bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
John Desmond Bernal, 10 May 1901 - 15 September 1971
Authors: Hodgkin Dorothy Mary Crowfoot
Published: December 2006

John Desmond Bernal lived his life to the full. He liked to say that his biography ought to be written in four colours, on interleaved pages, to show his different activities, fitted together. Oral tradition differs as to the colour of the pages; black and white, certainly for science, red for politics, blue for arts, purple or yellow for his personal life. This biographical note necessarily covers mainly the black and white pages, though others may ultimately prove as important for mankind. In his scientific work he was a great pioneer, whose ideas and early experiments made possible many of the major advances of our time in our understanding of structure and function in physics, chemistry and biology.
Dennis Gabor, 5 June 1900 - 9 February 1979
Authors: Allibone Thomas Edward
Published: December 2006

Dennis Gabor, originally in Hungarian Gábor Dénes, scientist, engineer, inventor, humanist, Nobel Prize winner, was born in Hungary on 5 June 1900, came to England in 1934, married Marjorie Louise Butler in 1936 and, after a life of brilliant scientific and philosophical achievement coupled with great happiness, died in London on 9 February 1979. To use his own words he was “one of the lucky physicists who have been able to see one of their ideas grow into a sizeable chapter of physics”, a chapter he continued to enlarge up to the onset of illness in 1974, and in addition he applied his penetrating intellect to some of the problems of man’s survival, problems created by the advance of technology: in a series of books and discourses he—to use again his own words— “invented a future,—and a good one,—one that preserves the values of civilization and yet is in harmony with man’s nature—based on hope and the love of life”. Few scientists are masters of the ‘two cultures’, but this, Dennis Gabor certainly was.
William Quarrier Kennedy, 30 November 1903 - 13 March 1979
Authors: Sutton John
Published: December 2006

William Quarrier Kennedy, one of the most farseeing geologists of this century, divided his professional service almost equally between the Geological Survey of Great Britain, of which he was a member from 1928 to 1945, and the University of Leeds where he occupied the Chair of Geology from 1945 to 1967. During most of his time with the Geological Survey, Kennedy worked in his native Scotland, but with his move to Leeds he was able to range farther afield, in particular into Africa. In that continent his remarkable ability to discern geological relations on a large scale, previously concealed by small scale complications, which had already led him to a series of major discoveries in Scotland, found ever wider scope. Quick to perceive, but with the patience to spend years marshalling evidence around a germinating idea, he had great clarity of mind and an exceptional memory. These qualities are reflected in his published work and in his successful leadership of the Research Institute of African Geology he founded at the University of Leeds in 1955 and which he directed until his retirement. A slim man of no more than average height Kennedy was always neatly dressed whether in the laboratory or in the field. This neatness was reflected in his work, for his office was well ordered as were his lectures, professional papers and geological maps. His charm of manner and sparkling intelligence won him friends throughout his career. The affection and esteem in which he was held by colleagues at Leeds, emerges particularly clearly in the bookAfrican magmatism and tectonicsbrought out in his honour after his retirement and which opens with an appreciation by R. M. Shackleton.
Sidnie Milana Manton, 4 May 1902 - 2 January 1979
Authors: Fryer Geoffrey
Published: December 2006

Sidnie Milana Manton, one of the outstanding zoologists of her time, and the elder of the two daughters of George Sidney Frederick Manton and Milana Angele Terese (
née
d’Humy), was born in London on 4 May 1902. Both sides of the family seem to have produced craftsmen of one sort or another and this ability to use, and enjoy using, her hands she inherited in full measure. Her father, a dental surgeon, was skilled in wood-carving and also worked with metals and enamels. One of his ancestors was Joe Manton, the gunsmith, a celebrated maker of flintlock guns, who also ran a fashionable London shooting range in the early 19th century. Her mother, of mixed Scottish and French ancestry, came from a family with a strong artistic bent, and was herself gifted in this direction, being skilled at drawing and needlework and did design work for Liberty’s. Sidnie enjoyed a comfortable home in which the constant example of two manually skilled parents who were always making things, from jewellery to lenses and furnishings, and who encouraged youthful assistants, had a great influence on her. Not surprisingly, as a child much of her spare time was spent making things, and she was also interested in pets, and in drawing creatures that she had collected. A probably natural inclination to collect plants and animals was encouraged from an early age, especially by her mother, who aroused an interest in natural history in both Sidnie and her sister. This led to remarkable results for not only were both destined to become professional biologists, Sidnie a zoologist and Irene a botanist, but both were eventually elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society—the only case in its histoiy of two sisters achieving this distinction.
Ernst Boris Chain, 19 June 1906 - 12 August 1979
Authors: Abraham Edward Penley
Published: December 2006

Ernst Boris Chain was one of the highly gifted scientists who found refuge in Britain from Hitler’s regime in Germany. His great contribution to science and medicine lay in his role in the initiation of the work in Oxford which led to the demonstration of the therapeutic power of penicillin. For this he shared a Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming. He was a cosmopolitan and controversial figure.
Eric Eastwood, 12 March 1910 - 6 October 1981
Authors: Jones Francis Edgar
Published: December 2006

