Natural Sciences Tripos Research Articles

Richard Gilbert West. 31 May 1926—30 December 2020

Richard West was undoubtedly the greatest British Quaternary geologist of his generation. Following National Service in India, he was admitted to Clare College, Cambridge in 1948 to study the Natural Sciences Tripos. Considering Geology for Part II, he finally selected Botany and was awarded First Class Honours. Under the supervision of Professor Harry Godwin FRS, in the Subdepartment of Quaternary Research (SDQR) for his PhD thesis he studied Pleistocene interglacial deposits in East Anglia. His detailed investigations at Hoxne and Ipswich led to a lifetime unravelling the environmental, geological and vegetational history of Quaternary deposits in Britain, particularly in East Anglia. In the course of this work, he was responsible for recognizing and defining the majority of the cold or glacial and interglacial stages into which the Quaternary Period in Britain is subdivided. His expertise extended from pollen and plant macrofossil analysis to physical geological evidence, glacial deposits, periglacial phenomena, and sea-level change. These studies required extensive cooperation with specialist colleagues, to the extent that the majority of his investigations are determinedly multi-disciplinary, an approach in which he was undoubtedly a leader. At Cambridge, becoming Director of the SDQR and later Professor of Botany, he supervised, nurtured and inspired numerous research and Master's students and influenced many others, both academics and amateurs alike. His research articles (over 150) and books provide a lasting legacy in Quaternary research. After retirement and up to the time of his death he continued to research, producing several important publications, principally on the evolution of the East Anglian Fenland.

Richard Hills

Richard Hills (1945–2022) Simon Mitton remembers a world-class pioneer and innovator of submillimetre astronomy. Emeritus Professor Richard Edwin Hills FRS, a world leading innovator of millimetre and submillimetre radio astronomy died on 5 June 2022. Richard was born on 30 September 1945 and attended Bedford School. He was admitted to Queens' College, Cambridge in 1964 to study for the Natural Sciences Tripos and he received his BA in Physics in 1967. Then he headed west, to the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) as a doctoral student in William John ‘Jack’ Welch's radio astronomy group, which had begun in the late 1950s when UCB established the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO). Within a couple of years, Hill had co-authored papers on time-of-arrival measurements of NP 0352, the pulsar in the Crab Nebula. Meanwhile, his backstory concerned the development of a novel radio interferometer at millimetre wavelengths. Richard's five years in California shaped his career. His doctoral thesis on interferometric observations of galactic water vapour was made with a first-generation millimetre wave interferometer that he and other students had constructed. At the 50th anniversary celebrations of HCRO Richard regaled attendees with a recollection of what it was like to work with Jack Welch: “Naturally Jack figured out how the interferometer should work, but we had a great time making some of the bits and pieces. I particularly recall making the delay lines out of a series of coaxial cables, which were all tied up with rope inside a box. I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out that what Jack taught me about telescopes and interferometers, plus how to set about actually making a technical project happen, was essentially everything I needed to know for all the subsequent things I have worked on.”

Dr Dorothy Helen Rayner FGS (1912–2003): vertebrate palaeontologist and academic

Abstract Dorothy Rayner was one of the first women to be appointed to a tenured academic post in any English university geology department, joining the Geology Department of the University of Leeds in 1939 and serving for 38 years to her retirement in 1977. She had two very important early influences in her life. The first was her family, with its tradition through several generations of doctors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, radical politics and social activism. The other was her earlier education, particularly her 7 years at the very influential Bedales School, the first of what were to become known in the twentieth century as ‘progressive’ schools. After gaining a First at Girton College in the Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos, she undertook ground-breaking research on the taxonomy and neural systems of Jurassic fishes, for which she was awarded a Cambridge PhD in 1938, soon after which she was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Geology at Leeds. In addition to an always very heavy teaching load, she continued with a broad range of research, including further work on fossil vertebrates, and the stratigraphy of first the north of England and then the whole of the British Isles. She was also an outstanding Editor, and then President, of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

Malcolm Keith Sykes

Malcolm Keith Sykes was one of the most prominent British anaesthetists of the second half of the 20th century. His career extended from 1950 to 1991, a period of major...

