandparents and their antecedents were nearly all artisans, blue-collar workers or servants from London and the home counties: the men including a cabman, a dock clerk, a milkman, a bellows-maker, a tallow-chandler, a shoemaker and two weavers, the women a housemaid and a boot-binder. One great-great-grandfather was a Cornish naval sea man. Some exotic genes entered the family stock through a great-great-great-grandfather, a Swedish mariner named Janas Winnburg, whom one is tempted to picture as a six-foot-plus red-headed Viking. Tom described his father George as a very intelligent person, with great determination. Because of the early death of his father, George had to start work at the age of 14 as an office boy earning five shillings a week, but continued his education in evening classes, reaching finally the grade of executive engineer in the Post Office. Although Tom’s mother Edith had trained as a teacher, she led a mainly domestic life, devoted to the upbringing of their four sons. Both parents were ‘loyal members of Baptist churches’, from whom their sons inherited the ‘Puritan work ethic’ (78)*. * Numbers in this form refer to entries in the bibliography at the end of the text.
Thomas Neville George, 13 May 1904 - 18 June 1980
Authors: Leake Bernard E.
Published: December 2006

Thomas Neville George, later renowned as a Carboniferous stratigrapher and palaeontologist and also as a geomorphologist, was born in Morriston, Swansea, on 13 May 1904, being the elder of two children and the only son of Thomas Rupert George (1873-1933) and Elizabeth George (née Evans, 1875-1937). The family background on both sides was dominated by school teaching driven by a deep-seated moral belief in the ability of education to improve and enrich the lives of otherwise impoverished folk. His father, Thomas Rupert George, had attended the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and originally came from Port Eynon. He became a school teacher and eventually headmaster in a Swansea school but much of his time was given to Socialist politics, particularly in organizing the local Trades and Labour Council, of which he was an honorary secretary. Neville’s mother, Elizabeth, was a school teacher from Swansea Training College and for a short time taught her son at his first primary school. She came from a chapel-going family, whereas his father did not, and Neville attended chapel sporadically until he was eight but not thereafter.
Mary Winifred Parke, 23 March 1908 - 17 July 1989
Authors: Boalch G. T. , Fogg Gordon Elliott
Published: December 2006

Mary Parke was an outstanding and all-round expert on algae, one of the generation of remarkable phycological ladies who dominated the field in Britain during the middle years of this century. She played a leading part in shaping the course and setting the standards of phycological research in this country and, beyond this, her work has been of worldwide significance in the establishment of modern mariculture and in biological oceanography.
Helen Kemp Porter, 10 November 1899 - 7 December 1987
Authors: Northcote D. H.
Published: December 2006

Helen Porter (
née
Archbold) was born in 1899 at Place Hale, Farnham in Surrey. She was the younger of two daughters of George Kemp Archbold M. A. and Caroline Emily Broughton (
née
Whitehead). Helen maintained a lifelong attachment to her elder sister, Dorothy. The family was essentially educated middle class. George Archbold was the son of the vicar of Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School and went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, to read classics. He became a schoolteacher and until 1914 coached candidates for universities and also for army commissions for entry into Woolwich and Sandhurst Military Academies. In 1915 he was appointed as second master at Aysgarth Preparatory School, Bedale, Yorkshire. He invested money in the school and became a partner. He was a very popular master and was recalled to the school after initially leaving in 1918 and then remained until final retirement at the age of 72. He died in 1944. Mrs Archbold was educated at home and at a finishing school in Switzerland. She trained as a professional singer at the Conservatoire in Brussels where for a few years her parents resided. She was related to small land owner (county) families. Helen spoke of her mother as an energetic person excelling in the domestic virtues with a deep sense of duty to her family. Her recreation was music.
Richard Rado, 28 April 1906 - 23 December 1989
Authors: Rogers Claude Ambrose
Published: December 2006

Richard Rado was born in Berlin; he was the second son of Leopold Rado, from Budapest. At one stage of his education he had to decide whether to become a concert pianist or a mathematician. He chose the latter in the belief that he could continue with music as a hobby, but that he could never treat mathematics in that way. He studied at the University of Berlin, but also spent some time in Göttingen. He took a D.Ph. at Berlin with his thesis ‘Studien zur kombinatorik’ (3)* under Issai Schur in 1933. During this period he was also influenced by Erhard Schmidt. On 16 March 1933, he married Luise Zadek, the elder daughter of Hermann Zadek, whom he had earlier come to know when he needed a partner to play piano duets. It was indeed a remarkable partnership. As Hitler came to power in 1933, the Rados, being Jewish, made their way to England, Richard having obtained a scholarship of £300 p.a., from Sir Robert Mond through the recommendation of Professor Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell), who had interviewed him in Berlin, to enable him to study at Cambridge. * Numbers in this form refer to entries in the bibliography at the end of the text.
John Stuart Anderson, 9 January 1908 - 25 December 1990
Authors: Hyde B. G. , Day Peter
Published: December 2006

Stuart Anderson (‘JS’ to most colleagues, and in this memoir) was born on 9 January 1908 at 134 Englefield Road, Islington, London (U. K.) and died on 25 December 1990 at the Woden Valley Hospital, Canberra (Australia). He was the youngest child and only son of John Anderson (1850-1916), a master cabinet maker who was born and brought up in Aberdeen, and Emma Sarah,
née
Pitt (born Ipswich, died 1937). Knowledge of his ancestry is limited and contains no suggestion of science, his antecedents being in business or teaching or, in the case of his maternal grandfather, a sailor. His parents, both widowed, married about 1901-2. Being of his father’s previous marriage, two step-sisters were much older than he, by about 20 years; his sister Olive was about four years older. His father was a good violinist and also played the cello; he enjoyed musical evenings with his daughters and friends, playing instrumental quartets and sometimes more ambitious efforts such as, on one occasion as JS recalled, ‘Handel’s Toy Symphony’ [
sic
.]. The house was well stocked with books, especially the main classics of the Victorian period; but family circumstances, at first ‘modestly prosperous’, declined in the years just before and during World War I, catastrophically so in 1916, when his father died. Just before that, his mother went to work in a munitions factory, his sister left school early and they suffered upwards of ten years of great difficulty and acute poverty. He believed that these years which, due to his mother’s ‘overdone ideals about gentility’, were solitary and self-contained ones, left on him a permanent mark; a lack of self-confidence, mainly manifest as shyness and an inability to get on with people. He was certainly a private man but, at least after he passed the age of 30, his younger colleagues did not detect this supposed lack of self-confidence.
Ann Bishop, 19 December 1899 - 7 May 1990
Authors: Goodwin Leonard George , Vickerman Keith
Published: December 2006

Ann Bishop was an eminent protozoologist and parasitologist who spent almost her entire career in Cambridge where she was a Fellow of Girton College for nearly 60 years. Her main work was concerned with the development of drug resistance in the protozoan parasites that cause the disease malaria, still among the most important agents of mortality in the world today.
Kenneth Mather, 22 June 1911 - 20 March 1990
Authors: Lewis Dan
Published: December 2006

Kenneth Mather was born on 22 June 1911 in the ancient rural town of Nantwich in the southeast of the county of Cheshire, England, a county noted for its flat fertile plains, its agriculture and salt mining. Kenneth’s paternal ancestors had lived for several generations in Prestwich, part of the great industrial area of the city of Manchester, some 40 miles away, until his grandfather, John William, left the area to work in the mainly ecclesiastical town of Beverley in Yorkshire and later in London and finally in Nantwich (since 1890). Kenneth’s father was born in Beverley in 1888 and brought up from the age of two in Nantwich where he lived, worked and married a local girl, Anne Mottram and brought up a family of two, Kenneth the first born and Barbara. Kenneth’s paternal grandmother, Kate Wilson was born in Bridlington on the east coast of Yorkshire where, her father, John Mowbray Wilson, was the organist of the main Church of England church. On the maternal side, the grandparents John Mottram and Ellen Allman were born and lived in the country south of Nantwich and both had an agricultural background. Kenneth’s genes, therefore, came from urban Manchester, rural Cheshire and the Viking-ridden northeast coast of England; not so spaciously isolated as the stocks of the fruitfly (
Drosophila
), Oregon, USA, and Samarkand, USSR, which were to be used in his selection experiments, but both sufficiently genetically different to produce the exceptional recombinant.
Paul Robert Owen, 24 January 1920 - 11 November 1990
Authors: Young Alec David , Lighthill Michael James
Published: December 2006