Eric Eastwood was born at Rochdale on 12 March 1910, the youngest of six children of whom five were boys and one a girl. His brilliant career as an electrical and electronic engineer— since World War II his name has become synonymous with radar although his interests were much wider—was clearly influenced by two main factors. The first was his upbringing in a closely knit Lancashire family whose fortunes were very much linked to the ups and downs of the cotton industry, more often down than up it would seem. The second was the advent of World War II which took Eric away from his prewar career as a schoolmaster, put him into uniform as an R.A.F. officer and initiated him into radar. It was on this initiation that he built his extraordinarily fruitful career in the postwar era. I would like to dwell at some length on these two influencing factors before coming on to that part of his life as a scientist and engineer for which he is so well known.
Egon Hynek Kodicek, 3 August 1908 - 27 July 1982
Authors: Fraser D. R. , Widdowson Elsie May
Published: December 2006

Egon Hynek Kodicek was born on 3 August 1908 at Kamenny Ujezd, a little village on the river Moldau in southern Bohemia, which at that time was part of the Austro -Hungarian Empire. He was an only child and his father was a general medical practitioner, trained in Vienna. Egon’s father was widely known in the region for his expert diagnostic skills. Using only his senses of touch, vision and smell he was able correctly to identify disease processes where other doctors would need the help of hospital facilities. As a doctor he was much influenced by the teaching of Sigmund Freud and he was one of the first to use psychological methods, when appropriate, in the treatment of disease. Egon admired and had an enormous respect for his father and sometimes would accompany him in his horse-drawn carriage on visits to patients. When Egon was 6 years old the family moved to nearby Budweis, where his father had been appointed doctor-in-charge of the military hospital there. Although his grandparents on both sides w ere orthodox Jews, Egon’s parents were not religious and he described him self and his father as ‘Czech liberals’
Edward George Tandy Liddell, 25 March 1895 - 17 August 1981
Authors: Phillips Charles Garrett
Published: December 2006

Edward George Tandy Liddell, the second and younger son of Dr John Liddell, a physician of Harrogate, was born on 25 March 1895. ‘In the first three winters of existence,’ he wrote in his personal memoir, ‘he had bouts of pneumonia which deprived him permanently of really robust health, but he limited his way of life and escaped further serious illnesses.’ After attending two local ‘dame schools’ he was sent to Summer Fields, Oxford, in 1905; from there, in 1909, he won a scholarship at Shrewsbury but chose instead to go to Harrow , where he spent two years on the classical side before transferring to science. At the end of 1913 he left school and lived for 6 months with families in Germany, at Bonn and Frankfurt-on-the-Main; and in October 1914 he went up to a ‘fast-emptying Oxford’ to read medicine as a member of Trinity College. Having obtained a first class honours degree in Physiology in 1918, he became an assistant at the Serum Department of the Lister Institute at Elstree under A. T. MacConkey. He was elected to a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College. He began his clinical studies at St Thomas’s Hospital in January 1919, qualifying B.M., B.Ch. Oxon. in July 1921. During those years of steady work he evidently learned to spend his energies to best advantage. Often he felt too tired to read in the evenings. It turned out that his heart had been damaged. Sir James Mackenzie gave him a Delphic prognosis: ‘take care of your heart, and it will last you as long as you need it’. In old age he recalled that Lady Osier once said to him: ‘you look like a lazy man to me’. But no one who was close to him, and knew how much work he got through, could have so misread his calm manner, his economy of movement, and his deliberate pace.
Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn, 7 January 1906 - 18 September 1980
Authors: Shoenberg David
Published: December 2006

Kurt Mendelssohn was born on 7 January 1906 at Berlin-Schoenberg, the only child of Ernst Moritz Mendelssohn and his wife Elisabeth
David Gwynne Evans, 6 September 1909 - 13 June 1984
Authors: Downie Allan Watt , Gordon Smith C. E. , Tobin J. O'h.
Published: December 2006

David Gwynne Evans was born in Atherton, near Manchester, on 6 September 1909 of Welsh parents; his father, a schoolmaster, was from Pembrokeshire and his mother from Bangor, North Wales. He was the third of four children in a distinguished family. His older brother, Meredith Gwynne, became Professor of Physical Chemistry in Leeds and later in Manchester and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. His sister, Lynette Gwynne, took a degree in modern languages at Manchester University and taught in girls’ high schools. His younger brother, Alwyn Gwynne, after holding a lectureship in Manchester University was appointed to the Chair of Physical Chemistry in Cardiff University. David left Leigh Grammar School in 1928 at the age of 18 years and worked for two years in a junior capacity for the British Cotton Growers’ Association at the Manchester Cotton Exchange. However, when Alwyn went up to Manchester University in 1931, David decided to go with him and both graduated B.Sc. in physics and chemistry three years later and M .S c. after a further year. At this time Professor Maitland in the Department of Bacteriology wanted a chemist to help in the public health laboratory which was run by his department. Professor Lapworth recommended David for the post and thus David entered the field of bacteriology and immunology, to which he was to contribute so much. He was appointed Demonstrator and soon afterwards Assistant Lecturer in the University Department. During these early years he worked with Professor Maitland on the toxins of
Haemophilus pertussis
(now
Bordetella pertussis
) and related organisms, work that provided a sound basis for his subsequent interest in whooping cough immunization and later for his abiding interest in vaccination against other diseases and in the standardization of vaccines and antisera.
Keith Stewartson, 20 September 1925 - 7 May 1983
Authors: Lighthill Michael James
Published: December 2006