Patricia Hannah Clarke. 29 July 1919 — 28 January 2010

Patricia Hannah Clarke was a distinguished British biochemist and microbiologist who won an international reputation for her work on microbial evolution. After completing the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge at the beginning of World War II, she chose to work for the Armaments Research Department, before moving into microbiological research on bacterial toxoids. She was appointed to an assistant lectureship in biochemistry at University College London in 1953, eventually becoming Professor of Microbial Biochemistry in 1974. Her pioneering work on the directed evolution of bacterial metabolic capability led to her election to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1976. Patricia gave dedicated service to the scientific community through her many years of committee work with the Royal Society, the Biochemical Society and the Society for General Microbiology. She was a passionate advocate of the importance of equal opportunities for women in education and scientific careers.

Michael John Absolon

Michael John Absolon was born in Cheltenham. He won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read for a natural science tripos degree. During his time as a...

David Marr's Vision: floreat computational neuroscience

This is a reprint of David Marr’s 1982 book. A foreword placing the book in its historical context is added by Shimon Ullman, and an afterword by Tomaso Poggio is added on some of the themes in the book. David Marr was one of the originators of computational neuroscience, and the useful re-publication of this book enables us to assess how this field is developing, and to put David Marr’s contributions into perspective. David Marr (1945–80) obtained a First Class degree in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1966; and was sufficiently interested in how the brain works to attend the Part II undergraduate courses in physiology and psychology of the Natural Sciences Tripos. (David was not experienced in practical classes, and happened to be paired with Barbara Rolls, the first female PhD student in physiology at Cambridge, who also sat in on the practical classes and provided expertise partly as a result of her training with Alan Epstein at the University of Pennsylvania.) One of the lecturers in physiology was Giles Brindley, who was interested in vision (as were many of the other members of the Department, including Horace Barlow, Fergus Campbell, William Rushton and John Robson) and in synaptic physiology. [Giles Brindley’s Physiology of the Retina and Visual Pathway (Physiological Society Monograph No. 6, Edwin Arnold, London) appeared in 1970.] Giles Brindley published a paper on how different classes of synapses might show plasticity and contribute to learning in neural networks (Brindley, 1969). These lectures and this work stimulated David’s thinking about synaptic modification and its role in systems in the brain that learn. This led to three seminal papers: on the hippocampus (Marr, 1971), the cerebellum (Marr, 1969) and the neocortex (Marr, 1970). David’s theory of the hippocampus was influenced too at the systems level by …

Sir ram nath chopra: A profile

Ram Nath was born on August 17, 1882 at Gujranwala, Punjab. He had his early education at Jammu and Srinagar and collegiate studies at Government College, Lahore. He left for England in 1903 and enrolled himself in the Downing College, Cambridge. He qualiÞ ed for Natural Sciences Tripos and admitted B.A. in 1905. He was privileged to work with famous Dr. Walter E. Dixon, a keen experimental pharmacologist. He also studied at Barthelomew’s Hospital in London. He successfully competed for the Indian Medical Service (1908). He obtained Cambridge M.B. and M.D. and the London M.R.C.P.

Professor Emeritus Denis William Ewer MBE FRSSAf 1913–2009

Denis Ewer went to University College School in London. In 1931 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge (his father had studied mathematics at Trinity) where he read for the Natural Science Tripos, obtaining a B.A. in 1934. In his second year at Cambridge he gained the nickname of 'Jakes' via a literary route (his father's nickname also had literary origins). The word 'ewer' can mean a jug, chamber pot, or jerry, and hence the progress to 'jakes', Elizabethan English for an outside lavatory. It was at Cambridge that he also met the future communist spy, Kim Philby. After graduating, Jakes Ewer moved to the University of Birmingham where he undertook his doctoral studies (graduating PhD in 1940) under H. Munro Fox. World War II, however, temporarily halted any further academic career, and during the war years he was an Experimental Officer for the Army Operational Research Group (Ministry of Supply) achieving the rank of Major. For his work, which included being a Scientific Advisor to the Chief, Air Defence Division, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, he was awarded the M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire).

A TRIBUTE TO JOE SMITH

Joseph Victor Smith was arguably one of the most productive and influential crystallographers of the 20th century. After graduating at the University of Cambridge (1st Class Honours Natural Science Tripos – Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Mineralogy) in 1951, he turned to postgraduate work in

The micrographia of Sir Henry Head (1861–1940)

Henry Head1 was born of Quaker stock on 4 August 1861 at 6 Park Road, Stoke Newington. Educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge (1st class in both parts of...

