bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
David Thoday, 1883-1964
Authors: Stiles Walter
Published: December 2006

David Thoday was born on 5 May 1883 in Honiton, Devon, the eldest of a family of six consisting of three boys and three girls. Both his parents had descended from eastern English stock. His father, David Thoday, and his paternal grandfather, Ephraim Thoday, were natives of Willingham, Cambridgeshire, while his mother, Susan Elizabeth, was the daughter of Charles Bingham of Guyhirne in the same county who migrated to London. Both the grandfathers were skilled rural craftsmen. David Thoday the father (1858-1922) possessed a dominant personality. With a keen mind and scientific interests, although largely self-educated, he applied the best knowledge available to him to matters of diet and hygiene and in bringing up his family. From 1884 onwards he was a skilful and conscientious schoolmaster in elementary schools in London, becoming a headmaster in his later years. He was a radical in politics with the independent tradition of Cambridgeshire dissenters. Much of his leisure was absorbed in evangelical activities.
Donald Devereux Woods, 1912-1964
Authors: Gale Ernest Frederick , Fildes Paul Gordon
Published: December 2006

Donald Woods, Iveagh Professor of Chemical Microbiology in the University of Oxford, died on 6 November 1964 at the early age of 52. He was the elder son of Walter and Violet Woods, born at Ipswich on 16 February 1912. Educated at Northgate School, Ipswich, he became a Scholar at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating in 1933 with first class honours in Parts I and II of the Natural Science Tripos. He remained at Cambridge with a Beit Memorial Fellowship and took his Ph.D. in 1937. In 1939 he joined the Medical Research Council’s Unit for Bacterial Chemistry as a Halley- Stewart Research Fellow, working at the Middlesex Hospital, London. In 1940 to 1946 he was engaged in ‘war work’. In this latter year he became Reader in Microbiology in the Biochemistry Department, University of Oxford (Professor Sir Rudolph A. Peters) and in 1955 Iveagh Professor of Chemical Microbiology in the same Department (Professor Sir Hans A. Krebs). This was the first Chair in this subject in the United Kingdom, and was endowed by Arthur Guinness, Son and Company. Woods became a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1951. He was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1952.
Edward Victor Appleton, 1892-1965
Authors: Ratcliffe John Ashworth
Published: December 2006

Edward Victor Appleton was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, on 6 September 1892. He attended Barkerend Elementary School from 1899-1903, and from there he won a Scholarship to Hanson Secondary School, where he studied from 1903-1911. One of his contemporaries at the school later wrote: ‘He was brilliant in every way when he was a schoolboy. He not only learnt with ease and rapidity everything that his teachers put before him, but he also seemed to have anticipated the next lesson. This was due to his remarkable talent, very rare in schoolboys, for grasping the significance of a school subject as a whole. I well remember his gaining 100 per cent, in his first school examination in physics. No amount of success ever led him to rest on his laurels, but his tremendous initiative led him to greater and greater efforts. To his genius he added an almost super-human capacity for sustained hard work, and one of my most vivid memories of him is that he always sought the hard road, the one that taxed his powers most. . . . If he had not been so keenly attracted to science he would have been as successful on the arts side; his reading in English literature was always much wider than was usual at his age, he quickly gained facility in reading, writing, French and German. Called upon to qualify in Latin and Greek for the Cambridge “Previous” examination, he reached the required standard in less than a year.’ The letter referred to other things, such as his being a self-taught pianist, a boy soprano, a clever gymnast, a player of football and cricket, with a sturdy figure and ruddy countenance (1).*
Thomas Percy Hilditch, 1886-1965
Authors: Morton Richard Alan
Published: December 2006

Thomas Percy Hilditch was born at Tollington Park, North Islington, London, on 22 April 1886. His father, Thom as Hilditch and his m other (
née
Priscilla Hall) came from near Newcastle-under-Lyme, N orth Staffordshire. His paternal grandfather, Jo h n Hilditch, was a shopkeeper and tradesm an in boots and shoes at Audley and his m aternal grandfather, Frederick Hall, was cashier and office m anager at Apedale Colliery, Chesterton, until 1883 when he moved to London to become the London agent of Edwards and Company, Tile M anufacturers, of R uabon in N orth Wales. Hilditch described Frederick H all as successful in his business and a m an of culture and wide reading who before moving to London had organized and conducted am ateur brass and string orchestras in N orth Staffordshire. He played the ’cello and, in his early days, other instruments. Hilditch was always conscious how much he owed to Frederick H all’s example and encouragement. His m other was also musical and played the pianoforte competently. H ilditch’s secondary education began in 1900 at Owen’s School, N orth Islington, an establishment supported by The Worshipful Company of Brewers as Governors. His interest in science was first aroused in his prim ary school by F. R. Guglielmo, an enthusiastic young teacher, but his great debt was to A. E. D unstan who joined the Staff of Owen’s School in January 1901 soon after graduating from the Royal College of Science. D r Dunstan later became Chief Chemist to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd. At Owen’s School Dunstan took a great interest in those boys who showed an interest in science and a particular aptitude for chemistry. He piloted them skilfully towards the type of university education which seemed best suited to their individual needs. Hilditch records that he, and some of his contemporaries, kept in touch with Dunstan long after they had left school.
Gordon Morgan Holmes, 1876-1965
Authors: Walshe Francis Martin Rouse
Published: December 2006