Keith Stewartson, one of the most mathematically profound of this century’s great applied mathematicians active in the mechanics of fluids, was brought up in Billingham, County Durham , where his father was a master baker. Keith was the youngest of three children, two boys and a girl, but his sister died very young and he was not subsequently able to remember her. Later on, an eminent academic career was nearly smothered at its inception when the eleven-plus examiners failed Keith Stewartson. Fortunately, however, they put him on a reserve list, from which he was in the end selected for entry to Stockton Secondary School. After a brilliant performance in the School Certificate Keith was encouraged to enter only a year later, in 1942, for the Higher School Certificate. Immediately after his extremely distinguished examination achievement leading to a State Scholarship and Kitchener Memorial Scholarship to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, the family home received a direct hit from a German bomb. Happily, however, the Stewartsons escaped owing to their air-raid shelter’s robust construction.
Harold Warris Thompson, 15 February 1908 - 31 December 1983
Authors: Richards Rex Edward
Published: December 2006

Harold Warris Thompson was born in Wombwell, Yorkshire, on 15 February 1908. He had one sister, born five years earlier, who died in 1980. His father was the Chief Executive of a colliery and a town councillor; he died in 1928. At the age of nine he went to King Edward VII School in Sheffield, where he was particularly influenced by the mathematics master, Mr Nicholas, and by Mr Lloyd Davis who instilled in him a love of the German language and particularly its poetry. He was a House Captain and played football and cricket for the school. He took Higher School Certificate in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and German, and obtained an open scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1924. During the scholarship examination he was invited with a few other candidates to dine in the Senior Common Room in Balliol, and he often spoke of his vivid memories of that daunting occasion, when he first met C. N. Hinshelwood, Harold Hartley, E. J. Bowen, H. R. Raikes and J. H. Wolfenden.
Errol Ivor White, 30 June 1901 - 11 January 1985
Authors: Stubblefield Cyril James
Published: December 2006

Errol Ivor White, a former Keeper of Palaeontology at the British Museum (Natural History), was for over sixty years an outstanding research worker studying all groups of fossil fishes, especially those found in the Old Red Sandstone and late Silurian strata. By using chemical solution techniques, he added anatomical knowledge to the substantial morphological and taxonomic knowledge he had obtained of some of the fishes he studied. Like his predecessor, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, F.R.S., White made sterling efforts to make the Museum’s collections representative of every world-important fauna or flora. By his own physical labours in Madagascar, Spitsbergen, the Welsh border counties and South Wales, he contributed to that aim; his published studies ranged over all fish-bearing geological systems and they touched on each of the continents. In the realms of natural philosophy, whereas White accepted that, through time, organisms show a succession of creatures of increasingly modern aspect, from his work on fossil fishes he found that direct linkages between the fish groups were missing or faulty (115)*. In the later years of his Keepership he initiated the creation of an adjunct to the Museum building to provide for the enlarged collections and increased staff; also he sought and gained financial approval for the modernization of the display in the Museum’s fossil mammal gallery. * Numbers given in this form refer to entries in the bibliography at the end of the text.
Frank Macfarlane Burnet, 3 September 1899 - 31 August 1985
Authors: Fenner Frank John
Published: December 2006

Frank Macfarlane Burnet was the greatest biologist that Australia has produced. He spent virtually all of a long working life in Australia. His experimental work on bacteriophages and animal viruses, especially influenza virus, resulted in major discoveries concerning their nature and replication, and he was a pioneer in the application of ecological principles to viral diseases. He proposed two concepts in immunology, acquired immunological tolerance and the clonal selection theory of antibody production, that proved to be of critical importance in stimulating research and led to a more complete understanding of immune processes. In the later stages of his life he wrote about problems of ageing and cancer.
Arthur Roderick Collar, 22 February 1908 - 12 February 1986
Authors: Bishop Richard Evelyn Donohue
Published: December 2006

Arthur Roderick Collar’s technical interests lay mostly in aeronautics. His principal scientific achievements were in matrix theory and, in particular, its applications to engineering dynamics. He had a distinguished career both as a scientific civil servant and as an academic. Such, in outline, were his achievements; but the outline is misleadingly bare. Collar was the first academic ever to become President of the Royal Aeronautical Society while still in academic office, was made the Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University at a time when a firm hand was needed, and was the Chairman of the South West Regional Hospital Management Board. In short, he made things happen, not only in engineering but in the wider world.
Percy Edward (Peter) Kent, 18 March 1913 - 9 July 1986
Authors: Falcon Norman Leslie , Dunham Kingsley Charles
Published: December 2006

