bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Alexander Fleming, 1881-1955
Authors: Colebrook Leonard
Published: December 2006

Alexander Fleming was the youngest of four children born to an Ayrshire farmer, Hugh Fleming, by his second wife Grace (néeMorton) on 6 August 1881. His education, up to the age of twelve, was at the village school (Darvel) and, for a further two years, at the Kilmarnock Academy. At fourteen he joined his brothers in London, where he worked for a time as a clerk in a shipping office, and also attended some classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic. His eldest brother Thomas was already practising as an ophthalmologist and, perhaps influenced by his example, Alexander also decided to study medicine. His choice of a medical school (which was to prove all important) seems to have been largely determined by the fact that he had competed in a water polo match against the students of St Mary’s Hospital. He therefore sat for an Entrance Scholarship at that Medical School, and won it, in 1901. After winning many other prizes as a student, he duly obtained his London University degree, M.B., B.S., in 1906. At that time he seems to have had no strong predilection towards any particular sphere of medical practice. Surgical work evidently made some appeal to him for he proceeded to take his F.R.C.S. examination, and it may well be that, if he had pursued that career, his great technical ability and high intelligence would have made him an outstanding surgeon, and won him a substantial fortune.
Harold King, 1887-1956
Authors: Harington Charles Robert
Published: December 2006

Harold King, who died on 20 February 1956, was brought up in Wales, although he had no Welsh blood in him. His father, Herbert King, who, together with his wife, came of Lancashire farming stock, was a schoolmaster by profession; he had received his training at Carmarthen and had hence become specially interested in Welsh education. Harold, the eldest of four children, was born on 24 February 1887 in the village of Llanengan, Carnarvonshire, where his mother was headmistress of the church school, his father being headmaster of the church school at the neighbouring village of Llanbedrog. Soon after Harold’s birth the family moved to Llanystumdwy, where his parents were headteachers of the church school until 1891; in the latter year they moved again, this time to Bangor, the move being dictated by Herbert King’s desire to provide the best education for his children; the parents remained head teachers of the St James Church School in Bangor until their retirement in 1923. It was in this modest and serious-minded environment that Harold King grew to manhood, and the marks of his upbringing remained with him to the end of his life. His earliest education was received at the school where his parents taught; from this he moved to Friars’ Grammar School, Bangor, where he spent about five years, and in 1905 he entered University College,, Bangor, as the holder of two scholarships. King himself has recorded that at this time he had a general interest in science, but was quite undecided as to which particular branch he would pursue. At the end of his intermediate course he was still undecided, but at this stage he was influenced by the advice of a fellow student to choose chemistry as one of the subjects for his final examination. The advice that was given to King was based on the excellence of the teaching of chemistry by the late K. J. P. Orton who held the chair at Bangor; it was a fortunate circumstance that he accepted this advice, for as he himself said, under the inspiration of Orton’s teaching he found chemistry both interesting and easy; his period of indecision was over; he had found the chosen subject for his life’s work, and in 1909 he graduated with first class honours.
John William Nicholson, 1881-1955
Authors: Wilson William
Published: December 2006

John William Nicholson, who was born on 1 November 1881, was a great mathematician whose chief interest was in attacking problems arising out of physics and astrophysics. How interesting these problems must have been in the days when he was still a student at Manchester and Cambridge will be appreciated when it is recalled that he must have been just over 19 years of age when Planck communicated his theory of the distribution of energy in the normal spectrum to the German Physical Society (14 December 1900) with its rather startling innovation of the elementary quantum of action. Before that very few could contemplate any modification or expansion of Newton’s mechanical principles, which, it was generally believed, were sufficient to account for all physical phenomena; though Kelvin’s clouds had already appeared on the horizon. Nicholson was born at Darlington and was the eldest son of John William Nicholson of Highcliffe, Redcar, Yorks and Alice Emily, daughter of John Kirton of Darlington. He was educated at the Middlesbrough High School where he remained till 1898. Here he showed great aptitude in all subjects, but especially in mathematics and science. As a boy he was very fond of country rambles and was an enthusiastic entomologist. He is said to have made fine collections of butterflies, moths, beetles, etc., and one suspects that his enthusiasm for anything of a mathematical character deprived the world of a great biologist!
Robert Cyril Layton Perkins, 1866 - 1955
Authors: Scott Hugh
Published: December 2006