Gordon Morgan Holmes was born in Dublin on 22 February 1876, the son of Gordon Holmes and his wife Kathleen Morgan). There were three brothers and a sister all of whom survive. The family is believed to have come to Ireland from Yorkshire and to have been settled in King’s County during the last of the Cromwellian plantations at the time of the Acts of Settlement in 1652. Holmes’s mother acquired by inheritance Dellin House and property at Castle Bellingham, Co. Louth, just south of the Ulster border, and this then became the family home and was farmed by his father. In complexion, physique and predominantly in temperament, Holmes was indubitably an Irishman, and during the centuries Irish blood must have mingled with the English strain. His mother died while he was a child and his formal education began late. He has said that he taught himself to read, but it is recalled that later in the village school his schoolmaster discerning unusual ability in the lad voluntarily gave him extra tuition. Thence he went as a boarder to the Dundalk Educational Institute where his schooling was completed. The school had a reputation for turning out good mathematicians, and when Holmes went up to Trinity College, Dublin, his choice wavered between reading mathematics or classics. But he was a determined walker, and had rapidly grown to love the Wicklow Hills, so easily within reach of Dublin, and to develop an interest in their flora. He thus decided to read natural science, was attracted by botany and biology, and so became a medical student. In 1897 he took his B.A., Senior Moderator in Natural Science, graduated in medicine in 1897 and proceeded M.D. in 1903. During his course he took a number of scholarships and a travelling prize. His hospitals were the Sir Patrick Dunn’s and—after graduation—the Richmond Hospital.
Robert George Spencer Hudson, 1895-1965
Authors: Stubblefield Cyril James
Published: December 2006

Robert George Spencer Hudson was Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Trinity College, Dublin, a former Professor of Geology at the University of Leeds and for nearly thirteen years (1946-1958) geologist and palaeontologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company. He was born on 17 November 1895 and died suddenly on 29 December 1965. He was distinguished for his major studies in Carboniferous palaeontology, stratigraphy and sedimentation in Yorkshire and elsewhere in the north of England; also for his contributions to the understanding of the palaeontology and geology of the Middle East, especially the Mesozoic Stromatoporoids found there. Rather above middle height he was sturdily built and of rugged appearance. He spoke slowly as if evaluating every thought before delivering it; yet conversely on occasions one was surprised by a thoughtless and untimely remark. Nevertheless, he will be remembered for his enthusiasm, courage and kindly nature, especially by many of those who worked with him. Hudson was born at Rugby, the eldest son of Robert Spencer Hudson, a member of a Rugby firm of builders, Parnell and Sons, which built several buildings designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. A skilled worker in wood, he took charge under Lutyens of the building of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. He was prominent in the municipal life of Rugby, serving for many years on its Urban District Council; he became in turn, Alderman, then Mayor and was subsequently elected the first Freeman of Rugby. R. G. S. Hudson’s mother was Annie Wilhelmina, née Goble, of Bicester, Oxfordshire; he had three brothers and two sisters. His schooling began at St. Matthews, a Church of England school in Rugby, under a good headmaster.
Arthur Wormall, 1900-1964
Authors: Morgan Walter Thomas James , Francis G. E.
Published: December 2006

Arthur Wormall was born on 17 January 1900, in Leeds. He was the second of four children (two sons and two daughters) of James William Wormall, a printer and lithographer by trade, and his wife, Anne Wormall [neePhillis). At eleven years Arthur Wormall won a Junior City Scholarship to the Boys’ Modern School, Leeds, and at seventeen was awarded a Senior City Scholarship to Leeds University where he read for the Honours B.Sc. degree in chemistry under Professor J. B. Cohen, F.R.S. One of Wormall’s closest friends during these early years was H. R. Whitehead, who graduated at the same time as Wormall and married Wormall’s youngest sister, Ellen. From the time he entered the University in October 1917, Wormall served in the O.T.C. and he joined the Royal Air Force in June 1918, at the end of his first year. The 1914-1918 war came to an end suddenly in November, and so, after a short period of service, he was demobilized and was able to resume his studies. He graduated in 1921 and immediately started research and a year later was appointed Demonstrator in Biochemistry in the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry. In 1925 Wormall married Eva Jackson. In these early days at the University Wormall lived on the outskirts of Leeds, did not travel to any extent, and was much interested in his own county, Yorkshire. He played a good deal of cricket, golf and tennis, and several times went with the University team to play cricket matches against teams in Holland and Belgium.
Frank Philip Bowden, 1903-1968
Authors: Tabor David
Published: December 2006

Frank Philip Bowden died in Cambridge after a long illness on 3 September 1968 in his 66th year. At the time of his death he was Professor of Surface Physics at the University of Cambridge and Director of Surface Physics, a sub-department of the Cavendish Laboratory. Bowden was a man of many talents and could have made his mark as a writer, as a lecturer, as an aesthete, as a politician and statesman, as an administrator and man of affairs, as a scientist. In a sense he was, in fact, all these but his deepest and most sustained interest throughout his life was his laboratory and the challenge and excitement of scientific research. He was, indeed, an experimental scientist of great originality, perception and versatility.
William Hume-Rothery, 1899-1968
Authors: Raynor Geoffrey Vincent
Published: December 2006