Percy Edward Kent was born in West Bridgford, Nottingham, on 18 March 1913. Early in his life he chose to be called Peter, and by this name he has become widely known as a leading petroleum exploration geologist, as Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council (N.E.R.C.) and latterly as a consultant and company director.
John Turton Randall, 23 March 1905 - 16 June 1984
Authors: Wilkins Maurice Hugh Frederick
Published: December 2006

John Randall was an unusual scientist who made outstanding contributions in three very different areas of science. First he made his mark in solid-state physics. Next, for radar he invented (with H. A. H. Boot) the cavity magnetron, which was probably the most decisive contribution of science to the winning of World War II. Lastly, and most significantly, he entered biology and built up a biophysics laboratory that was a world leader in pioneering the new area of molecular biology and contributed to both the discovery of the DNA double helix and of the sliding filament mechanism of muscle contraction. Randall’s success derived from his exceptional energy, foresight and sound judgement. Although an original and even somewhat maverick scientist, he had a very shrewd understanding of how established society worked and, as a result, he achieved great success as a scientific entrepreneur, fund-raiser and administrator. But he was never content with such success and his greatest enthusiasm was always for personal engagement in laboratory work. It is sometimes claimed that creativity springs from contradiction; the aspect of contrast in Randall’s personality and in his work in some ways supports that idea. I began research as a Ph.D. student studying luminescence under Randall, was fairly closely in touch with him during his magnetron work and also worked in his laboratory for nearly all of his biological period (except for his characteristically active retirement). My career depended much on him, and between us there was an undercurrent of father and son relationship. As a result I do not feel I can be wholly objective about him. Therefore, while I give here primarily my own impressions, I also give those of others and quote directly from Randall’s Personal Record written 1962-68 (all unnumbered quotes are from the Record).
Owain Westmacott Richards, 31 December 1901 - 10 November 1984
Authors: Southwood Sir Richard
Published: December 2006

Owain Westmacott Richards was born on 31 December 1901 in Croydon, the second son of Harold Meredith Richards, M.D., and Mary Cecilia Richards (
née
Todd). At the time H. M. Richards was Medical Officer of Health for Croydon, a post he held until 1912 when he returned to the town of his birth, Cardiff, as Deputy Chairman of the newly formed Welsh Insurance Commission, the forerunner of the Welsh Board of Health. Owain Richards’s grandfather had a hatter’s business in Cardiff, which had been established by his father, who had migrated to Cardiff from Llanstephan in Carmarthenshire (now Dyfed). This great-grandfather was probably the last Welsh-speaking member of the family; his son discouraged the use of Welsh as ‘unprogressive’ and married a non-Welsh speaking girl from Haverfordwest. Harold Richards, being the youngest son, did not inherit the family business. On leaving school he worked for some years in a shipping firm belonging to a relative. He found this uncongenial and in his late twenties, having decided to become a doctor, he attended classes at the newly founded University College at Cardiff. Passing the Intermediate Examination he entered University College London, qualifying in 1891, taking his M.D. and gaining gold medals in 1892 and 1893. He was elected a Fellow of University College London in 1898. As medical practices had, at that time, either to be purchased or inherited, Harold Richards took a salaried post as Medical Officer of Health for Chesterfield and Dronfield (Derbyshire), soon moving to Croydon. After his work at Cardiff, he transferred, in 1920, to the Ministry of Health in London, responsible for the medical and hospital aspects of the Local Government Act, 1929 (Anon. 1943
a, b
). He retired in 1930 and died in 1943. His obituaries recorded that he was ‘excessively shy and modest’, that he always ‘overworked’ and had markedly high standards (Anon. 1943
a, b
). Such comments would be equally true of Owain.
William Homan Thorpe, 1 April 1902 - 7 April 1986
Authors: Hinde Robert Aubrey
Published: December 2006

William Homan Thorpe came from a Sussex family. He could trace his ancestors back through two generations of shoemakers to a great-great- grandfather who was landlord of The Six Bells at Chiddingly. One of his great-uncles, Richard Oscar Tugwell Thorpe, became 9th Wrangler at Queens’ College, took Holy Orders and in 1870 founded The Infant Life Protection Society, giving evidence before Parliament that led to the first Infant Life Protection Act. His father, Francis Homan Thorpe, was Borough Accountant of Hastings, and later Chief Accountant of the Imperial Tobacco Company. On the other side of his family, his mother was related to Felix Joseph Slade (1788-1868), founder of the Slade School and of the Slade Professorships at Oxford and Cambridge.
James Hardy Wilkinson, 27 September 1919 - 5 October 1986
Authors: Fox L.
Published: December 2006

James Hardy Wilkinson was the first professional numerical analyst to be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. He was without any doubt a world leader in the subject and indeed the world leader for many years in that considerable part of it generally called numerical linear algebra. But his early life could only be described as ‘humble’, and we have to thank his parents, brother and sisters and some very special schoolmasters for giving him the chance of success. In this memoir I shall call him Jim, though the nickname ‘Wilkie’ occurs in section 5.
William Henry Wittrick, 29 October 1922 - 2 July 1986
Authors: Mansfield Eric Harold , Davies G. A. O. , Williams F. W.
Published: December 2006