Robert Cyril Layton Perkins , born on 15 November 1866, died on 29 September 1955, aged 88. A zoologist, principally an entomologist, an outstanding field-worker and taxonomist, his name is inseparably connected with the investigation of the fauna of the Hawaiian islands, besides intensive studies of certain groups of British insects. Early upbringing and school-days His love of nature and ardent interest in insects, together with exceptional powers of observation and memory, manifested themselves from the earliest time which he could recall. Yet he had no scientific training whatever at school, nor until he was half-way through his undergraduate years at Oxford. From his family background several persons stand out, of a type far rarer now (if, indeed, it has not almost vanished); men, largely clergy, who, living in the country for years in the same place, gained an intimate knowledge of the natural history or antiquities of their own districts. His grandfather, the Rev. Benjamin Robert Perkins, B.C.L., of Lincoln College and Christchurch, Oxford, after working in Buckinghamshire as a parish priest and schoolmaster, was Vicar of Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, for over 50 years (1829-81). A good classical scholar, he was interested in geology, archaeology and architecture. Perkins’s maternal grandfather was also a clergyman. For his mother was Agnes M artha Beach, daughter of the Rev. Percy Thomas, Rector of Nash, near Pembroke. Her relatives were not, as far as he knew, interested in science.
John Alexander Sinton, 1884-1956
Authors: Christophers Samuel Rickard
Published: December 2006

Few can have had so varied experiences in life and at the same time contributed so greatly to knowledge in a field of science as Sinton. Educated and taking his medical qualifications in Northern Ireland, and first in every examination he took in school or university, entering the Indian Medical Service, again the first on his batch, Sinton was to see active service in both world wars. In the first, as medical officer to an Indian cavalry regiment on active service in the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, he received the award of the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty during an action at Sheik Sa’ad in 1916, thus having the unique distinction of being the only bearer of this honour to be also a Fellow of the Royal Society. Later in the Medical Research Department of the Indian Medical Service he was appointed the first Director of the Malaria Survey of India (now the Malaria Institute of India) an institution that under Sinton’s direction and that of those following him was to become one of the chief centres of malaria research in the world. Then after retirement, but being still on the reserve of officers of the Service, he was in the second world war again recalled to military service and as Consultant Malariologist in several campaigns again saw active service in many countries, travelling extensively in India, the Middle East and Africa and later, as Adviser on Malaria to the War Office, again to travel and advise on measures against malaria, visiting Australia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and other areas. Finally retiring to his native Ulster at the age of 60 he took an active part in academic and public affairs and besides other activities was Pro-Chancellor of his University and in 1953 High Sheriff of Co. Tyrone.
Edmund Taylor Whittaker, 1873-1956
Authors: Temple George Frederick James
Published: December 2006

Edmund Taylor Whittaker was born on 24 October 1873, the eldest child of John Whittaker and his wife Selina, daughter of Edmund Taylor, M.D. The family belonged to the district where the river Ribble forms the boundary between Lancashire and Yorkshire: his father, John Whittaker (1820-1910) was the youngest son of the first marriage of Henry Whittaker (1780-1853) of Grindleton near Clitheroe, who was the sixth of the eight sons of Richard Whittaker of Rodhill Gate near Grindleton. Several of Richard’s descendants were men of distinction in the late Victorian period, among them the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Palmer Whittaker (1850-1919), for many years M.P. for the Spen Valley division of Yorkshire, and Sir Meredith T. Whittaker (1841-1931), of Scarborough. His father on his marriage to his mother—whose father practised as a physician at Middleton near Manchester—settled in Southport. Though not well off, they were able to live on their private means: and there Whittaker was born. In childhood he was extremely delicate, and his time was spent almost entirely with his mother, who devoted herself to him and was in his earlier years his only teacher. As he grew older he grew stronger, and at the age of eleven was sent away from home to the Manchester Grammar School, which then dominated education in Lancashire. He was on the classical side, which meant that three-fifths of his time was devoted to Latin and Greek: in the lower forms, where the study was purely linguistic, he did well: but his lack of interest in poetry and drama caused a falling-off when he was promoted to the upper school, and he was glad to escape by electing to specialize in mathematics. Only after he had left school did he discover the field of Latin and Greek learning that really appealed to him—ancient and mediaeval theology, philosophy and science.
Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell, 1886-1957
Authors: Thomson George Paget , Farren William Scott
Published: December 2006

Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell, was born on 5 April 1886, at Baden-Baden, where his mother was taking the cure. His father A. F. Lindemann was a naturalized British subject of French-Alsatian origin and was an engineer who had played some part in the making and laying of one of the earliest transatlantic cables. A. F. Lindemann was a keen scientist and had an observatory and well-equipped laboratory at his large and pleasant country house in Devonshire, where his family of two sons and two daughters were brought up by governesses and tutors. The mother was an American whose father was born British. At the age of 11 F.A.L. was sent, with his elder brother,* to a Scottish school run by a friend of his father, which specialized in preparing army candidates. F.A.L. was an outstanding pupil with a remarkable memory, but took a pride in not working much. When at home he spent much of his time in the laboratory. In 1902 or 1903 his father was persuaded to send both the brothers to a school in Darmstadt where F.A.L. quickly acclimatized himself to German methods and passed into the ‘Hochschule’. Here also he distinguished himself and was accepted by Nernst into his Physikalisch Chemisches Institut in Berlin, where he took his Ph.D. in 1910. His school and University days were by no means all work. He played a great deal of tennis at which he won many prizes, and later, as an Oxford professor, he competed at Wimbledon.
William Cudmore McCullagh Lewis, 1885-1956
Authors: Bawn Cecil Edwin Henry
Published: December 2006