Paul Robert Owen was a scientist and engineer of great distinction and versatility. His work ranged widely over the fields of aerodynamics, flight mechanics and fluid dynamics and their applications to aeronautics, environmental and safety problems, building design, the movement of solid particles in an air flow, the ventilation of mines and wind erosion of desert areas. He also had a passionate interest in the arts, particularly literature and music. He wrote and spoke with clarity, style and wit, so that his papers were a pleasure to read, his company was always eagerly sought and letters from him were most welcome for their acute insight coupled with a delightful ironic, often self-deprecating humour. He was the quintessential humanist with wide interests and sympathies and an aversion to dogma; in his later years he became particularly concerned with the problems of the Third World and how technology can best be applied to help solve those problems. He enjoyed and enlivened good company and conversation but he had an inner core of reserve which his friends were aware of and respected. He was known to some as Robert and to others as Paul; one can only guess at what distinguished the two groups, but it seems he decided the appropriate name to be used early on in the development of a friendship. He had a deep musical speaking voice and a pleasant bass-baritone singing voice, and in his youth he was a talented amateur actor. Woodwork was a favourite form of relaxation and in his later years he became a skilled restorer of old furniture.
James Eric Smith, 23 February 1909 - 3 September 1990
Authors: Bone Quentin , Nichols D.
Published: December 2006

James Eric Smith was born in Hull on 23 February 1909. His family originally came from Yorkshire in the North Riding near Malton, where his grandfather Benjamin (the youngest of a family of nine), was put in service in 1855 at the age of six to work as a bootboy and bird scarer on the estate of Sir Tatton Sykes north of Malton. He married Martha Consius, who had also been in service since she was very young, a tough hardworking and immensely caring woman. Eric’s grandparents evidently were both intelligent and hardworking, for they began together a small grocery business in Driffield, specializing in a large range of teas, and in lemon curd and jams, which Martha made at night. The business prospered and Benjamin and his wife then moved to Hull, where Eric’s father was born, one of nine children, seven of whom survived infancy. The family were devout Methodists, and one of Eric’s great-uncles, Ernest, became a successful Methodist minister, and another departed from the family environment by going to Samoa.
Thomas Gaskell Tutin, 21 April 1908 - 7 October 1987
Authors: Bradshaw Anthony David
Published: December 2006

Thomas Gaskell Tutin will be remembered by countless botanists and naturalists for the great definitive flora of the British Isles, which appeared first in 1952 and which, aided by its field versions, has remained the source for nearly all taxonomic work ever since. Anyone who was a student at that time will recall the way in which the confusion that had reigned previously was suddenly stilled by the appearance of this orderly, scientific, easily usable volume. But those with wider interests will know the central role played by Tom Tutin in the much bigger flora of Europe, which began to appear in 1964 and was only completed when the fifth volume was published in 1980. It is by these two important works that he has given himself a major and enduring place in plant science.
Charles Maurice Yonge, 9 December 1899 - 17 March 1986
Authors: Morton B.
Published: December 2006