Lindsay Cameron Hurst

Lindsay Hurst was born in Kingston-upon-Hull on 17 June 1924, the son of a general practitioner. He was educated at Repton School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read for the Natural Sciences Tripos with part 2 in anatomy. His clinical studies were at University College Hospital, London.

Topics, Notes and Comments

From them one learns to recognise the great gulf which exists between those who really use their brains to solve important questions and those who think that anything can be answered if you dig a big enough hole (Acknowledgements in T.C. Lethbridge, 1957). Introduction The year 2001 marks the one-hundredth year since the birth of one of the most compelling, if not controversial, figures in the history of twentieth-century British Archaeology. Thomas Tom Lethbridge (1901-71) was at one time an honorary keeper of Anglo-Saxon antiquities at the University of Cambridge, author of a number of books on the British Dark Ages and maritime archaeology, a leading light in the Cambridge Antiquarian Society; but he is perhaps better known today as the pioneer in the scientific study of one of the most arcane aspects of archaeological survey: dowsing. The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the legacy of this intriguing man--a former fellow of the Society of Antiquaries--after the centenary of his birth and the thirtieth year since his death. Before considering the controversies that surrounded his life, a brief biographical sketch of Lethbridge is needed to frame the context for his later ideas, which crystallised as a reaction to a rather rigorous and unbending training as an antiquarian. Lethbridge: The Man and the Archaeologist Lethbridge's academic and own personal life could be seen as a perfect conventional paradigm. Born into an old Devonian family, he was educated at Wellington College and went up to Trinity College Cambridge ostensibly to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos, but he ultimately came into the formidable orbit of Louis Clark, the then Director of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and a lifelong interest in archaeological fieldwork was kindled. Lethbridge made three expeditions to the Arctic between 1921 and 1937, but ultimately found his interest in the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England and, as a man of extensive means, he was able to indulge what was becoming more than a mere hobby. Lethbridge's obituary in the Antiquaries' Journal of 1972 hints already that he was beginning to acquire a more curious approach to the past, something that would have initially sublimated itself in a preoccupation with archaeology, but would later lead to other things. Lethbridge, according to his obituary, emphasised experimental testing of what he found by observation, but also respected the work of others, yet he preferred to test that too (Anonymous 1972). The apogee of Lethbridge's career in mainstream academia came with his appointment as honorary Keeper of Anglo-Saxon antiquities at the museum in Cambridge, but it would be fair to suggest that Lethbridge never really felt at home here, despite his leading a number of excavations for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and his publishing extensively. The eminent archaeological historian, Glyn Daniel, noted this theme in his Antiquity editorial in the year after Lethbridge's death. Daniel stated that that this colourful, stimulating, provocative and often controversial figure never felt as if he was a member of the mainstream archaeological establishment. Daniel attributes this feeling of insecurity to a dilettante outlook and emphasises Lethbridge's semi-professional status (Daniel 1972). As an archaeologist, he had a distinguished if fairly unspectacular reputation, but perhaps Lethbridge needed more of a challenge; it is almost as if he anticipated the widening interest in popular archaeology that has burgeoned in recent years. Lethbridge's book Merlin's Island shows how his ideas were steadily developing in the context of his later interests (Lethbridge 1948); essentially a personal book, filled with anecdote and reminiscences, it was rather aimed at a wider, popular audience. Although it was not generally appreciated by academic reviewers, this work occasionally met with qualified praise. …

Chapter 6 Edward Walker, Robert Rastall, Frederick Green, John Hartley, George Mitchell and their work on Lakeland volcanics and structure