William Hume-Rothery was born on 15 May 1899. His hyphenated surname reflects his immediate ancestry; his grandfather, William Rothery, was a clergyman of advanced views, who married Mary Hume, an authoress, with whom he shared an interest in poetry. Mary was the daughter of Joseph Hume, who died in 1855. He was a Member of Parliament, of radical persuasions, a Freeman of the City of London, one of the founders of University College London, and was concerned in the development of the British Museum. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was one of the movers of the 1832 Reform Bill. There is evidence that he was economyminded, particularly in relation to the Privy Purse, which did not particularly commend him to his Sovereign. William and his wife, who took the name Hume-Rothery, lived for some time in the North of England, but eventually, at about the time of William’s resignation from the Ministry, moved south to Cheltenham. Their son, Joseph Hume Hume-Rothery (our William Hume-Rothery’s father) was born in 1866, and lived at Cheltenham until his own marriage to Ellen Maria Carter. Joseph never went to school; he was educated by tutors, and it is a tribute both to him and to them that he took First-class Honours in Physics at London University (1886), became a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was 16th Wrangler in 1890. He then read Law and was called to the Bar in 1893. After his marriage, Joseph and his wife moved to Worcester Park, Surrey, and it was here that William Hume-Rothery was born. Finding his work as a patents lawyer somewhat uncongenial, Joseph and his family returned to Cheltenham, where their son William, with two young sisters, spent most of his childhood
James Ernest Richey, 1886-1968
Authors: Kennedy William Quarrier , MacGregor A. G.
Published: December 2006

James Ernest Richey was born on 24 April 1886. His father, the Rev. John Richey, a Church of Ireland clergyman, was Rector of Desertcreat in County Tyrone, and it was there that James Richey was born and spent his childhood. He received his schooling at St Columba’s College, near the Irish capital, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1904. Four years later he graduated B.A. in Natural Sciences (geology, botany and zoology) and was awarded a Senior Moderatorship and gold medal. His preference, by then, was firmly for geology, perhaps owing to the inspiring influence of John Joly, but before taking up work in that science he spent a further year at Trinity College and graduated B.A.I. in engineering in 1909. This was a prophetic step as his knowledge of civil engineering determined his sphere of service in the first World War, and ultimately proved of special value in the latter part of his career. In 1934 he graduated Sc.D.
Henry Hallett Dale, 1875-1968
Authors: Feldberg Wilhelm Siegmund
Published: December 2006

Dale had no knowledge of any ancestors or relatives who had any kind of contact with science. An amusing but cranky cousin of Dale’s father, R. M. Dale, wasted much time in trying to fake an interesting genealogy for the family and told Dale that he had discovered an ancestor, named Dale, who was a botanist and had accompanied Captain Cook on one of his voyages—or perhaps had made an arrangement to do so, which failed. However, Dale could find no Dale among the supernumeraries of any of Cook’s expeditions. There was also a certain Samuel Dale who, in 1707, published a book entitledPharmacologeia . . . Supplementum. This, so Dale was told, was the first known use of the term pharmacology. ‘I am confident that R. M. Dale would have brought this “savant” into my ancestry’, wrote Dale, ‘but I know of no reason, apart from his name, for suspecting any connexion.’ Dale’s paternal grandfather, Robert Dale, was manager of a pottery in Denby, near Ripley, Derbyshire. He is remembered by Dale ‘as a tall, gentle old man, of a simple piety and scholarly and scientific tastes at a humble level’ and as being interested ‘in hearing what lectures he could, and reading what books he could find about the “wonders of science” ’. Little is known about Dale’s paternal grandmother. She died when Dale’s father was still young; she certainly had an earlier marriage, for Dale’s father had a half-sister older than himself, he being the only child of her second marriage. About her mother, Dale’s great-grandmother Batkin, who had been more of a local celebrity, having borne nineteen children and lived to be ninety-nine, Dale writes: ‘There is no reason to credit the old lady with other claims to distinction, than those due to her fecundity and longevity; my father whose tendency to hoard and repeat stories I have, perhaps, to some extent inherited, used to tell of her that, when one of her daughters died, at the age of seventy-five, she shed a quiet tear and remarked that “she was always the weakly one” ’.
Herbert Leader Hawkins, 1887-1968
Authors: Allen P.
Published: December 2006

Herbert Leader Hawkins died in Reading on 29 December 1968, having lived and worked there all his life. Spatially, he travelled little prior to visiting the West Indies in his retirement. Intellectually, he was a noted voyageur. Adventurous of mind, kindly, young in heart, vividly imaginative and telling a superb tale, he radiated a genuinely joyful dedication to geology. Outwardly, this inner liveliness beamed through a merry twinkle of eye and ready humour—robust or ribald, sensitive or elegant according to the occasion, which he seldom mistimed or misjudged. A consummate actor on life’s stage, he was for ever transmitting a message or moral. Its essence was, I think, that the materials of scientific enquiry should be loved as well as enjoyed, that feed-back from scientific endeavour to the individual and community mattered pre-eminently; that somewhere behind it all there was a meaning. With him, generations learned to question, as well as respect, things held sacred.
David Willis Wilson Henderson, 1903-1968
Authors: Kent L. H. , Morgan Walter Thomas James
Published: December 2006