Maurice Yonge, formerly Regius Professor of Zoology at the University of Glasgow, was a marine zoologist of great distinction. His early pioneering work on marine invertebrate feeding and digestion soon brought him recognition. He led the highly successful Great Barrier Reef Expedition of 1928-1929. In 1932, he was appointed the first Professor of Zoology at the University of Bristol, where he remained until 1944 when he moved to Glasgow. His research interests ranged widely but it was in the relation between form and function and evolution of the bivalve Mollusca that his major contribution lay. He was a dedicated scientist who travelled widely, a fine teacher and a prolific writer. He served on many professional and government committees.
Kenneth Lyon Blaxter, 19 June 1919 - 18 April 1991
Authors: Waterlow John Conrad , Armstrong D. G.
Published: December 2006

Kenneth Lyon Blaxter (KB as most people called him) was born and brought up in the region of Norwich. He graduated in agriculture in the University of Reading in 1939. In 1948 he was appointed head of the Nutrition Department of the Hannah Dairy Research Institute, and in 1965 Director of the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen. He retired in 1982, but remained extremely active in writing and in work on a number of committees until his premature death from a tumour of the brain in 1991. KB was probably the leading world authority on the nutrition and food requirements of farm animals. A man of many parts, with a remarkable breadth of knowledge and range of interests, he was one of those increasingly rare people who, starting with no scientific education, achieved great distinction in his field. The thread which bound his whole life together was a fascinated reverence for all forms of life on earth. It began in boyhood, with the collection of grasses and bugs, expanded to animals and eventually to a politically conscious concern for the earth and mankind. Shortly before he died Kenneth composed an autobiographical memoir for his family. [Verbatim quotations are set in small, indented type.]
Arthur Roy Clapham, 24 May 1904 - 18 December 1990
Authors: Willis A. J.
Published: December 2006

Arthur Roy Clapham is remembered with great admiration, affection and also some awe by his many colleagues and students, who never ceased to be impressed by his intellectual stature and seemingly boundless knowledge. He was always known as Roy Clapham and is referred to frequently in this memoir as Roy. A polymath
par excellence
, he was a well-rounded scientist, an excellent linguist, and one who could converse authoritatively on many and diverse topics, seeming equally at home in the fields of literature, history, music and the arts; any subject was grist to the mill. Indeed he was the very epitome of a scholar. Best known for his major role, in association with T.G. Turin and E.F. Warburg, in the
Flora of the British Isles
, he was a leading plant ecologist and also made substantial contributions to nature conservation both nationally and internationally. Roy Clapham’s writings range over a considerable field and are notable not only for their scientific contribution but also their crystal-clear expression. Besides a distinguished academic, he was an active member of numerous committees, many related to ecology and nature conservation, was Head of the Department of Botany in the University of Sheffield for 25 years and acted briefly as Vice-Chancellor. An unassuming and modest person, he was always extremely busy but was invariably helpful and gave encouragement and sound advice freely to many plant ecologists.
John Laker Harley, 17 November 1911 - 13 December 1990
Authors: Smith David Cecil , Lewis D. H.
Published: December 2006

When he died, Jack Harley had nearly finished an autobiography (probably written for personal and family records, rather than for publication). The title was
As luck would have it
, and it begins: I choose this title because I have, from my earliest years, been amazed at my good fortune. I find it difficult indeed to ascribe any success I might have had in work or play, in the Army, in science or in the amazing successes of my pupils in Oxford to any skill that I have and certainly not to hard work on my part. I am constitutionally lazy, especially in subjects and matters that I do not particularly like - mentally lazy, not physically. So Luck, and the influence of good friends and amazing coincidences seem to have followed me always. In the same way I have been fortunate in my forbears and immediate family, most especially in my marriage and children, and indeed in about everything that happened to me.
Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, 18 November 1906 - 2 October 1988
Authors: Downs Diarmuid
Published: December 2006