William Cudmore McGullagh Lewis, who died at his home in Malvern on 11 February 1956—eight years after his retirement from the Grant-Brunner Chair of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry in the University of Liverpool— was a pioneer in research and made lasting and outstanding contributions to physical chemistry. He will always be remembered for his studies in the theory of chemical change and colloid science. Lewis was born at Belfast on 29 June 1885 and was the only son of a family of five children. His father, Edward Lewis, was a native of Belfast and a linen merchant in that city; his mother, Francis Welsh McCullagh, was the daughter of the Rev. William Cudmore McCullagh of Ballysillan Presbyterian Church, Belfast. Lewis married Jeannie Waterson Darrock, of a Scottish family who had settled in London and their only child, Ian, became a lecturer in physics in Liverpool University before joining the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.
John Herbert Parsons, 1868-1957
Authors: Duke-Elder William Stewart
Published: December 2006

John Herbert Parsons died on 7 October 1957, at University College Hospital, London, in his 90th year. He was primarily an ophthalmologist and over a long period of years held a unique position in that specialty. In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, British ophthalmology maintained the proud position among the countries of the world that it had inherited from Bowman, and its senior representatives were deservedly respected both at home and abroad—Jonathan Hutchinson, Nettleship, Doyne, Marcus Gunn, Treacher Collins, Fisher, Lawford, Paton and others. Among these, Parsons was a junior; but alone among them he grasped the significance of the changes that were at that time becoming apparent in the progress of medicine. They confined their attention to the study of ocular disease as it presented itself in the clinic, or followed up the ruins it left behind in the pathological laboratory; for him the real problem lay in neither of these but rather in an understanding of physiology and biochemistry, his interest was centred not in arranging disease-pictures in neatly docketed pigeon-holes, but in trying to understand the initial aberration from the normal. To a generation which hardly understood, he preached that advances in the treatment of cataract consisted not in the elaboration of operative techniques, but in an understanding of the biochemistry of the lens and its respiratory mechanism; of glaucoma, in the elucidation of the dynamics of the aqueous humour. Establishing himself in the front rank as a clinician in the years before the First World War, he spent the years between the wars striving to maintain the spirit of research in British ophthalmology at a time when it was conspicuously weak, widening the field of visual hygiene by adapting its lessons to industry, and extending his interests to the perceptual and psychological aspects of vision and sensory perception in their widest sense. During this period he dominated British ophthalmology by his great industry, his forceful personality, and his transparent integrity, and at the same time established a considerable reputation in wider scientific circles. And after the Second World War, when he formally opened the Institute of Ophthalmology in London and saw clinical and laboratory research married and set upon a secure basis, he had reason to believe that he had achieved one of the main purposes of his life.
Franz Eugen Simon, 1893-1956
Authors: Kurti Nicholas
Published: December 2006

Sir Francis Simon, physicist, great thermodynamician, and for many years universally recognized leader and doyen of low-temperature physics, died on 31 October 1956 in Oxford. His purely scientific work, his contributions to the development of atomic energy and his forcibly expressed views about the impact of science and technology on public affairs were all closely interwoven. His many scientific interests and preoccupations permeated his whole life and coloured his relations with friends, colleagues and pupils. Nevertheless, a separation, however artificial, of the various aspects of Simon’s career has been attempted in this memoir which is accordingly divided into the following sections: I. Life, which contains only brief references to Simon’s work. II. Work. (1)
Scientific research
. A survey, under several sub-headings, of Simon’s researches which covered the whole field of low-temperature physics. (2)
Atomic energy
. A brief account of Simon’s contribution to this subject, chiefly during the 1939-45 war. (3)
Science, industry and public affairs
. A summary of Simon’s views on various topics such as scientific and technological education, fuel and power policy, and the future of nuclear power. III. Personality and influence.
John Anderson, Viscount Waverley, 1882-1958
Authors: Bridges Edward Ettingdean , Dale Henry Hallett
Published: December 2006

The Right Honourable Sir John Anderson, O.M., 1st Viscount Waverley of Westdean, died in St Thomas’s Hospital, London, on 4 January 1958 at the age of 75, after a lifetime of public service. Few men have filled so many public posts of the highest importance and of such bewildering variety. No one who has covered so wide a range has ever, surely, left behind a record of so many difficult tasks carried through to a successful conclusion. But when this record of a lifetime’s work is set out, it is not the variety of his achievement which leaves the deepest impression. John Anderson had certain outstanding qualities of intellect and character: and the development of these qualities and his determination to use them for the public service, give to his whole life a singular degree of unity.
George Macdonald Bennett, 1892-1959
Authors: Haworth Robert Downs
Published: December 2006