Abstract Following the work of the first Surveyors, and the Cambridge geologists Marr and Harker, a number of amateurs such as John Postlethwaite 1 and Matthew Stables of Barrow were active in the second half of he nineteenth century and around the turn of the centruy, the amateurs concentrating particularly on mineral and fossil collection and studies of glacial phenomena (see Chapter 18). There were also visits to the Lakes by members of the Geologists' Association in 1881 (Hudleston 1881 a, b ) and in 1900 (Marr 1990 b ). It was made known his ideas on lag faulting and the general structure of the Lakes. Postlethwaite acted as an 'unofficial' excursion leader before and after Marr took over guidance of the party. One of the places visited by the Geologists' Association in 1900 was Langstrath (see Figs 2.3 and 16.1), the eastern branch of Borrowdale, and specifically a locality called Blea Crag, where Marr (1990 a , p. 530) reported that 'Mr E. E. Walker, B.A., who is occupied with their study, explained what he had learnt about' the intrusive garnet-bearing rocks that formed the Crag. Such rocks had been noticed as far back as the time of Otley and Sedgwick, but were only now becoming a source of particular interest. Edward Eaton Walker (1878-1903) was a product of Bradford Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took up a major scholarship in 1897. A student of Harker and Marr, Walker graduated with first-class honours in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos, with a distinction

Chapter 11 Gravity, geomagnetism and granites

Abstract We shall now consider aspects of Lakeland research where geophysical (particularly gravimetric) investigations have played a significant role in the elucidation of the geology of the region. The two main figures have been Martin Bott, Professor at Durham, and his former student Michael Lee, now a geophysicist working for the Survey. Let me first say something about Bott's work. Bott (see Fig. 11.1) (b. 1926) was awarded a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to read mathematics, but decided to do his national service first and served with the Royal Signals in East Africa. On going up to Cambridge in 1948 he started off in mathematics as planned, but halfway through the first term he switched to the Natural Science Tripos and took on mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology. At the end of his first year he participated in an expedition to Spitzbergen led by the lecturer Brian Harland and, enthused by this experience, Bott turned to geology and took the subject for his Part 2. Given that he is now a Fellow of the Royal Society, I was most surprised to learn (pers. comm., 1999) that, as one of the most distinguished scientists whose work is referred to in the present book, he scored a lower second. 1 This was a result of his indifferent performance in palaeontology - a part of geology much emphasized at Cambridge in those days. (Bott had had no previous background in biology or anatomy.) His overall result notwithstanding, Bott obtained a DSIR grant to do

OBITUARY: LEWIS FREDERICK PENNY (1920–2000)

Lewis Frederick Penny died in Northallerton on the 10th of August, 2000, just before his 80th birthday, after a long illness. Born in London and educated at Oundle, he decided to follow both his geologist grandfather and father (Chief Geologist of Trinidad Leaseholds), entering Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1939. One year later he was on a troopship bound for India with a commission in the Rajputana Rifles. Serving in Persia and with Iraq Force, by 1945 he was in Singapore de-briefing prisoners of war. Returning to Cambridge, he took a first in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos in 1949. Meanwhile, he had married Mary, and first Catherine was born, followed later by three brothers. Appointed Head of the Sub-Department of Geology at University College Hull in 1949, he inherited one wooden hut, one technician, one English and two African students, followed by a new intake of 18 students and a newly appointed Assistant Lecturer. In the same year, he began his long …

"A lab of one's own". The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge University, 1884-1914.

The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women was established at Cambridge University in 1884 to prepare the students of Newnham and Girton Colleges to sit the Natural Sciences Tripos, first opened to women in 1881. For thirty years, until its closure in 1914, the Balfour Laboratory served as the central conduit for biological instruction for the women of Cambridge, introducing them to the new program of experimental biology developed by the physiologist Michael Foster and the embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour. Directed by distinguished women graduates, the Balfour Laboratory became recognized as the leading center for women's biological instruction in Britain. Its significance, however, extends beyond its nominal status as a teaching laboratory. It provided university positions for able scientists who otherwise would not have been placed, offered advanced students the opportunity to engage in independent research, and, most important, formed the locus for the scientific subculture created by women at Cambridge to compensate for their exclusion from the social community of science. Drawing upon college and university archival records, this essay offers institutional, social, and biographical research that broadens our understanding of the experience of the first generation of women to pursue a higher education in the life sciences at one of the world's premier universities.