David Willis Wilson Henderson was born in Glasgow on 23 July 1903, the only child of the late John Henderson, a chartered accountant, and his wife, Mary. He attended the Hamilton Academy where he perfected several ingenious methods of avoiding work in subjects he disliked, but acquired a genuine interest in science, though at this stage it was of a practical rather than academic nature. His initial leaning was to agriculture and he insisted on leaving school at the earliest possible moment to become articled to a farmer. He soon found that the application of science on this particular farm was scant and the same streak of impatience with arbitrarily imposed authority, so apparent in Henderson’s later life, resulted in a sudden and dramatic termination of the apprenticeship. Though somewhat sceptical, his parents agreed to his proposal to read for a degree at Glasgow University. He chose agricultural bacteriology as his major subject, enrolled under Professor J. F. Malcolm, D.Sc., at the West of Scotland Agricultural College, and graduated in 1926. His first post was as lecturer in bacteriology at King’s College, University of Durham, where he started to lay the foundations of his research career, and was subsequently awarded an M.Sc. degree in 1930 for work on anaerobic infection in lambs. In this same year he married his first wife, Beatrice Mary Davenport, daughter of Sir Westcott Abell, K.B.E., at that time Professor of Naval Architecture at the affiliated Armstrong College. Prospects of advancement in Durham University looked poor and with this added need to provide for the future, Henderson sought a move to London.
Herbert Harold Read, 1889-1970
Authors: Sutton John
Published: December 2006

Herbert Harold Read was born at Whitstable, Kent, on 17 December 1889. His parents were Herbert Read, dairy farmer, and Caroline Mary Read,
née
Kearn. His forebears on his father’s side had been small farmers and farm bailiffs in East Kent, around Canterbury and especially at Ash, near Sandwich, where records of the family go back to 1611. To this ancestry Read attributed his love of small farms and farm life which he was able to satisfy during half a century’s geological field work in Scotland and Ireland. Probably for this reason also, he objected to living in cities and to city life in general. Even when appointed to the Chair of Geology at Imperial College, he preferred to have a few acres at Whitstable in spite of the sixty-mile daily journey to South Kensington which this decision involved. (A decision made, incidently, in defiance of the University of London regulations of that time.)
Ernest Basil Verney, 1894-1967
Authors: Burgh Daly Ivan De , Pickford Lillian Mary
Published: December 2006

Ernest Basil Verney, who died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital on 19 August 1967, was the fourth son and fifth child of Frederick Palmer and Mary Ann (nee Burch). He was born in Cardiff, but his father’s home was in Branston, N. Devon, where his ancestors had lived for several generations; his mother came from Bradford, Somerset. Basil married Ruth Eden Conway on 10 April 1923, in Manchester. She was the daughter of Robert Seymour Conway, Litt.D. (Cantab.), Hon.D.Litt.(Oxon.), Hon.Litt.D.(Dub.), Hon.Dott.Univ.(Padua), F.B.A., who was then Hulme Professor of Latin in Manchester University, and of Margaret ( Hall), sister of Arthur L. Hall, Sc.D., F.R.S. Ruth was the eldest child in a family of five, consisting of four sisters and one brother, Geoffrey Seymour Conway, who took a First Class in Part 1 of the Classical Tripos and was a Cambridge Rugby Blue and a Rugby International. Basil and Ruth Verney had three children, David Basil Conway, Geoffrey Ivan, and Margaret Elizabeth. David was educated at King’s College Choir School and Highgate School, entered King’s College, Cambridge, in 1942 and joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He received his training in Arizona, U.S.A., returning to this country to serve as a pilot in Fighter Command. On demobilization in 1947 he re-entered King’s College and took his degree in 1949. He is now with the Montreal Shipping Co., Montreal and Quebec, and is married with two daughters. Geoffrey (Bob) was also educated at King’s College Choir School and Highgate School (Foundation Scholar), entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1946.
Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, 1887-1971
Authors: Cottrell Alan Howard
Published: December 2006

Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, who, in over 60 years of research added greatly to our knowledge of the flow of liquids and solids, died in London at the age of 83 on 6 June 1971. He was born, in London, on 27 December 1887, the second son of Henry da Costa Andrade and Amy Eliza (née Davis). Despite his Portuguese name—for the family of Andrade came from Portugal to England during the Napoleonic era and included among its ancestors the Portuguese statesman, the Marquess of Pombal—Andrade was nevertheless a Londoner through and through. In 1897 he went to St Dunstan’s College, Catford, a secondary school for which he retained a lifelong affection, later becoming one of its Governors. Under the headmastership of Mr C. M. Stuart, who had earlier been a research scientist, St Dunstan’s was one of the first schools in the country to have a science laboratory and to introduce practical work into the science course. Andrade was a bright and hard-working pupil, interested in both science and literature, and in 1905 he went straight from school with a scholarship to study under F. T. Trouton at University College London, where he gained first-class honours in physics in 1907. He stayed on to do research and chose to work on the flow of solid metals such as lead under constant stress, a subject to which he was to return time and time again and which held its fascination for him even in his final researches, over sixty years later. His first paper, published in the
Proceedings
of the Society in 1910, ‘On the viscous flow in metals, and allied phenomena’, was a landmark both for Andrade himself and for the science of the mechanical properties of matter.
Geoffrey Wingfield Harris, 1913-1971
Authors: Vogt Marthe Louise
Published: December 2006