Sir Alec Issigonis was an automobile engineer whose name will always be associated with the design of the Morris Minor and the Mini motor cars. He followed a line of innovative British car designers that includes amongst their number Frederick Lanchester, William Lyons (principally for styling) and, later, Colin Chapman. With Ettore Bugatti, Ferdinand Porsche and Dante Giacosa he was one of the last of those who were totally responsible for their cars’ design, styling as well as engineering - disciplines too often separated in modern industrial practice. He was an unusual Fellow of the Society, more artist than scientist, although the two were blended to make the engineer. He liked to describe himself, self-deprecatingly, as an ironmonger - not a term which the modern professional mechanical engineer would much like. In truth, although he himself would have contested it, because he thought of himself primarily as an engineer, the artist was probably as strong as the engineer in his make-up. This showed itself in his working method, which was to produce freehand sketches of his requirements, leaving others to do the necessary calculations and to convert the sketches into working drawings, although, as will appear later, he was no mean draughtsman himself. Issigonis was a believer in the product being design-driven rather than market-led - he was very scornful of market research. The product, of course, had to be his - he was not known as Arrigonis for nothing, and he was sometimes disappointed when the customer did not see it his way. This was exemplified by the Mini, which he conceived as a simple, cheap, peoples’ car but which turned out to be so expensive to make that it is doubtful whether the manufacturer made much profit from it, and it became a cult car for the few rather than a cheap, car for the masses. Nevertheless, by his innovative ideas on car packaging and perhaps particularly by his work on suspensions - latterly in association with Alex Moulton - he did much to influence thinking on motor car design within the industry, and to raise the public profile of the engineering designer and of the automobile engineer in the UK. Although he was autocratic in his working methods, he could also be very charming and invariably secured the respect of his team and of his collaborators, exemplified by the large number of tributes its members have paid to him since his death.
William George Penney, O. M., K. B. E., Baron Penney of East Hendred, 24 June 1909 - 3 March 1991
Authors: Makins Roger Mellor
Published: December 2006

Lord Penney, a distinguished mathematician in his youth, gave up a promising academic career at the call of public service and became primarily responsible for developing and testing the British fission and fusion nuclear weapons.
Frederick William Shotton, 8 October 1906 - 21 July 1990
Authors: Coope G. R.
Published: December 2006

Frederick William Shotton was born on 8 October 1906 at Exhall, Coventry, the son of Fredrick John Shotton and Ada Shotton, well known figures on both the industrial and political scene in Coventry. In 1905 his father had founded the Albion Drop Forging Company at Holbrooks, north Coventry, a company that had a remarkable record for making car components and for the manufacture of munitions during two World Wars, a record of which Fred Shotton was justly proud. The family were staunch Liberals, and his father, though in his early days a socialist, was President of the Coventry Liberal Society, for four years a member of the Coventry City Council and for many years a Justice of the Peace in the city. In 1930 Fred married Alice Louise Linnett at St Paul’s Church, Foleshill, Coventry with whom he shared a common interest in natural history. Alice was the only daughter of John and Alice Linnett who kept a drapers shop in Smithford Street, Coventry. Later John Linnett opened a ribbon making factory on Foleshill Road, Coventry with which Alice Shotton retained an interest well into the post-war years. They had two daughters, Anne Elizabeth and Margaret Alice, who are both married with sons and daughters of their own. Alice Shotton died in 1979. Fred Shotton remarried in 1983 to Lucille Bailey of Portland, Oregon, who provided him with tender loving care during the last years of his life when gradually failing health kept him from his field work and to a greater and greater extent confined him to home. He died on 21 July 1990. Lucille survives him and still lives in their house in Dorridge near Solihull.
John Charles Burkill, 1 February 1900 - 6 April 1993
Authors: Pitt Harry Raymond
Published: December 2006