William Henry Wittrick was born in Huddersfield on 29 October 1922. His father, Frank Wittrick (1894-1960) was the eldest of three sons of an iron and steel merchant in Huddersfield who died in 1913. After leaving school Frank Wittrick completed an engineering apprenticeship with a view to joining his father in the firm of steel merchants, but his father’s death and World War I prevented this plan from being realized. Frank Wittrick enlisted in 1914 and served in France through most of the war; he was wounded and emerged with impaired health. In 1919 he set up a business as a haulage contractor but this failed in the depression some years later. In 1921 he married Jessie, eldest child of Walter Jury, a builder in Huddersfield. He then had a variety of jobs, including working for an insurance company and as a bus driver, but on the outbreak of World War II he went to work for an engineering firm in Huddersfield, which specialized in valve manufacture, and stayed with them until he retired through ill-health in the mid-1950s. William’s mother, Jessie, was a proficient pianist and also had a fine contralto voice. She sang in the well-known Huddersfield Choral Society but, regrettably, she left it after her marriage. Nevertheless, as a boy William spent many enjoyable musical evenings around the piano with his family and other relatives or friends, and his mother playing the piano and leading the singing.
Robert Gwyn MacFarlane, 26 June 1907 — 26 March 1987
Authors: Born Gustav Victor Rudolf , Weatherall David John
Published: December 2006

Professor Gwyn MacFarlane was an experimental haematologist who, more than anyone else, turned the perplexing phenomenology of blood clotting into a scientific subject. In doing so, he created a school of coagulationists that now extends all over the world and revolutionized the outlook for sufferers from haemophilia and other bleeding disorders. .
Irene Manton, 17 April 1904 - 13 May 1988
Authors: Preston Reginald Dawson
Published: December 2006

Irene Manton was by profession a cytologist but she was much else besides: a violinist, a collector of modern and Chinese painting, and knowledgeable about Chinese printing. She was a versatile classical botanist, but her real interests lay in two specialist fields. H er early work, up to about 1950, was exclusively devoted to chromosome cytology, using chromosome number as a guide in elucidating interrelationships between plants and their phylogeny. During this part of her career she concentrated largely on ferns. After 1950, and with the advent of electron microscopy, she extended her interests to cover the fine structure, firstly of spermatozoids but for many years thereafter of a wide range of nanoplankton from all over the world. Even then, she continued her fern cytology partly at her own hands but mostly through the activity of innumerable students and colleagues. In both fields of research she inspired generations of postgraduate students by her enthusiasm, her meticulous attention to detail and her exuberant energy.
Bryan Harold Cabot Matthews, 14 June 1906 - 23 July 1986
Authors: Gray John Archibald Browne
Published: December 2006

Bryan Harold Cabot Matthews (later Professor Sir Bryan Matthews C.B.E., M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S.) will be remembered in the public field for his major contribution to neurophysiology and for his important contribution to the War effort by his work at Farnborough. These achievements appear to derive naturally from his vigorous personality, his life long interests and his family background. He was a friendly, likeable and at times commanding figure who, as experience at Farnborough shows, was capable of handling people with very varying backgrounds. He had, throughout his life, a deep love of activities that involved some challenge to the natural elements: skiing, canoeing, camping and above all long-distance sailing. Early on he developed an interest in technical things and in the way modern techniques could solve the problems with which he was faced, whether in the laboratory or at sea. His background and family were scientific. His father, Harold Evan Matthews, was trained as a pharmacist at the School of Pharmacy in London and was a manufacturing pharmacist with a factory and shop in the Mall at Clifton. His mother, Ruby Sarah Harrison, was also a pharmacist. His elder brother, born in 1901, was Leonard Harrison Matthews, F.R.S., the zoologist whose Biographical Memoir appeared in 1987 (vol. 33). The scientific culture has deep roots in the family and continues with Bryan’s son Professor P.B.C. Matthews, F.R.S., now a leading figure in an area of neurophysiology, the function of the mammalian muscle spindle, opened by his father. Bryan had an early interest in science, though this was probably not always purely academic, as for example when he had an accident with gunpowder at the age of 11. He went to Clifton College and while he was there he developed an interest in radio. This was in the early 1920s and very soon after the beginning of radio broadcasting in 1921; methods were primitive to say the least and, although in some respects simple, required much skill and patience to obtain results.
Peter Brian Medawar, 28 February 1915 - 2 October 1987
Authors: Mitchison Nicholas Avrion
Published: December 2006