George Macdonald Bennett was born in the City of Lincoln on 25 October 1892, and was the third of a family of two sons and one daughter. His father, the Rev. John Ebenezer Bennett, B.A. (Dublin), after teaching as an assistant master at a private school at Tring, Hertfordshire, started a school of his own at Peckham Rye and subsequently became a Baptist Minister, first at the Thomas Cooper Memorial Chapel, Lincoln, and later at the Mare Street Baptist Chapel, Hackney. His mother, Hannah Martha Grange, who died in 1932, was the second daughter of William Grange, a farmer of Wigginton, Tring, Hertfordshire. Bennett was named after a friend of his father, George Macdonald, the Scottish poet and novelist. In 1918 he married Doris Laycock, who was the only daughter and eldest child of James Laycock, M.P.S., of Fulham, and who had just taken Part II of the Classical Tripos at Cambridge.
James Swinburne, 1858-1958
Authors: Freeth Francis Arthur
Published: December 2006

James Swinburne lived to be over one hundred years of age, the third Fellow of the Royal Society to do this. The first was Sir Moses Haim Montefiore who was born in Leghorn on 24 October 1784 and died in this country on 28 July 1885, having settled here as a young man. He was elected into the Society on 16 June 1836. He is still well remembered as an outstanding philanthropist and a fearless defender of his fellow Jews all over the world. The second was Henry Nicholas Ridley the botanist who died in 1956. One other Fellow who died a few days before his hundredth birthday might well be mentioned; he was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Secretary of the Académie des Sciences and later President of that body. Fie was born on 11 February 1657 and died on 9 January 1757. Family, Early Life and Background The Swinburne family is an ancient one as a glance at
Burke's Peerage
will show; they are essentially Northumbrian. The baronetcy dates from 1660. John Swinburne, father of the first Baronet, was promised a baronetcy by Charles I but the patent of creation never passed the seal. He died in 1652, eight years before the Restoration, His son, also John Swinburne, was created a Baronet in 1660 and is called in the patent ‘Virum patrimonio censu et morum probitate spectabilem’. Swinburne on his father’s side was descended from Flotspur, of whom he dryly remarks in his personal record ‘was a lively member of society but not noticeably scientific’. One of Swinburne’s ancestors (Sir John Swinburne, Bart.) was a Fellow of the Society elected 26 February 1818. Like so many of his contemporaries of the period he was an ardent antiquarian and F.S.A. Humphry Davy was his proposer for the Society. He founded the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, closely modelled on the L.S.A., and during his lifetime maintained the most friendly intercourse between the two Societies. He, like our Swinburne, lived to a great age, dying a few weeks short of his entry into his hundredth year.
Frank Twyman, 1876-1959
Authors: Menzies A. C.
Published: December 2006

Frank Twyman was born in Canterbury on 17 November 1876. His father, George Edmund Twyman, had nine children, and Frank was the seventh child. George Twyman was a ropemaker, specializing in ropes, netting and jute articles for the hop trade. His sons used to help, and Frank cut out and sewed hop-pockets, and designed a machine for marking hop-pockets with their consecutive numbers. Frank Twyman attended the Simon Langton School, Canterbury, until September 1892 when he began a two-year course in electrical engineering at the Finsbury Technical College, where he studied under Sylvanus Thompson, John Perry and Meldola. While at Finsbury, he won the Siemens Scholarship to the Central Technical College, South Kensington (later to form part of Imperial College). While he was at school, he had proved so expert at passing examinations with a minimum of knowledge that ‘in entering for the Intermediate B.Sc. examination I thought I could pass without knowing anything whatever. I was mistaken; so it is that my highest academic distinction is to have failed in both biology and chemistry in the Intermediate B.Sc. examination.’ It is fair to add that at the time he was making a model of ‘Duplex Telegraphy’ for a lecture of Professor Ayrton’s, and correcting the proofs of a new edition of one of Ayrton’s books, and he attributed his failure in part to the conscientiousness with which he was doing these tasks.
Ezer Griffiths, 1888-1962
Authors: Darwin Charles Galton
Published: December 2006

Ezer Griffiths was born on 28 November 1888 at Aberdare in Glamorgan. His father, Abraham Lincoln Griffiths, was a colliery mechanic, and he and his wife Ann had nine children, three daughters and six sons of whom Ezer was the eldest son. There was evidently high ability in the family, since in addition to his own distinguished career two of his brothers have also gained good academic positions, and have published books, and another became a rector of a parish. Ezer himself attributed his success in life to the good fortune that there was an excellent Intermediate School at Aberdare, since otherwise he would have gone directly from the elementary school into coal-mining. As it was, he went as a student to University College, Cardiff, and studied physics there. He got First Class Honours, and was awarded a Research Scholarship, and later a Fellowship of the University of Wales. Still later, he proceeded to the degree of D.Sc. in that University. To give his later career briefly, he researched at Cardiff until 1915 and he was then appointed to the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. There he remained for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was elected into the Royal Society, and in 1950 he was awarded the O.B.E. He retired from the N.P.L. in 1953.
Joseph Kenyon, 1885-1961
Authors: Turner Eustace Ebenezer
Published: December 2006

