Tuesday 11 February 2020

One click away: scientists I never met



A ‘random’ thought popped into my head recently, probably as a result of something I’d seen or a word or phrase used in conversation, I no longer remember: were there any famous scientists I might have met but didn’t, or perhaps ‘knew’ only once-removed? It used to be said that no-one on the planet is more than six handshakes away (if one shakes the correct hands in the correct sequence presumably); the internet is somewhat more complex, with trillions of pages rather than billions of people. Even there, it seems that no two pages are separated by more than nineteen clicks (see here). Are there people who, though I’ve not actually met them, are only one click/handshake away? One example stands out in my mind …
Way back in 2013 I photographed this from a train as it drew to a stop at Didcot Parkway station (- a station I have used more often than would be possible to number; I lived in Didcot for a season but also travelled there throughout most of my professional career in order to use the world-class research facilities nestled in the Oxfordshire/Berkshire Downs nearby). In passing, it was this shot that set the record for the number of people who were reached by a single tweet from my account; it’s all been downhill since then ;-)

My wife and I were married in the late 1970s in the midst of a second summer of drought. The ceremony took place in a small rural church in the village she’d grown up in, and which was led by the vicar she’d known all her life. I liked Rev. Graham Brade-Birks, or B-B to his friends and familiars. He was a kindly, quick-witted man who, to my naïve twenty-something mind, seemed far too old still to be gallivanting around as a parish priest. (In fact, as I later discovered, he was in his eighties – although you’d be hard pushed to know it.) I was invited to visit him in the vicarage for a pre-wedding pep talk, although we had already enjoyed a great many conversations in the months before the wedding, and more in the period following. This was a vicarage of the sort you’d not find these days: a large, rambling old house with views across the garden to the river Stour, and a study to dream of – built at the top of a spiral staircase in a near-circular tower at one end of the house. It had the less desirable characteristic of being sited only just above the river’s flood plain, devoid of either proper damp-proofing or effective heating; he used to hang hot-water bottles under his outer clothing in order to keep warm. (The house was sold when he finally stepped down and is now almost unrecognisable as a £million+ private property.)

During one of our conversations, which often drifted into topics in science, he astounded me by recounting the story of when, in pre-WW1 Manchester, he mended the car of someone he used to see around about the university campus: J.J. Thompson. For those readers not familiar with the pantheon of ‘science greats’, J.J. Thompson is the person credited with discovering the electron. In other words, he identified the very first sub-atomic particle and thereby changed the face of Physics. Moreover, it was his work and direct influence that sent Earnest Rutherford along the pathway that led to his own seminal work on ‘splitting the atom’ – the centenary of which was celebrated in 2011. So there I was, in free-flowing conversation with someone who actually knew one of the greats. As time passed it began to dawn on me that Brade-Birks himself knew and understood a lot about a lot. In fact, I dare to say that he was the first genuine polymath I had ever met; it’s a mind-set I’ve always aspired to achieve. He graduated in Geology (with a subsidiary in Zoology); with his wife he became an expert in the study of centipedes and millipedes (aka myriapods – they added eight new species to the lexicon and published a couple of dozen papers, see here for additional details), and whilst a lecturer at a local agricultural college – how did he fit this in with being a vicar? – he wrote books on soil science and archaeology. He spoke and wrote on local history and even made a contribution to the biographical study of Jane Austen, whose brother had lived in his parish.  
The penny didn’t drop for years, but I now take great pleasure in the fact that I had selected one of his books as a prize from my school. I was 13 at the time, so this was many years before I met him; I had evidently already developed my abiding interest in archaeology (see my earlier post, here). For those not familiar with pre-decimal UK coinage, 7/6 – seven shillings and sixpence, or more usually ‘seven and six’ – would now be rendered as 37½p. (Within three years I had found myself a Saturday job clearing tables and washing up: 7/6 was equal to my pay for 2½ hours.) The signature shown is that of my most excellent school head teacher; I mentioned him in an earlier post, here. (In passing, Rev. Brade-Birks’ original surname was Birks. When they married in 1916, he and his wife decided to amalgamate their surnames. I have found several mentions online: e.g. here and here)