John Charles Burkill, born on 1 February 1900, was the only child of Hugh Roberson Burkill (1867-1951) and Bertha (
née
Bourne, 1866-1937). His father came from a family which had farmed in Lincolnshire for generations, whereas his mother came from a background of prosperous farming and building. On neither side was there a strong academic tradition, but Charles was soon to show evidence of intellectual distinction by winning a scholarship to St Paul’s school at the age of 14. There he profited fully from the excellent teaching that the school offered and which was reflected not only by his mathematical prowess, which led to a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1918, but also in his ability in classical studies in which he maintained a life-long interest. He was also a formidable chess player and had a mischievous sense of humour which he retained, albeit in a more restrained mode, in later life. A striking example of his grasp of the essence of a practical joke is recorded in the story that, as a boy on a visit to a house-proud aunt, he saw the comic potential of a trail of corn from the chicken run through the front door and upstairs to the bedrooms. On leaving school in 1918 he joined the Royal Engineers (RE), but was demobilized soon after being commissioned as second lieutenant. However, this early military training was of service in 1939 when he joined the Cambridge University OTC as a second lieutenant and came to command the RE unit with the rank of major. He went up to Trinity in 1919 and stayed on successively as scholar, research student and Smith’s Prizeman and fellow until 1924 when he was appointed at an unusually early age to the chair of pure mathematics at Liverpool.
George Frederick James Temple, 2 September 1901 - 30 January 1992
Authors: Kilmister C. W.
Published: December 2006

George Temple was born in London on 2 September 1901. There is no record of any previous scientific activity in his family; his father James Temple and his mother Frances (
née
Compton) were country folk from Oxfordshire, although by the time George was born James was working for the Great Western Railway at Paddington Station. George himself stressed his good fortune in having three teachers of mathematics of outstanding ability, the first two being Ray Gilbert (who taught George briefly at Northfields Elementary School) and P. G. Goodall (at Ealing County School). James Temple’s death meant that George had to leave Ealing School after less than five years to seek employment. Within a year of leaving, however, he had enrolled as an evening student at Birkbeck College. He decided to study science rather than his other love, classics, and so met the third of his inspiring mathematics teachers, C. V. Coates. George was a student for only one year, 1918-19, after which Professor Albert Griffiths made him his part-time research assistant in physics, an appointment that freed George from his post at the Prudential Assurance Company, though with a cut in salary. It was at this time that he became a Catholic, and his strong faith informed the rest of his life. He had many close Dominican friends and learnt to value the theology of St Thomas highly. He took the General Honours B.Sc. in 1922 and became Steward in the Physics Department for two years.
Isaac Wolfson, BT., 17 September 1897 - 20 June 1991
Authors: Bullock Alan
Published: December 2006

Twentieth Century Britain has known a considerable number of men who have built up large fortunes it has known a much smaller number who have given away large sums of money to help people in need and supported hospitals, hospices and a long list of charities as well as education and research. It is doubtful, however, if it has known anyone who made and gave away money on the same scale and with the same undisguised satisfaction in both operations as Isaac Wolfson. There are few if any of the original universities, few if any of the major centres of scientific and medical research which do not have cause to be grateful for this son of an immigrant Jewish cabinet-maker from Russia, who by the time of his death in June 1991 had seen grants from the Wolfson Foundation he created with his wife and son in 1955 reach a total of £130 million - a much higher figure in present day values if account is taken of inflation.
Eric Ashby, Baron Ashby, of Brandon, Suffolk, Kt, 24 August 1904 - 22 October 1992
Authors: Heslop-Harrison John
Published: December 2006

Eric Ashby was a distinguished plant scientist who moved at the early age of 46 from research and teaching in Britain and Australia into university administration, first as Vice- Chancellor of Queen’s University, Belfast, then as Master of Clare College, Cambridge. He later explained the rationale for the move in these words: ‘I decided ... that I was more interested in people than in ideas; in teaching and educational issues than in pure science, and in solving problems about people rather than problems about plants.’ During the second phase of his career he engaged himself in many activities outside of the university sphere, notably with education in Africa, environmental pollution and public policy in matters such as genetic manipulation. In this memoir his research contributions are placed in a separate Appendix to give them coherence while preserving the continuity of the chronological narrative.
John Gatenby Bolton, 5 June 1922 - 6 July 1993
Authors: Wild John Paul , Radhakrishnan V.
Published: December 2006

