Address at the memorial service for Lord Adrian, O.M., F. R. S., at Westminster Abbey on 18 October 1977

Abstract

LORD Adrian cared deeply about the past and I think he would have liked me to begin by saying something about his forebears and about the people who influenced his early intellectual development in London and Cambridge. Adrian, for that was how he liked to be called by his friends and family, was of Huguenot descent and his ancestors came to England after the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. Although Adrian later became keenly interested in outdoor pursuits such as skiing and mountaineering, he was very much a Londoner by upbringing. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were civil servants, the last-named being a clerk at the Houses of Parliament. In an autobiographical note Adrian remarked that as a boy he saw little of the countryside except from the windows of a train. And that until he came to Cambridge his time was spent in London with holidays at the seaside. But his surroundings were not without beauty, for he went to school at Westminster in the shadow of this lovely building. There he studied classics under John Serjeant in the sixth form before moving to the modern side. At Cambridge he had a brilliant career both as an undergraduate and as a research student; in 1913 his thesis on nerve conduction won him a research fellowship at Trinity College, of which he was later to become Master