Peter Brian Medawar was born in 1915 in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Nicholas Agnatius, was a Brazilian businessman of Lebanese extraction, and his mother Edith Muriel Dowling, British. He was educated at Marlborough College and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a first-class degree in zoology in 1936 and D.Sc. in 1947. At Oxford he was successively a Christopher Welch Scholar and senior-demi of Magdalen, a senior research fellow of St John’s, and a fellow by special election of Magdalen. From 1947 to 1951 he was Mason Professor of Zoology in the University of Birmingham, from 1951 to 1962 Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in University College London, and from 1962 to 1971 Director of the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill. From 1971 to 1986 he worked in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Centre, Harrow. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1949; he was awarded a C.B.E. in 1958, a knighthood in 1965, a C.H. in 1972, and an O.M. in 1981, as well as honorary degrees too numerous to mention. In 1960, jointly with MacFarlane Burnet, he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine, for the discovery of immunological tolerance. Medawar enjoyed great fame as a popularizer and philosopher of science, through his books, numerous articles (cited here only as the collected volumes which contain a selection) and broadcasts. He had a powerfully dramatic presence, much wit, and deep insight into the hopes of his audience.
John Frank Adams, 5 November 1930 - 7 January 1989
Authors: James Ioan Mackenzie
Published: December 2006

Frank Adams was born in Woolwich on 5 November 1930. His home was in New Eltham, about ten miles east of the centre of London. Both his parents were graduates of King’s College London, which was where they had met. They had one other child - Frank’s younger brother Michael - who rose to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal in the Royal Air Force. In his creative gifts and practical sense, Frank took after his father, a civil engineer, who worked for the government on road building in peace-time and airfield construction in war-time. In his exceptional capacity for hard work, Frank took after his mother, who was a biologist active in the educational field. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the Adams family was evacuated first to Devon, for a year, and then to Bedford, where Frank became a day pupil at Bedford School; one of a group of independent schools in that city. Those who recall him at school describe him as socially somewhat
gauche
and quite a daredevil; indeed there were traces of this even when he was much older. In 1946, at the end of the war, the rest of the family returned to London while Frank stayed on at school to take the usual examinations, including the Cambridge Entrance Scholarship examination at which he won an Open Scholarship to Trinity College. The Head of Mathematics at Bedford, L.H. Clarke, was a schoolmaster whose pupils won countless open awards, especially at Trinity.
Geoffrey Morse Binnie, 13 November 1908 - 5 April 1989
Authors: Wood Alan Marshall Muir
Published: December 2006

Geoffrey Morse Binnie was born on 13 November 1908, the youngest of three brothers. His father, William James Eames Binnie, and grandfather (Sir) Alexander Richardson Binnie, were both distinguished engineers who came together to found the firm of consulting engineers, Binnie and Partners, in 1902. Geoffrey’s great-grandfather, Alexander (1801-1870), a Bond Street tailor, was also grandfather of Alfred Maurice Binnie, F. R. S. (1901-1987). Geoffrey Binnie’s father and grandfather served as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1939 and 1905 respectively. Partly, no doubt, because of pride in these distinguished immediate forebears, Geoffrey spoke often of his perception of family as a continuum stretching across the generations. He wore a ring with the family crest that was a royal award to a remote ancestor, a Scottish yeoman farmer who captured a key fortress from the English in the Wars of Independence. He made time, in a busy life, to research the fates of some of his kin in the intervening centuries. And he rejoiced at having himself lived to see his own grandchildren embarked upon their chosen careers.
Alan Robertson, 21 February 1920 - 25 April 1989
Authors: Hill William George
Published: December 2006

Alan Robertson was born on 21 February 1920 at a nursing home in Preston, although his parents lived in Liverpool. His father, John Mouat Robertson, was in the Signals Branch of the Post Office. He was a self-taught linguist of exceptional ability and subsequently served as an interpreter in the War Office. He was also good in a wide range of sports. Alan’s mother, Annie Grace, came from a farming family and was one of six children, but the only one who married. Her eldest brother, John Hilton Grace, was a mathematician; he was second wrangler at Cambridge in 1895, where he spent most of the rest of his life, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1908. He was, however, of intemperate habits (Todd 1958) and was apparently cut off from the family, so Alan did not know him during his own time in Cambridge. It is of note that Alan had mathematical, linguistic and sporting talents. Alan was the second child, but his elder sister had died of tuberculosis before he was born. His mother died a few days after his birth, so he was brought up by his aunt, Bessie Grace, on the family farm at Halewood, near Liverpool. The farm was run by his uncle, Willie Grace, who was considered a very enterprising individual and a pioneer in stock husbandry.
Francis Leslie Rose, 27 June 1909 - 3 March 1988
Authors: Suckling Charles Walter , Langley B. W.
Published: December 2006

Francis Leslie Rose (known to all his friends and colleagues as Frank Rose) was born in Lincoln on 27 June 1909, second son of Frederick William Rose and his wife Elisabeth Ann (née Watts). He had an elder brother and an elder sister. His father, born in Ipswich in 1873, began an apprenticeship in a pharmacy but was forced by the financial stringency imposed by the death of his father, who left a widow and six children, to seek more remunerative employment as a clerk in the office of Tweed, Stephen & Page, solicitors in Lincoln, with whom he remained until retirement at the age of 72. During the war of 1914-1918 he served as an assistant magistrates’ clerk, helping to deal with the upsurge of petty crime that resulted from the stationing of many thousands of troops around Lincoln. Frederick Rose’s devotion to his work and loyalty to his employers were, in due course, to be matched by his son Francis.
Frank George Young, 25 March 1908 - 20 September 1988
Authors: Randle Philip John
Published: December 2006