Joseph Kenyon was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 8 April 1885. His parents, Lawrence and Mary Anne, who were married in 1884, had six other, younger, children, three boys and three girls. Mrs Lawrence Kenyon’s maiden name was Southwarth. Joseph’s education began at the Primary School of St Barnabas in Blackburn. He was there from 1890 to 1897, and then went to the Secondary, Higher Grade School, in the same town for two years. On leaving school he became a Laboratory Assistant in the Municipal Technical School, Blackburn. He occupied this post from 1900 to 1903, and attended evening classes in the Technical School from 1898 to 1906, studying chemistry (first under Dr Conrad Gerland and later under Dr R. H. Pickard), physics, mathematics, Latin and shorthand. He passed London Matriculation in the first class, in 1903, and was awarded the ‘John Mercer, F.R.S. Scholarship’, which enabled him to continue his undergraduate studies until 1905, as a full-time student. In 1904 he passed the London Intermediate Science Examination and became Private Assistant to Pickard in his capacity as Corporation Chemist and consultant to several cotton mills. Kenyon was appointed as Assistant Lecturer and Demonstrator in the Municipal Technical School in 1906, and was promoted to Lecturer and Demonstrator in the following year. He carried out some researches whilst an undergraduate, publishing three papers with Pickard, two on ‘The chemistry of oxygen compounds’ and the other which became a classic, on ‘The resolution ofsec.octyl alcohol’.
John Walter Ryde, 1898-1961
Authors: Whiddington Richard
Published: December 2006

John Walter Ryde died at Marlborough on 15 May 1961 after a short illness. Born on 15 April 1898 at Brighton, he was the only child of Walter William Ryde, an artists’ colourman, and Hannah Louise Ryde Buckland, related distantly to William Buckland, F.R.S. (1784-1856), sometime Dean of Christchurch). He had an unusually varied education starting with two years at a local Kindergarten, going on to the Junior Department of Brighton Grammar School until the death of his father in 1908; then, after his mother’s removal to South Kensington, going to St Paul’s School after a preparatory period at Colet Court. He left St Paul’s in 1913 and was sent to France for a year to learn French, where apparently he got little formal instruction and, as the youngest member of the school he attended, enjoyed much latitude and read widely to his own choice. Unknown, presumably, to the school authorities he practised revolver shooting in the grounds and at the end of his stay could shoot the pips off a playing card! He was sent to Berlin in July 1914 but the War spoiled the plan for a year’s stay in Germany and he was fortunate enough to escape internment by getting away to England on, literally, the last train out. Entering the City and Guilds College, Finsbury, with the object of reading engineering, he had the good fortune to be recognized as an embryo physicist by Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, who advised that after the College course he should carry on his scientific education at Cambridge. However in 1916 the young Ryde volunteered for service with the Royal Engineers, and was given a short training in Monmouthshire before being posted to a searchlight station in East Anglia. He soon showed his flair for physics by working at the theory of focusing finite sources of light with parabolic mirrors, later to be the subject of a paper to the International Congress on Illumination, held in America in 1928. When posted to France, his fluent French secured him interesting liaison duties of various kinds including it is said, the unusual task of purchasing a pig from a local farmer for the Armistice Celebrations! Just before the Armistice he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant.
Thomas Alan Stephenson, 1898-1961
Authors: Yonge Maurice
Published: December 2006

Thomas Alan Stephenson was born on 19 January 1898 at Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset. He was the first child, being later joined by a younger brother and then a sister. His father, Thomas Stephenson, D.D., was a Wesleyan Minister who shortly after the birth of his elder son was appointed a Tutor at the Wesleyan Trinity College, Richmond, Surrey, of which his father-inlaw, the Rev. George Fletcher was the Governor or Principal. The following years were the pleasantest in Alan Stephenson’s childhood. In his own words, ‘We lived in the Governor’s well appointed house, and had the run of the large College grounds and kitchen-garden, so that we were brought up in all the surroundings and circumstances usual to gentlefolk of good education in the Edwardian period. We were surrounded by flower-gardens, had Richmond Park and the Terrace Gardens and river close at hand (not to mention all the rather more remote attractions of the London area), and were provided with an adequate staff of well trained nurse maids, servants and gardeners’.'
Arthur Mannering Tyndall, 1881-1961
Authors: Mott Nevill Francis , Powell Cecil Frank
Published: December 2006