Since World War II astronomy has lived through its golden age undergoing a complete transformation. Before the war, astronomy meant optical astronomy and observations were confined to the use of the narrow range of visible spectrum capable of penetrating the earth’s atmosphere - about 1 octave in all. Since that time new advances have made it possible to observe at radio, infrared, ultra-violet, X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths covering a spectrum of some 56 octaves. An exciting consequence of the new era has been the discovery of new classes of galaxies with extraordinarily high energy and luminosity, pushing back the limits of the observable universe beyond all expectations. What started this great revolution? It may be fairly said that it all began in 1948 in Sydney, Australia, when a three-man team led by a 26-year old Yorkshireman named John Bolton discovered that three distant objects, known from optical observations, were, extremely powerful emitters of radio waves. One, which Bolton called ‘Taurus A’, was located in our own galaxy; the Crab Nebula. The other two (‘Virgo A’ and ‘Centaurus A’) were external galaxies. This discovery marked the beginning of the new era in which the universe could be explored by means of its high- energy galaxies. The pursuit of this subject became the main theme of Bolton’s scientific life.
Edmund Brisco Ford, 23 April 1901 - 21 January 1988
Authors: Clarke Bryan Campbell
Published: December 2006

Edmund Brisco Ford, Emeritus Professor of Ecological Genetics in the University of Oxford, Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College and Darwin Medallist of the Royal Society, died on Thursday 21 January 1988 at the age of 86. His body was cremated and, at his request, the ashes were scattered on a grassy Cotswold hillside near Birdlip. In death he returned to the butterfly-meadows that had been the setting for so much of his working life. As the author of what is widely regarded as the best book on butterflies ever written, he progressed through entomology to using his insects as tools for the study of evolution, and finally (as he wrote) to ‘invent and develop the science of ecological genetics.’
1
* In doing so he became one of the outstanding evolutionary biologists of his generation, famous not only for the quality of his science but also for the individuality, not to say the eccentricity, of his behaviour. ‘Henry’, as he was known to friends and colleagues, was a man about whom tales accumulated. * Numbers in this form refer to entries in the footnotes at the end of the text.
Sir Harold Percival Himsworth, K. C. B., 19 May 1905 - 1 November 1993
Authors: Black Douglas , Gray John Archibald Browne
Published: December 2006

This is the memoir of a man whose public life embraced two separate careers. It is unusual for someone who has held a chair of medicine in a leading London hospital with distinction for a decade, to change direction radically in his mid-forties, accepting in so doing a quite different and more demanding set of responsibilities even than those intrinsic to a clinical chair, and having done so, to earn general recognition and acclaim as an outstanding facilitator of the notable flowering of both basic and clinical research in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. Himsworth stands out as one of those whose gifts would have brought success in a great variety of worthwhile careers, for he had an unusual combination of wide vision of what might be possible and desirable, and a strong sense of what was actually practicable and capable of deployment in many fields of science, and even of more general affairs. He could not, of course, command success in all his endeavours; but like Cato in Addison’s tragedy, he generally deserved it; nor could he have foreseen the academic philistinism which was to overtake our country in the 1980s.
Christopher Frank Kearton, Baron Kearton, of Whitchurch, Bucks, Kt, O.B.E., 17 February 1911 - 2 July 1992
Authors: Wooding Norman
Published: December 2006

Christopher Frank Kearton went up to Oxford in 1929 from a grammar school to read chemistry. On graduating in 1933 he joined ICI and began a career in industry which left its mark across a swathe of sectors which, if not unique, has been emulated by few. Chemicals, nuclear, man-made fibres, textiles, oil and gas were all industries in which he played a major part. Nor were his efforts confined to these. He took on a succession of public appointments, serving causes as diverse as the reorganization of the railways, the generation and supply of electricity, the Industrial Reorganization Corporation and the establishment of the British National Oil Corporation. When these efforts were recognized in 1970 by the award of a life peerage he was still deeply involved in activities related to both industry and the academic world. It was, therefore, some years before he played an active part in the work of the Upper House. When he did he soon became an indefatigable member of a number of select committees. Throughout his life his restless energy and ambition, coupled with a formidable memory, meant that he was no stranger to controversy. But few would deny that his objectives were always in what he saw to be the national interest.
Robert Alexander McCance, 9 December 1898 - 5 March 1993
Authors: Widdowson Elsie May
Published: December 2006