Raymond John Heaphy Beverton, C. B. E., 29 August 1922 - 23 July 1995

Ray Beverton was born on the 29 August 1922, the only child of Edgar John Beverton and Dorothy Sybil Mary Beverton. His father was a commercial artist and his mother, too, came from an artistic family; indeed an ancestor was Sir Thomas Heaphy, a portrait painter and official war artist at Waterloo. Another forebear won the V.C. As a young child Ray acquired enthusiasms for music, fishing and football, activities which were dear to him throughout his life; in later years he became very fond of sailing. He was a regular supporter of West Ham United - the Hammers - until he moved to Swindon. When eight years old he entered his first angling competition and in later life he rarely took a holiday or trip abroad without his fishing rods. He went to school at the Forest School, Snaresbrook and then to Downing College, Cambridge (1940-42), where he read physics, chemistry and mathematics in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos. Between 1942 and 1945 he worked at the Operational Research Group developing polystyrene and latex for the insulation of coaxial cables for radar. During this time he retained his links with Cambridge and when in 1945, Michael Graham, the newly appointed Director of Fisheries Research, asked his former tutor, Sir James Gray, F.R.S, for an able young graduate to extend his studies on the exploitation of the North Sea cod (Graham 1935, 1938 a ), Ray was introduced to him. Ray wrote ‘I first met Michael Graham in the late summer of 1945 in a small space carved out of the racks of dusty files in St Stephen’s House. He gave me a copy of his book, The Fish Gate (Graham 1943). Within a month he took me with him on a Grimsby trawler to the Barents Sea fishing grounds’ (1)*. Ray suffered badly from sea sickness and wrote three letters of resignation, which fortunately he did not send. He spent a year in Lowestoft from 1945-46. During this time he wrote the first chapter of Graham’s Buckland lecture (2), one of a series which are given from time to time by scientists to audiences of fishermen; both Ray and Michael used the English language well, if differently. The amalgam is a delightful study of Frank Buckland, one of the ancestors of fisheries research. In 1946, Ray returned to Cambridge to read zoology in Part II of the Tripos and he gained the top first class degree in his year and the Smart Prize for zoology; he also won a Blue for soccer. He returned to Lowestoft in 1947 and married Kathleen Edith Marner the same year. They had three daughters, Susan, Valerie and Julia. *Numbers in this form refer to the bibliography at the end of the text.

Ben Lockspeiser, 9 March 1891 - 18 October 1990

Ben Lockspeiser was born on 9 March 1891 to Jewish parents who had recently arrived from Eastern Europe. He had an orthodox Jewish upbringing in a lively immigrant community in the East End of London. Music was a familiar part of daily life and he became an extremely competent pianist, while his brother Edward became a musicologist and authority on Debussy. He was educated at the Grocers’ School, Hackney, and from there won an Open Science Scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (his school proclaimed a public holiday to celebrate this). He read the Natural Sciences Tripos Part I, gaining a first, followed by the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1913. After a short period of study at the Royal School of Mines he enlisted with the RAMC in 1914 and was landed at Gallipoli. He maintained he survived only because he was invalided out of the peninsula with dysentery. He then worked for a time in Egypt on a treatment for this disease.

Siegfried Ruhemann (1859-1943), F.R.S. 1914-1923

In October 1891 James Dewar, Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, and Director of the Royal Institution in London, had printed for private circulation the correspondence relating to his attempt to secure the dismissal of his Assistant in Cambridge, Siegfried Ruhemann Ph.D. of Berlin University. There is a copy of this rare pamphlet of 58 pages in the Cambridge University Library (Cam. c . 891.12), and it is from this that the quotations are taken, unless otherwise attributed. When Dewar was elected to his chair in 1875, at the age of 33, he made clear that he would need an assistant to prepare his lecture demonstrations, and he brought with him from Edinburgh his 22-year old student assistant, Alexander Scott. In the following year Scott was awarded an exhibition which seems to have allowed him to enrol as an undergraduate while still working for Dewar. He obtained first-class honours in part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos and remained in his post until 1884, lecturing on organic and physical chemistry, and supervising advanced students in their first taste of research. After 12 years of very successful teaching at Durham School, Scott was called back by Dewar, this time to act as Superintendent of the Davy-Faraday laboratory which Ludwig Mond had established next door to the original Royal Institution. And here he stayed until 1911 when the managers, doubtless at Dewar’s instigation, terminated his appointment. The acrimony which attended the severance of this long association was typical of Dewar’s professional relationships; which brings us back to Siegfried Ruhemann.