Arthur Mannering Tyndall was a man who played a leading part in the establishment of research and teaching in physics in one of the newer universities of this country. His whole career was spent in the University of Bristol, where he was Lecturer, Professor and for a while Acting ViceChancellor, and his part in guiding the development of Bristol from a small university college to a great university was clear to all who knew him. He presided over the building and development of the H. H. Wills Physical Laboratory, and his leadership brought it from its small beginnings to its subsequent achievements. His own work, for which he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, was on the mobility of gaseous ions. Arthur Tyndall was born in Bristol on 18 September 1881. He was educated at a private school in Bristol where no science was taught, except a smattering of chemistry in the last two terms. Nonetheless he entered University College, obtaining the only scholarship offered annually by the City of Bristol for study in that college and intending to make his career in chemistry. However, when brought into contact with Professor Arthur Chattock, an outstanding teacher on the subject, he decided to switch to physics; he always expressed the warmest gratitude for the inspiration that he had received from him. He graduated with second class honours in the external London examination in 1903. In that year he was appointed Assistant Lecturer, was promoted to Lecturer in 1907, and became Lecturer in the University when the University College became a university in 1909. During this time he served under Professor A. P. Chattock, but Chattock retired in 1910 at the age of 50 and Tyndall became acting head of the department. Then, with the outbreak of war, he left the University to run an army radiological department in Hampshire.
Gilbert Thomas Walker, 1868-1958
Authors: Taylor Geoffrey Ingram
Published: December 2006

Gilbert Thomas Walker was born on 14 June 1868, the eldest son and fourth child of a family of eight. His father, Thomas Walker, M.I.C.E., was Borough Engineer of Croydon, and was one of the pioneers in the use of concrete for big structures like reservoirs for town water supplies. He came from Eckington, a village north of Chesterfield, and was one of seven children. Gilbert’s mother, Elizabeth Haslehurst, was one of a family of four. She became a permanent invalid when Gilbert was about six years old. Gilbert’s first school was Whitgift Grammar School of Croydon, which he entered in 1876. There he showed an early interest in arithmetic and mechanics. In 1881 he won a scholarship to St Paul’s School, then under the famous headmaster F. W. Walker. There, according to his own account, he spent two years on the classical side but was then ‘sent in disgrace’ to the mathematical side when he made some appalling linguistic blunder. In 1884, he passed the London matriculation and was given a small prize awarded to the best students who intended to take a London degree.
Herbert Graham Cannon, 1897-1963
Authors: Smith James Eric
Published: December 2006

Herbert Graham Cannon, Beyer Professor in the University of Manchester, died in a London hospital on 6 January 1963, at the age of sixty-five. He had been for more than forty years a leading figure among British zoologists. An inspiring teacher, a vigorous and controversial writer, he had contributed greatly to the advancement of zoology by his researches on arthropodan animals and, in particular, by his interpretations of the embryology of the Crustacea and of the nature of their feeding mechanisms. Graham Cannon was born on 14 April 1897, in Wimbledon, the third child of a family of four. His father David William Cannon was a compositor in the firm of Eyre and Spottiswoode and was for several years engaged in the preparation of maps and papers for the India Office; his mother was the daughter of a Charles Graham who owned and drove one of the first horse-buses to run on a regular service in south London. David Cannon’s weekly wage was little enough for the needs of a largish family and when Graham was about five years old the parents moved from Wimbledon to a house in Brixton near to which there were some good free schools. Cannon was sent for a time to the local council school and, on winning a scholarship, he moved on to Wilson’s Grammar School in Camberwell where he followed the normal grammar school curriculum specializing, in the higher forms, in science subjects in preparation for entrance to a University. He took little part in field games, but he was interested in chess and rifle shooting. He also enjoyed making things, and early developed a facility for drawing and sketching. As evidence of this I have been told that one of his schoolmasters, the father of a present Professor of Zoology, thought sufficiently well of the young Cannon’s drawings to keep them to the day of his retirement as examples of the work of his more talented pupils. But Graham’s main love was music. He had a good singing voice and was for several years a choirboy at the local church where, on special occasions such as the Christmas and Easter services, he and his brother would almost invariably be called upon to take the solo parts.
Ronald Aylmer Fisher, 1890-1962
Authors: Yates Frank , Mather Kenneth
Published: December 2006

Ronald Aylmer Fisher was born on 17 February 1890, in East Finchley. He and his twin brother, who died in infancy, were the youngest of eight children. His father, George Fisher, was a member of the well-known firm of auctioneers, Robinson and Fisher, of King Street, St James’s, London. His father’s family were mostly business men, but an uncle, a younger brother of his father, was placed high as a Cambridge Wrangler and went into the church. His mother’s father was a successful London solicitor noted for his social qualities. There was, however, an adventurous streak in the family, as his mother’s only brother threw up excellent prospects in London to collect wild animals in Africa, and one of his own brothers returned from the Argentine to serve in the first world war, and was killed in 1915. As with many mathematicians, Fisher’s special ability showed at an early age. Before he was six, his mother read to him a popular book on astronomy, an interest which he followed eagerly through his boyhood, attending lectures by Sir Robert Ball at the age of seven or eight. Love of mathematics dominated his educational career. He was fortunate at Stanmore Park School in being taught by W. N. Roe, a brilliant mathematical teacher and a well-known cricketer, and at Harrow School by C. H. P. Mayo and W. N. Roseveare. Even in his school days his eyesight was very poor—he suffered from extreme myopia—and he was forbidden to work by electric light. In the evenings Roseveare would instruct him without pencil or paper or any visual aid. This gave him exceptional ability to solve mathematical problems entirely in his head; and also a strong geometrical sense, which stood him in good stead later in the derivation of exact distributions of many wellknown statistics derived from small samples. Other mathematical statisticians, most of whom were not very skilled algebraists, consequently found his work difficult to follow, and often criticized him for inadequate proofs and the use of ‘intuition’.
Frederick Gugenheim Gregory, 1893-1961
Authors: Porter Helen Kemp , Richards Francis John
Published: December 2006