Geoffrey Wingfield Harris was born in Acton, London on 4 June 1913; the father’s family came from Oxfordshire, his mother, Winifred Irene Stiles, from Buckinghamshire. Geoffrey Harris’s paternal grandfather, Thomas Harris, had become headmaster of an L.C.C. school (Warlington Road School, Westbourne Park) at the early age of 24; this achievement had been made possible by his mother’s hard work and careful saving for the purpose of giving her children a good education. Such self-denial by Geoffrey Harris’s great-grandmother repeated itself in the next but one generation: both Geoffrey’s parents saved strenuously to give him and his younger sister the best possible training. Geoffrey’s father, Tom Harris, had won a scholarship to study physics at the Royal College of Science, S. Kensington, spent 2 years in Cambridge as a research student of J. J. Thompson, and 9 years as a lecturer at East London College, University of London. He was then appointed to the Ballistics Department, Woolwich Arsenal, a post he held till his death in 1942. His special line was the photography of bullets as they emerge from a rifle; the results were confidential and remain unpublished, but appear to have been of the highest quality. Geoffrey’s devotion and gratitude to his father have been an important factor in his life.
Harold Raistrick, 1890-1971
Authors: Birkinshaw J. H.
Published: December 2006

Harold Raistrick was born at Pudsey in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 26 November 1890. He was the son of Mark Walker Raistrick and Bertha Anne Raistrick (née Galloway). Although his parents were in humble circumstances, the family name of Raistrick is of considerable antiquity.
The history of Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme
by J. Horsfall Turner, printed for the author by Thomas Harrison & Sons, Bingley, Yorkshire, in 1893, states under the general heading Manorial Rolls: '1398. Rob. Hare conveyed a mess. 11 acres, called Whithillroide in Nm. to Henry de Rastrik. [The Rastrik family gradually migrated towards Calverley, etc., at this time, where their descendants, known by the name of Raistrick, are still numerous.]’ Rastrick is now part of Brighouse Municipal Borough, West Riding of Yorkshire, 3 1/2 miles north of Huddersfield. Harold’s mother was a descendant of the Galloways of South West Scotland, a family of Covenanters who migrated to Reeth, a village in Swaledale in the North Riding of Yorkshire, where some of their descendants still live. Before her marriage Bertha Anne Galloway was a teacher in an elementary school in Pudsey; an uncle of hers, Alderman William Firth, was a noteworthy Liberal in West Leeds.
Charles Alfred Coulson, 1910-1974
Authors: Altmann S. L. , Bowen Edmund John
Published: December 2006

Charles Coulson used to say that he had led not one life but two or three: as a scientist he straddled physics, chemistry and mathematics, in all of which he occupied academic positions during his career—and his contributions to biology were not negligible. Also, during a good part of his life he devoted almost as much attention to religion as to science and, yet again, there was the public figure active in numerous charitable pursuits. Many-sided as Charles Coulson’s life was, no picture of the man would be true that did not convey the essential unity of everything he did—concern being perhaps the key word to describe the common strand that ran through all his works. To describe them and the man is thus not an easy task.
Francis Albert Eley Crew, 1886-1973
Authors: Hogben Lancelot Thomas
Published: December 2006

Third in a sibship of five, and the only survivor beyond the neonatal period, Francis Albert Eley Crew was born on 2 March 1886 in Staffordshire at Tipton, now part of the Birmingham conurbation. His father Thomas Crew, who later prospered in business, was at that time a grocer in a small way. Both his parents were devout nonconformists. At 3 1/2 years of age his formal education started at the local Board School from which he proceeded by scholarship first to the King Edward VI grammar school at Five Ways in Birmingham at the age of 10, then to the King Edward VI High School at Edgbaston, where, among other Fellows of the Society, the late Bishop Barnes was at one time a pupil. An inveterate pet-lover, he began breeding Brahma bantams while still a schoolboy, and won prizes at all the major poultry shows. Though as yet with no access to information about the science of animal breeding, he acquired at an early age a flair for animal husbandry to prove of much value when he became Director of an Institute for Genetical Research.
David Lambert Lack, 1910-1973
Authors: Thorpe William Homan
Published: December 2006

David Lack was the oldest of four children of Harry Lambert Lack, M.D., F.R.C.S. ‘Lack’ is an East Anglian variant of ‘Lock’; Harry Lack’s people on both sides were tenant farmers of very modest means in Norfolk, but he became a leading ear, nose and throat surgeon at the London Hospital. He had some interest in birds as a boy, but not afterwards until he had retired, so that David’s interest evidently arose independently. When rather over 40, he married Kathleen, daughter of Lt. Col. McNeil Rind, formerly of the Indian army. She also was of very modest means, being on the legitimate stage, usually in a touring company. Her father’s people were Scottish; her mother’s father, a Ryall, was Irish, also in the Indian army, and her mother’s mother was the daughter of a Greek married to a Georgian in charge of the stables of the Shah of Persia.
David Meredith Seares Watson, 1886-1973
Authors: Parrington Francis Rex , Westoll Thomas Stanley
Published: December 2006