Frank Young was born in the London Borough of Clerkenwell at 2 Bond Street, Holford Square, an area of fine Georgian Houses destroyed in the 1939-45 war. His parents were Frank Edgar Young and Jessie Eleanor Young (formerly Pinkney). His father was a solicitor’s clerk and a fastidious and somewhat severe man. Frank had a younger brother Eric, born in 1912, and a sister Margaret, born in 1925. Eric was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, made a career in the Diplomatic Service and as a recreation studied and published on art and history becoming an authority on Spanish painting. In 1912 the family moved to Dulwich where Frank and Eric were educated at Alleyn’s School. As a schoolboy Frank became interested in chemistry through reading about the subject in the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica
. He comments that at this stage his interest owed more to fascination than to understanding. He extended his knowledge by reading the standard Victorian textbooks, given to him by neighbours who had been school science teachers. He also became interested in archaeology and Egyptology through articles in the encyclopedia and elsewhere; and later through a friend in Dulwich (Gerald Lankester Harding) who had been appointed to assist Flinders Petrie in his archaeological researches in Egypt. Frank was to retain this interest as an undergraduate at University College because Flinders Petrie and Lankester Harding were based there when in England.
Joseph Burtt Hutchinson, 21 March 1902 - 16 January 1988
Authors: Arnold M. H.
Published: December 2006

Joseph Burtt Hutchinson, known as ‘Jack’ to his family and friends in the U.K., but widely known as ‘Hutch’ overseas, showed, throughout his life, a rare combination of Quaker dedication to Christian principles, agricultural common sense and scientific excellence. It was this unusual combination of characteristics that enabled him to contribute to human well-being in ways that extended far beyond those demanded by his professional career. He served for more than 30 years in tropical developing countries, not only contributing to our knowledge of the genetics and taxonomy of the world’s cottons but, more generally, encouraging and stimulating science and education in the cause of development. The same underlying attributes continued to motivate his life and work when he returned to Cambridge as Professor of Agriculture and, later, in retirement. He received an Sc.D. from Cambridge in 1948, a D.Sc.
honoris causa
from Nottingham in 1966 and was similarly honoured by the University of East Anglia in 1971. He was awarded the Royal Society Gold Medal in 1967, made C.M.G. in 1944 and knighted in 1956.
Michael Meredith Swann, Baron Swann of Coln St Denys, 1 March 1920 - 22 September 1990
Authors: Mitchison John Murdoch
Published: December 2006

Michael Meredith Swann was born on 1 March 1920. He was the son of M.B.R. Swann, M.D., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Marjorie Dykes. He was an Exhibitioner at Winchester College (where he was not happy) and then a Scholar at Gonville and Caius College where he took an M.A. and a Ph.D. Having served with distinction in the Army (1940-1946) in various capacities, mostly scientific, and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel at the age of 26, he returned to Cambridge after the war. He worked in the Zoology Department until 1952 and was a University Demonstrator in Zoology (1946-1952) and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College (1946-1952). In 1952, he moved to Edinburgh University when he was appointed to the Chair of Natural History (Head of the Zoology Department) at the early age of 32. The later parts of his varied and distinguished career are described at the end of this memoir. In 1942, he married Tess Gleadowe, A.R.C.M., A.R.C.O., the daughter of Professor R.M.Y. Gleadowe, C.V.O. and Cecil Rotton. The Swanns had two sons and two daughters, all now living. It was in every way a happy and successful marriage and Michael was very much a family man.
Edward George Bowen, 14 January 1911 - 12 August 1991
Authors: Hanbury Brown Robert , Minnett H. C. , White Frederick William George
Published: December 2006

Edward George Bowen was one of the most dynamic and influential of the wartime generation of British physicists. Having completed his doctorate degree under Professor E. V. Appleton at King’s College, London, he was recruited by Robert Watson-Watt in 1935 and played an important part in the early development of radar in Britain. He went to the United States with the Tizard Mission in 1940 and helped to initiate the tremendous enterprise that marked the evolution of microwave radar as a fighting weapon in World War U. He was invited to join the CSIRO in Australia in 1943 and became the Chief of the Division of Radiophysics in Sydney. There he encouraged the greatest research effort that emerged from the War - the new science of radioastronomy - and brought about the construction of the 210 foot radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales. Following the initiation of cloud and rain physics by Langmuir and Schaefer in the United States, he mounted a remarkable effort to improve the rainfall in dry Australia which began in 1947 and continued after he retired in 1971. Throughout his Australian career, he remained a devoted Welshman, rejoicing in the name of ‘Taffy’. He had a strong and independent view of his science which occasionally involved conflicting views with others, but this was balanced by an enthusiastic and engaging manner which won him many friends.
Edith Bülbring, 27 December 1903 - 5 July 1990
Authors: Bolton T. B. , Brading Alison F.
Published: December 2006