In a tribute to F. G. Gregory written at the time of his retirement it was said ‘His contemporaries (at school) remember him variously as brilliant, versatile, talkative, untidy or not interested in games—but they remember him’. About the same time one of his former students wrote—in a letter of congratulation on the award of the Royal Medal—‘what matters is the company of your juniors who were influenced by you when they were students, it includes all sorts of people you met only once or twice’. The name of Gregory at once recalls in the minds of those who met him, that vivid personality whose eager and penetrating curiosity about every aspect of human knowledge made intellectual adventure appear the most exciting of pastimes. The bubbling flow of thoughts which was engendered by the mention of any topic, scientific or otherwise, could not be restrained and conversation tended to give way to a monologue which ranged from expression of highly informed opinion to the wildest of speculations. The listener might be interested, stimulated, surprised at being instructed in his own expertise, irritated or even annoyed by the exhortation he had provoked, but could never be indifferent. Everything that Gregory undertook he entered into with passionate fervour, and his extremes of behaviour elicited extreme responses from others. He inspired loyalty, affection and tolerance in some and in others antipathy, impatience, and resentment. His complex character was capable of forthright speaking amounting almost to rudeness, on the one hand, and on the other of courtesy, charm, and sincere sympathy for the difficulties of others. He was by nature a rebel who really enjoyed an argument, the more heated the better, and was quite gleeful over victory. ‘As I anticipated there was a rather vehement discussion—and I may have expressed my point of view too forcibly for a meeting of the Linnean Society.’
Morris William Travers, 1872-1961
Authors: Bawn Cecil Edwin Henry
Published: December 2006

Professor M. W. Travers died on 25 August 1961, at the age of eighty-nine at his home at Stroud, Gloucestershire, where he had lived since leaving Bristol in 1949. Travers was born at Kensington, London, on 24 January 1872, the second son in a family of four sons. His father, William Travers, M.D., F.R.C.S. (1838-1906), qualified at Charing Cross Hospital and was one of the first to take the F.R.C.S. by examination in 1864. He was an early exponent of antiseptic, and later of asceptic methods in surgery. A prize in gynaecology has been founded in his memory in the Charing Cross Medical School. Travers’s mother, Anne Pocock (1854-1928), was descended from the second son (Thomas) of the Rev. Thomas Pocock, F.R.S., Chaplain to the Navy, the elder son being Admiral Sir George Pocock, K.B. Because his father was a very busy professional man and his mother much engaged in the social side of his practice Travers as a child was left very much in the charge of nurses. As was then customary amongst the professional classes he was taught by governesses from the age of five until, at seven and a half, he was sent to school at Ramsgate. At the age of eleven he went to a school at Woking, and, a year later, to Blundells School at Tiverton. Blundells was then developing into a public school and as early as 1882 a good chemistry laboratory had been installed. Travers at school showed an early enthusiasm for science and at the end of his third year, having passed to the modern side, won the Fifth Form chemistry prize and the Form prize.
Edward Battersby Bailey, 1881-1965
Authors: Stubblefield Cyril James
Published: December 2006

Edward Battersby Bailey was a former Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and the Museum of Practical Geology, also for a time Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. He was born on 1 July 1881 and died on 19 March 1965, having dedicated his life to geological thinking and exposition. Though his studies extended beyond the confines of the United Kingdom and over a wide range of geology, his major work was interpretation, into three-dimensional concepts, of the phenomena observed by surface mapping of mainly igneous and metamorphic rocks in the mountains, hills and islands of western Scotland. His work was marked by physical and mental fearlessness and enthusiasm, reinforced by a flair or instinct for arriving at a novel explanation of his own or others’ observations.
John Hammond, 1889-1964
Authors: Slater William Kershaw , Edwards John Hilton
Published: December 2006