David Meredith Seares Watson was born on 18 June 1886 at Higher Broughton, near Salford in Lancashire. He was the son of David Watson and Mary Louisa Watson (
née
Seares). David Watson was a chemist and metallurgist who was a pioneer of the electrolytic refining of copper and had been educated at Clewer House School and at the Royal School of Mines where he was a student of T. H. Huxley, A. C. Ramsay and the metallurgist Perry, and took one of the earliest D.Sc.s in London, receiving a gold medal on graduation. He joined the Broughton Copper Company and eventually became the Managing Director. David Watson was a descendant of a Scottish family which included such eminent men as his father John Watson, an Advocate of Edinburgh and once Lord Provost of that city; great-uncle David Watson who was Minister of Cupar, Fife, once Moderator of the Church of Scotland; his great-grandfather James Watson who was Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh; and a Professor of Civil and Natural History in the United Colleges, St Andrews. Ultimately the line came from Turriff, Banffshire. Mary Louisa Watson was the daughter of Samuel Seares, a stockbroker of London, who was reputed to have among his ancestors a former Governor of Rhode Island at the end of the seventeenth century who married a ‘Red Indian’ wife. D. M. S. obtained a pedigree of this Sears or Seares, as variably written. From this stock apparently descended the Sears of Sears, Roebuck. D. M. S. Watson had one sister, C. M. Watson, who read classics at Manchester University and achieved first class honours on graduation at the age of nineteen, obtaining 97% marks from the famous Gilbert Murray of Oxford. She died tragically young in her second year at Somerville College, Oxford, having won the Chancellor’s prize for Greek Prose. It is not surprising that the children of such forebears should both have been brilliant.
Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson, 25 February 1889 - 11 March 1976
Authors: Houghton John Theodore , Walshaw C. D.
Published: December 2006

Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson was born on 25 February 1889 and died on 10 March 1976. His great achievements stem from his ability as an experimentalist of unusual ingenuity. Much of his life was devoted to the observation and study of atmospheric ozone, results from which were to be of great importance in leading to an understanding of the structure and circulation of the stratosphere. On 9 January 1975, Dobson spent some time with one of us recording some reminiscences of his early life and of people who influenced his scientific career. We include, with the minimum of editing, a number of excerpts from the transcript of his tape. 1. Early life Dobson’s father, Thomas Dobson, M.D., who came from farming stock from Knott End in the Fylde district of Lancashire, practised as a general medical practitioner in Windermere. His mother, Marianne Bourne, was a friend of one of Thomas Dobson’s patients. In 1886 they built Knott End, a large house with substantial grounds in an isolated position above the lake, and in 1892 Thomas Dobson was able to retire and live as a respected country gentleman, involved in local farming and building projects. Gordon was born at Knott End; he was 17 years younger than his sister Alice, 15 years younger than his sister Kate, and 12 years younger than his only brother Harry. From childhood he showed an interest in practical things; when a young boy he set up a field telephone between the house and the stable.
William Henry Glanville, 1 February 1900 - 30 June 1976
Authors: Baker John Fleetwood
Published: December 2006

Sir William Glanville, who died on 30 June 1976, was a pioneer in the modern age of civil engineering which developed after World War I. Before that, apart from the introduction of new materials, cast iron, wrought iron, mild steel and reinforced concrete, all of which in their turn, in the hands of brilliant and daring designers, made new forms of structure possible, there had been little advance in the basic art of the civil engineer for a hundred years. Truly empirical methods, which were so valuable in the development of mechanical and electrical engineering, were ruled out by the magnitude of the products—roads, bridges, dams, sea defences and the like—of what is now classed as civil engineering, while the dearth of suitable instruments had made full-scale testing impossible. William Henry Glanville, who was born on 1 February 1900, was the only son of a London builder of Cornish extraction. He was educated at Kilburn Grammar School and after a brief period of army service at the end of World War I he became a student at East London College (Queen Mary College), University of London, from which he graduated in 1922 with a first class honours degree in civil engineering. Instead of seeking practical experience on site or in the office of a practising civil engineer he took what was then the unusual step of going straight into a research establishment.
Ernest Gold, 24 July 1881 - 30 January 1976
Authors: Sutcliffe Reginald Cockcroft , Best A. C.
Published: December 2006

Ernest Gold, the meteorologist, rose from a modest rural background to become a world figure in his profession. Starting with no advantage more than could be given by a God-fearing, sober-living and kindly family he passed by scholarships from elementary school to grammar school and on to university with sufficient buoyancy to last throughout his career and ensure distinction at every stage.
John Donald Rose, 2 January 1911 - 14 October 1976
Authors: Johnson Alan Woodworth
Published: December 2006

John Donald Rose died on 14 October 1976, less than five years after his retirement from Imperial Chemical Industries where he spent nearly all his working life. He began as a research chemist at the Dyestuffs Division in Blackley, Manchester, and, having occupied many intermediate positions, finally became Research Director on the Main Board of the Company at Millbank in London.
George Paget Thomson, 3 May 1892 - 10 September 1975
Authors: Moon Philip Burton
Published: December 2006