It’s time to change the subject, although the longer I spend drafting this post, the more people I remember who deserve a mention. Doing so would, however, be to drift from my core topic – and to render the post unreadably long; a cardinal sin. I’ll therefore conclude with a couple of short stories instead. The first of these concerns two visits to Glasgow University’s Physics Department at the invitation of Prof. Sheila Rowan. Sheila and I had met whilst serving as members of the Science Board of the Science & Technology Facilities Research Council (I’ve written about this work here). My first visit involved delivering a talk on bioactive glass (see here) and having the opportunity to learn about the work of the Gravitational Waves group that Sheila led; my second was as examiner for the PhD student who’d taken a lead in perfecting the glass mirror at the very heart of their gravity wave detector. Why mention this? Well, because their equipment played its crucial role in the first ever detection of a gravity wave – as predicted decades ago within Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. (see here; also, this video may help) I had been ‘one click’ away from a Nobel prize-winning discovery. Although Sheila and I haven’t met again since our period of service with the STFC concluded, I was exceptionally pleased to see her later appointed to the office of Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland

This happy fact provides for me a perfect segue into a couple of examples of my encounters with the ‘science-adjacent’ movers-and-shakers of their day: the politicians with responsibility in the area. Take for example the meeting set up by my then local MP and the Higher Education minister, Boris Johnson. How interesting it would now be to offer my personal recollections of the man currently our Prime Minister, but no … he cancelled at the last minute. Never mind, I had a fascinating evening eating dinner with a small group of MPs and one other academic, sharing with them whatever insights I had regarding university teaching and research in the sciences. More satisfying, and amusing, by far was opportunity to discuss such matters with David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, when he was Minister for Science and Innovation (1998 – 2006). He visited the department I was at the time leading (here) and we spent an hour or so talking over tea and biscuits; no cameras, no up-staging by my university superiors: at his request this was a very low-key affair. This was my brush with science policy-making at the highest levels – still one click away in truth, if not more. When it came time for him to leave I walked him to the designated car park rendezvous, but neither chauffeur nor car were anywhere to be seen. Our campus security eventually people found him: parked and fast asleep in a particularly quiet corner of the campus. I’ve no idea what the upshot of that faux par was; it would be nice to think that it became a source of light-hearted humour …

As with my example of Rev. Brade-Birks, I suspect we could all recount a brush with the stars of our particular firmament, even if they’re once-removed. We all of us have great value however, simply by being who we are; I’ve no experience of being famous, even within my small cluster, but I suspect it’s less desirable than it sometimes seems. For my part, I had an amazing career. It is tempting to say that it was guided by serendipity and fueled by the ever-present struggle to hide or disguise failure; in truth there were also other forces at play. I’ve written about my life as a scientist throughout this blog, often obliquely, sometimes more directly (as here). I met some amazing people during this long phase of my life: hugely talented and creative individuals with the ability to bring the very best out of those around them. Some, I am glad to say, were also people of warmth and compassionate generosity (e.g. here); others were not. I have tried to learn from them all – in the latter case, in terms of what not to do.


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P.s. My original working title for this post was ‘One click away: scientists I never met and things I never did’. It is evident that I dropped any attempt to reflect on the latter phrase in my subsequent musings. I may return to the topic one day; I have long come to terms with the fact that I tend to disqualify myself by default. As a consequence I have eschewed all kinds of opportunities which, were I a person of different makeup, I might have enjoyed immensely. C’est la vie

P.p.s. I shan’t be able to beat J.J. Thompson as my best ‘one click away’ story. I’ve written relatively little about my old university department (e.g. here) but it deserves a mention within the broader scope of this post. When I was appointed it was a cause of celebration in the department: not because of me but because a very long hiatus had last been ended as university posts were ‘released’ through a government funding initiative to get some ‘new blood’ into an ageing population of UK academics. My appointment to what had been my ‘dream’ job for many years was life-changing, as one might expect, but once the dust had settled a little and I began to take stock something else dawned on me. I had joined one of the ‘plate glass’ universities created in the expansion of the 1960s and I was, de facto, working alongside people who had built the place from scratch. They had welcomed the first students and begun to guide them through a syllabus put together not long before their arrival and using teaching methods and laboratory set-ups designed between them. I was, in a sense, one click away from the birth of a university and its constituent courses. I have to say that I found it rather poignant when the last of that generation of academic and technical pioneers retired. Amongst them were those present at the birth of NMR as a tool for imaging, and of the large-scale scientific use of neutrons and synchrotron x-rays; all of them had their own stories to tell.