Sir John Hammond was a man of two worlds, in both he won esteem and affection. In the academic environment of Cambridge he was the centre of a devoted and distinguished group of students and research workers, on the farm and in the market place he was welcomed not only as a scientific guide, but equally as a friend of all those engaged in the breeding and management of livestock. The postgraduate school in animal reproduction and growth of which Hammond was the centre and inspiration attracted workers from every part of the world. They came to him raw, some with a purely academic training and little or no knowledge of the practical applications of his work, others from a farming background with the minimum of academic qualification. It was Hammond’s particular genius in recognizing the qualities inherent in each, that enabled him to direct into productive lines of study and research everyone who sought to work under him. At times he was criticized by his more conservative colleagues for accepting postgraduate students, particularly those from overseas, with too low an academic standard, but rarely did he misjudge the potential value of his pupil. Some it was true might never make outstanding research workers, but these men had the qualities essential to the difficult task of carrying the results of research into practice, whether it was on an English farm, a South American ranch or an Australian station. As a result the men who worked with Hammond are to be found in vitally important posts throughout the world, not only as university teachers and research workers, but equally in the advisory and administrative services. There is hardly any corner of the world where the Cambridge school is not represented at the highest levels.
Reginald William James, 1891-1964
Authors: Bragg William Lawrence
Published: December 2006

R. W. James, born 9 January 1891, was a Londoner born and bred. His father, William George Joseph James, was an umbrella maker and shopkeeper in Praed Street, Paddington, whose forbears had lived in Paddington or Marylebone for over a hundred years. ‘My family lived in the house over my father’s shop, and the circumstances of my boyhood were definitely urban, mitigated however by the nearness of Kensington Gardens in which much of my childhood was spent. The family business, although neither large nor very prosperous, was enough for our needs and my childhood was a very happy one. My father’s family were Baptists, and I was brought up in the non-conformist tradition, although not in the strictest one.’ In 1896, at the age of five, James went to the Infant School attached to St Michael’s Church, Paddington, and to the boys’ school two years later. In 1903 he started his secondary education at the Polytechnic Day School, Regent Street. He showed mathematical ability and it was suggested that he should take up actuarial work; with this possibility in view he passed in 1907 the first examination for the Institute of Actuaries as well as the matriculation examination for London University. But he also obtained a London County Council Scholarship which gave him two post-matriculation years at the City of London School. In December 1908 he won an Entrance Scholarship of £80 a year for Natural Science at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the next year, on leaving school, the Beaufoy Mathematical Scholarship tenable at Cambridge. He entered St John’s College as a Foundation Scholar in October 1909.
James McFadyen McNeill, 1892-1964
Authors: McCance Andrew
Published: December 2006

The life and the career of James McFayden McNeill were dedicated to the design and construction of ships. In this field of complex technology, the basic scientific principles cannot be applied with exactness. Even if they were known with precision—which is far from being true— the storms and stresses of voyages not yet foreseen render any exact calculation of the consequences of such hazards to a ship’s structure a waste of effort. Those skilled in the art of this applied technology must possess as an additional and important aid to their scientific grounding a trained and balanced judgement. They can then interpret the experience of earlier practitioners and shape it to their own needs when they adventure into new fields of endeavour. Circumstances may well arise in which judgement is the ultimate guide to their decision in such cases. That sense of judgement, which other people acknowledged and trusted, coupled with a sense of purpose determined to achieve the perfection which his mind had conceived were characteristics which were recognized in James McNeill by all who knew him and by all those who worked with him. He was born on 19 August 1892, the son of Archibald McNeill who came from seafaring people on the Island of Islay and who was sixty years of age when James was born. His mother, Isabella McKinnon, was born on the Island of Arran and had spent all her life on the Island up to the time of her marriage. She came from farming stock but little is known of her early life on the Island.
Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell, 1880-1964
Authors: Pantin Carl Frederick Abel
Published: December 2006

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell, C.I.E., F. R. S., died in Cambridge on 11 February 1964, at the age of 83. He was almost the last of a great generation of British zoologists who, brought up wholly in the grand nineteenth century tradition of evolutionary biology, saw and had to adapt themselves to the great change of outlook which began to overtake zoologists in the first decades of this century and which still continues. He was born in Leamington on 5 March 1880, the second son of the Reverend Arthur Sewell and of Mary Lee Waring, whose father Henry Franks Waring was a practising solicitor in Lyme Regis. Though born in Warwickshire, Seymour Sewell came of one of those Wessex families which have maintained and still maintain a steady distinction through the generations. Longevity also ran in the family. His great-great-grandfather William was made Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1753 and took the College living of Headly, Hants, in 1765. He lived to the age of 80. His son William (1804-1897) was Fellow of Exeter College and held the degree of D.D. He was a joint founder of St Columba’s College near Dublin, and founder of St Peter’s College, Radley. The second son James Edwards (1810-1903) was Fellow of New College, Oxford, and in 1860 became Warden and held that office till his death. Their sister Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815-1907) was a distinguished authoress and pioneer of education for girls. Seymour Sewell’s father was at Radley and New College, where he was a choral scholar. He became Chaplain to the Order of St John of Jerusalem, and died at the age of 106.