George Paget Thomson was born in Cambridge on 3 May 1892 and died there on 10 September 1975. His father, Joseph John Thomson, had been Cavendish Professor for seven years when he was born, while his mother (Rose Paget) was the daughter of another very distinguished Cambridge professor, and before marrying J. J. Thomson had worked as one of his students in the Cavendish Laboratory. Cambridge, physics and mathematics were in George’s blood and he greatly enriched the first two of these. Best known for the discovery of the diffraction of electrons, he was a substantial contributor, scientifically and politically, to the early stages of the study of neutrons and to their use by way of the uranium chain-reaction; he also independently initiated work on the still-intractable problem of releasing energy by controlled nuclear fusion. Largely, though not originally, through his service in World War I, aerodynamics was an important interest for Thomson; in this, his mathematical skill was joined with a spirit of practical enquiry, for he flew aircraft as well as theorizing about them. After professorships in Aberdeen and London, during which the bulk of his scientific and public work was done, he returned to Cambridge as Master of Corpus Christi College, where he had been a young Fellow after graduating from Trinity College. Through this appointment, Corpus gained a still vigorous and a far-sighted Head, while Thomson had the satisfaction of guiding new college ventures and the enjoyment of being a superb host in Hall, Combination Room and Master’s Lodge.
Conrad Hal Waddington, 8 November 1905 - 26 September 1975
Authors: Robertson Alan
Published: December 2006

Conrad Hal Waddington was born in Evesham on 8 November 1905. His parents, Hal and Mary Ellen (Warner) Waddington, were of long-established Quaker families and were first cousins, as were Mary Ellen’s parents. His surname traces to the Lancashire village of Waddington. He had one sister— Mrs Doris Christie. His father was a tea planter in South India and he spent his first 2 1/2-3 years on a tea estate in the Wynaad district of the Western Ghats and then nearly two years in Coimbatore, both being in the Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu). In a brief autobiographical fragment he describes one of his few memories of India: ‘One morning in the road outside our house I was scuffling my feet in the thick dust; as I remember it, it must have been at least six inches deep. I looked over my shoulder and there was a herd of young domesticated buffaloes coming fast towards me. I was terrified. I fled through the gate into the wide open garden, where the only cover was a rather straggly hedge in which I hid. It was made of some thick juicy plant, whose fleshy leaves were almost indistinguishable from the stem and when I broke one off and, without thinking, put it in my mouth as I watched with relief how the buffaloes went by without noticing me, the white acrid sap stung my tongue sharply, and I felt a renewal of terror that I was now poisoned and would surely die.’ He returned to England at the age of four (though his parents did not return permanently until 1928) to live with an aunt and uncle who had a son of his own age, on a farm in Sedgeberrow in the shadow of Bredon Hill. His uncle was farm manager for a bachelor gentleman farmer, always known as ‘Squire Bowly’, and the family lived with the squire in the farmhouse. His grandmother, who brought up his sister, lived in a house on the outskirts of Evesham where he went on school holidays.
Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler, 10 September 1890 - 22 July 1976
Authors: Piggott S.
Published: December 2006

Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler was born in 1890 in Edinburgh. His father, a journalist with Bristol antecedents, was at that time working on the staff of a newspaper there; he was, as his son was to recall in his autobiography (1)* a graduate of Edinburgh University, where he had been grounded in the stern discipline of the classics under Masson and Blackie, and retained an enthusiasm which he communicated to his son. Appointment as assistant editor in Yorkshire took him and his family to Bradford, where his son entered the Grammar School in 1899, leaving aged 14 in 1904. Here again Wheeler has recorded how ‘by and large my school was of no great moment to me’ except for confirming his dislike of ball-games (which he seems to have been more successful in escaping at school than many like-minded sufferers), grounding him in Latin, and above all giving him an opportunity to draw and paint. Scholarships and Oxford seemed to lie ahead, when his father was asked to take over the London office of his newspaper, and the family moved again.
Arthur Fage, 1890-1977
Authors: Collar Arthur Roderick
Published: December 2006

Arthur Fage spent the whole of his professional life at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, working on the problems of aeronautics, especially those of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. A perceptive and clear thinker, with an infinite capacity for taking pains, he was personally a little shy and reserved, except in the company of those he knew well; and partly for this reason, he lived for much of his life somewhat in the shadow of his lifelong friend and senior, more extroverted colleague, Ernest Relf (F.R.S. 1936;
see
Ernest Frederick Relf:
Biographical Memoirs
17 (1971), 593). But this very fact gave him the scope necessary for the development of his own intuitive ideas and for the conduct of the meticulous experiments which characterized his work; trained as an engineer, he became progressively a better and better research scientist, so that, shadowed or not, his own light could not be hidden, and he was able to take a rightful place in the brilliant group of early workers in his field: a group which included Bairstow, Frazer, Glauert, Melvill Jones, Relf, Southwell, G. I. Taylor and Tizard.
James Gray, 14 October 1891 - 14 December 1975
Authors: Lissmann Hans Werner
Published: December 2006

