Joseph Needham A Personal Impression

Abstract

I came up as an undergraduate scientist to Gonville and Caius College in 1935. In my second year, as secretary of the College's Natural Sciences Club, I invited Needham (already a Fellow of eleven years' standing in the College, having been admitted himself as an undergraduate in 1918) to speak to us on chemical embryology. I must have arranged many meetings; but this, and a subsequent paper by him, made a lasting impression on me as no others did. He was one of the younger fellows and one of the few with whom junior members of the College could easily associate. His readiness to discuss the most unlikely topics with an immensely informed background identified an unusual scholar with a remarkably kind disposition. As it happened, I later became a Quaker, and he readily agreed to talk to our group more than once on historical matters such as the Levellers. He had that rare enthusiasm that added magic to the subject of his discourse.