Edith Bülbring was born on 27 December 1903 in Bonn. Her father, Dr Karl Bülbring, was German and Professor of English at the University of Bonn. Her mother, Hortense Leonore Bülbring (
née
Kann), was Dutch and the daughter of a Jewish banker’s family in The Hague. Edith was educated in Bonn and entered university to study medicine at Bonn University in 1928. Afterwards she worked with the pharmocologist Paul Trendelenbury in Berlin and as a hospital physician in Jena. She left Germany in 1933 along with many others owing to the rise of the Nazi party. She began work in England with J.H. Burn at the Pharmaceutical Society in London and moved with him to Oxford in 1937 where she remained for the rest of her life. She worked at the Department of Pharmacology Oxford until her retirement and was successively Demonstrator and Lecturer. Reader and finally Professor. She died in 1990 at the age of 86. Edith Bülbring was distinguished both as a pharmacologist and as a smooth-muscle physiologist. Under her influence the study of smooth muscles first became recognised area of scientific enquiry, and then increasingly important. She will undoubtedly be remembered as the world’s most influential scientist in this field. The techniques developed in her laboratory led to increasing knowledge of smooth muscle function and transmitter action. Her influence and scientific skills were recognized by her election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, by the conferment of honourary degrees from the universities of Groningen, Leuven and Homburg Saar, and the award to her of the Schmiedeberg-Plakette of the Deutsche Pharmakologische Gesellschaft and of the Wellcome Gold Medal in Pharmacology.
Sir Harold Montague Finniston, 15 August 1912 - 2 February 1991
Authors: Petch Norman James
Published: December 2006

Sir Harold Montague Finniston, universally referred to as Monty, was born at 26 Aikenhead Road, Govanhill, Glasgow. As Monty put it, Govanhill was separated by the width of a rail track from the Gorbals and ‘both sides of that track were the wrong side’. The family was of Russian Jewish origin, and Govanhill was the area where the majority of Glasgow’s Jewish population lived. The family name was originally Feinstein, its modification into Finniston being a particularly appropriate mark of their transformation into true Glaswegians. Home was a grey, sandstone tenement, three stories high, with three apartments on each landing. Each apartment consisted of one room and a kitchen. There was no bathroom and one communal lavatory per landing. Lighting was by gas; heating was by a coal fire, served with coal from a bunker in the kitchen. The coalman carried 1 cwt sacks up the three stories. A hard beginning! Yet probably strongly influential in developing Monty’s determination to advance.
Francis Thomas Bacon, 21 December 1904 - 24 May 1992
Authors: Williams K. R.
Published: December 2006

Francis Thomas Bacon, known to all his friends as Tom, was a gentleman scientist with impeccable antecedents. He was a direct descendant of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Nicholas’s son by his second marriage was Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in the time of James the First, the author of
Bacon’s Esay, Novum Organum, The New Atlantis
, etc., who became Baron Verulam, Viscount St Albans. He persuaded his contemporaries that a scientific society should be founded in England; this led to the formation of the Royal Society itself. It is also quite possible that Tom was a descendant of the family of Roger Bacon of Oxford (1214-1294) who also was a pioneer of science. Tom Bacon was born at Ramsden Hall, Billericay. His father, Thomas Walter Bacon (1863-1950) was an electrical engineer who, during the later years of the last century, had worked for the Eastern Telegraph Company, both in their workshops in London and in their cable ships. He encouraged his sons to aim for careers in science and engineering. Tom was educated first at St Peters Court Preparatory School in Broadstairs Kent; he had hoped for a career in the Royal Navy but was turned down for Osborne at the age of 12 owing to failing the eyesight test. He then went on to Eton from 1918 to 1922, gaining the School Physics Prize in 1922. From Eton Tom went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, taking the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1925. It was while he was at Cambridge that Bacon realized the significance of the Carnot limitation on the thermal efficiency of heat engines and this was to influence almost the whole of the rest of his life.
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, G. B. E., G. M., Third Baron Rothschild, 31 October 1910 - 20 March 1990
Authors: Reeve Suzanne
Published: December 2006

Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild was born in England on 31 October 1910, the only son of Nathaniel Charles Rothschild and Rozsika von Wertheimstein. He was a Scholar at Harrow School and in 1929 became a Pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1935 he was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity and worked in the Department of Zoology. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1937, and inherited his title from his uncle in the same year. During the war he joined the Intelligence Service and was awarded the George Medal for his work on bomb disposal. After the war, he returned to laboratory life in Cambridge where he continued to work on fertilization, gaining his Sc.D. in 1950. In 1948 he was appointed Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council. In 1953 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society for his studies on the mechanism of fertilization of the egg and on the physiology of spermatozoa. In 1961 he was appointed Vice-Chairman of Shell Research Ltd., becoming its Chairman in 1963. He retired from Shell in 1970, and in 1971 the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, appointed him to be the first Director General of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) or ‘Think Tank’ as it was known. He held this post until the autumn of 1974. On leaving the CPRS he joined the family bank, becoming Chairman from 1975-76. In 1976 he was appointed Chairman of the Royal Commission on Gambling. In 1981 he established Biotechnology Investments Ltd. In 1982 he chaired an enquiry into the future of the then Social Science Research Council. He was made a GBE in 1975.