James Gray died on 14 December 1975 in his home at King’s Field in Cambridge. It may be difficult today to realize fully the extent to which he has influenced the course of biology, notably in Great Britain, during the first half of this century. When he first appeared on the scene as a student—and his first publication dates back to 1911—comparative morphologists and embryologists were the dominant breed. They were still basking in the glory of the Darwinian era, and were still hammering home, through much detailed evidence, support for the theory of an evolutionary relationship of living organisms, a theory which by then had been, in outline at least, almost universally accepted. The taxonomic order which was being created by fitting each species into the proper pigeon hole of its pedigree was, no doubt, a laudable exercise—if for no better reason than the one given by Mount Everest climbers for their endeavours. To a man of an impatient disposition, like James Gray, it became clear that in view of the very large number of known species many more generations of scientists could be kept occupied as sedate, taxonomic filing clerks by painstaking description and comparison of structures. This sort of existence was not for him; it lacked the excitement of discovery, and was not likely to make the principles or mechanisms underlying the process of evolution any more plausible.
Sheina Macalister Marshall, 20 April 1896 - 7 April 1977
Authors: Russell Frederick Stratten
Published: December 2006

Sheina Macalister Marshall, who was born on 20 April 1896, was the second of the three daughters of John Nairn Marshall, M.D., of Stewart Hall, Rothesay. Their grandfathers on both sides of the family came of farming stock. Her mother, Jean Colville Binnie, had a great grandfather who took Linlithgow Castle from the English for Robert the Bruce, and there were Covenanters on both sides of the family, one of whom fought at the Battle of Drumclog. Both sides were strong members of the Scottish Church and the Calvinistic characteristics of probity and hardiness were carried down to the daughters. Sheina was educated first by a governess at home and then at Rothesay Academy and at St Margaret’s School, Polmont. She evidently acquired an early interest in science for during her schooldays, when she was ill for two separate years with rheumatic fever, she read many of Charles Darwin’s books. The sisters received much encouragement in the study of natural history from their father who was a much loved G.P. and surgeon of the old school. He was an Honorary Member of the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. He founded the Buteshire Natural History Society, which 50 years ago became responsible for the Rothesay Museum. The children kept a freshwater aquarium and made a dried flower collection for the Rothesay Museum. Their mother was also gifted, being musical, a great reader, and a good needlewoman who passed on this gift to Sheina. She took an active part in setting up the District Nursing Association in Rothesay.
David Christie Martin, 1914-1976
Authors: Massey Harrie Stewart Wilson , Thompson Harold Warris
Published: December 2006

David Christie Martin was born at Kirkaldy, Fife, Scotland, on 7 October 1914, the youngest of three brothers. His grandfather, James Martin, and another of his older relatives, William Strachan, were engineers, the latter being particularly interested in science. In the school holidays, David spent much time in William Strachan’s home, and his interest in science was greatly encouraged.
Andrew Robertson, 30 January 1883 - 22 October 1977
Authors: Pugsley Alfred Grenville
Published: December 2006

Andrew Robertson was born in Fleetwood, Lancashire, on 30 January 1883. His father, James, was a marine engineer working in the small port there, and his mother Elizabeth had been born a Robertson, but was not a relative. They had six children, of whom Andrew was the youngest. There were four older brothers and one sister. George, the oldest, succeeded to the family business and later, becoming active in local government, was Fleetwood’s first mayor. James Alexander, the second son, developed a steam trawler fishing business and before his death was awarded the O.B.E. for services to local hospital and education affairs. John, a quiet bookish man, become secretary to the family business, and Harry, the youngest of Andrew’s four brothers, in due course succeeded George as head of the marine engineering firm. Their one sister, Margaret, born between Harry and Andrew, never married but worked for most of her life as a housekeeper and devoted her spare time to the local Congregational Church. Andrew’s home was run on strict Victorian lines with a strong non-conformist bias. Money was short and to be husbanded, not squandered, and anything approaching hire purchase was to be eschewed. But that did not result in any meanness in the family; all the children were later to show generosity in dealings with their churches, with each other, and with their friends. Andrew in later life, though amused to look back on the strictness of his upbringing, never regretted the simple honest routine of his family home.
James Walter McLeod, 2 January 1887 - 11 March 1978
Authors: Wilson Graham Selby , Zinnemann K. S.
Published: December 2006

J. W. McLeod was born in Dumbarton on 2 January 1887. His father, John, an architect, belonged to a family whose occupations ranged through law, medicine, the civil service, industry and commerce, conducted mainly in the south of Scotland. John McLeod had built up a successful practice, and at the time of his marriage in 1884 had just completed the new Glasgow synagogue— a surprising commission for a Presbyterian. He was then aged forty-five and his bride, Lilias Symington McClymont, who was twenty-one years his junior, was the daughter of what was then described as a gentleman farmer in Borgue, Kirkcudbrightshire. Less than four years later John died of diabetes, leaving his widow with two sons, Norman and James. Norman was to work for many years on irrigation schemes in India, and later to become a technical adviser to the World Bank. Four months after her husband’s death, Mrs McLeod bore a third son who was named John, after his father. He was to train as a lawyer and to make his career in banking.