Robert Alexander McCance spent most of his scientific life in Cambridge, as a student from 1919 to 1925, as Reader in Medicine from 1938 to 1945, and as Professor of Experimental Medicine from 1945 to 1966. During the intervening years (1925-1938) he completed his medical training at King’s College Hospital, London, and began his career in research. He came to be regarded in different circles as physician, paediatrician, physiologist, biochemist and nutritionist. He was certainly an investigator, but not a specialist. He was an opportunist, ready to take advantage of problems that presented themselves, whether concerning a patient with an obscure disease, food shortages in wartime, survival after shipwreck, or a chance observation that he believed needed further investigation. He was interested in the physiology and biochemistry of the whole body and the functions of its organs and tissues rather than its nerves, cells and their inclusions. He made major contributions in many fields, but he became so absorbed in the subject of current interest that he disliked being distracted, and he got rather irritated when a visitor called who wanted to discuss with him the relative merits of white and brown bread when he was deep in thought about the function of newborn infants’ kidneys. He was a well-known figure, cycling in Cambridge and along the country roads around, thinking about the investigations going on in his department. If he suddenly had an idea about one of them he would find the nearest telephone box and call the person concerned, even if it was early on a Sunday morning. Those who worked with him loved his little eccentricities and many stories were told about them, some of them true, but others greatly exaggerated.
Sir Owen Saunders, 24 September 1904 - 10 October 1993
Authors: Ford Hugh
Published: December 2006

Owen Alfred Saunders was born on 24 September 1904 in London, the only son of Alfred George Saunders and of Margaret Ellen Saunders (
née
Jones) who, as the name implies, was of Welsh origin, believed to have been descended from Owain Glyndwr. Sir Owen died on 10 October 1993. His health had not been good for some time and his failing sight in his last years restricted his activities. Alfred George Saunders was an engineer, who entered the firm of Beck and Co. as a draughtsman. He was, however, a man of considerable capability and ingenuity and in the course of a very busy life rose to be Managing Director. He was the inventor and designer of the Beckmeter Petrol Pump which at one time almost monopolized the forecourt of petrol filling stations in Britain. The Jones family, from which Sir Owen’s mother came, had its own distinctions. She was a teacher, who had a great influence on his formative years. Her brother, O. G. Jones - who was known as ‘the Only Genuine Jones’ - had been a student at the Royal College of Science at South Kensington. His claim to fame was as a mountaineer and rock-climber. He was also a writer and was the author of the widely acclaimed text on
Rock-climbing in the English Lake District
, a book that ran to three editions and is still considered one of the best references on the subject. He lost his life on 28 August 1899 when the guide fell on the west- ridge of the Dent Blanche. Only one of the five-man team survived and the account by F. W. Hill of the accident makes fascinating and tragic reading.
Sir George Taylor, 15 February 1904 - 12 November 1993
Authors: Cullen J.
Published: December 2006

George Taylor was a major British figure in flowering plant taxonomy during the period from 1930 to 1970. A Scot, he was trained at Edinburgh University and was first employed (in 1928) in the Botany Department of the British Museum (Natural History) as assistant in the herbarium, then as Deputy Keeper of Botany and finally as Keeper, coming into contact with all the influential currents of plant taxonomy of his day. This experience, coupled with his life-long interest in gardening, made him the ideal person to become Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew when Sir Edward Salisbury retired in 1956. Taylor spent 15 very active years at Kew, and then, at an age when most are thinking of retiring, took on a new career as Director of the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, a post which he held for 18 years until illness made it impossible for him to continue. Over this long period, his influence on flowering plant taxonomy and gardening in Britain and abroad was enormous and widely recognized.