Harold McCarter Taylor Harold McCarter Taylor CBE TD ( 13 May 1907 – 23 October 1995 ) was a New Zealand - born British mathematician , theoretical physicist and academic administrator , but is best known as a historian of architecture and the author , with his first wife Joan Taylor , née Sills , of the three volumes of " Anglo - Saxon Architecture " , published between 1965 and 1978 . Life and career . Taylor was born in Dunedin , son of a merchant , and graduated with an MSc from the University of Otago , whence he continued in 1928 to Cambridge and Clare College . He worked with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge , received his PhD in 1933 and became a university lecturer and a Fellow of Clare College . Whilst still in New Zealand he had been an officer in the New Zealand Artillery , and on 3 March 1934 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the university Officer Training Corps , commanding the artillery section . He was promoted local captain on 10 March 1934 , and received that rank on a substantive basis on 24 November 1935 , and was promoted major on 1 May 1936 . Following the start of World War II , he was transferred to the Royal Artillery on 30 April 1941 , rising to be Senior Instructor in Gunnery at the Royal School of Artillery , with the rank of temporary lieutenant - colonel , and was awarded the Efficiency Decoration ( TD ) . He was awarded the J . H . Lefroy Gold Medal of the Royal Artillery , the only non - regular recipient , for " furthering the science and application of artillery " His experience as a lecturer came in useful when he was a student on a staff course , and the instructor was having great difficulty explaining the difference between two types of gunsight , he offered to help the instructor explain ( to the horror of the other students ) , and was then thanked by the instructor , " Thank you now we all know " . He returned to part - time service after the war , and on his eventual retirement from the army in 1957 , he was permitted to retain the honorary rank of lieutenant - colonel . After the war , Taylor was appointed university treasurer in Cambridge . He and continued in academic administration as Principal of the University College of North Staffordshire in 1961 . When , in 1962 , the college became the Keele University , he became its first Vice - Chancellor . He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire ( CBE ) in the 1955 Queen ' s Birthday Honours . Taylor developed an interest in Anglo - Saxon architecture early in life . With his wife Joan , née Sills ( 1903 – 1965 ) , whom he had married in 1933 , he began a survey of more than 400 churches with some remnants of Anglo - Saxon architecture , culminating in the publication in 1965 of the first two volumes of their co - authored " Anglo - Saxon Architecture " . Joan died a few weeks before publication . In 1966 , Taylor remarried his personal assistant Dorothy Judith Samuel ( born 1931 ) , who was also co - author of the third volume of his great work . The archeologist Philip Rahtz , with whom Taylor collaborated in the investigation of St Mary ' s Priory Church , Deerhurst , describes Taylor as a " devout Christian " and as " unfailingly elegant , witty , gracious and neat . Rahtz notes in his obituary of Taylor : " Although he wore old clothes in the field , they were always pressed and clean . We could never understand how they remained so , even when he was clambering on dirty roofs or in and out of trenches . " Taylor was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London . In 1981 , the Society awarded him and Charles Thomas the first Frend Medal , set up by the church historian and archaeologist William Hugh Clifford Frend , " for services to early Christian archaeology " . He was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England on 1 January 1972 . He died in St Neots , Cambridgeshire , and was is buried in Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge .