Old Members Archives - The Queen's College, Oxford

Old Member Nicholas Coghlan (Modern Languages, 1973) is author of several books including, most recently, Under Wide and Starry Skies (Bloomsbury, 2025) and Sailing to the Heart of Japan (Seaworthy, 2024). Both contain intimate and original travel narratives of his adventures sailing to lesser-known and unusual locations with his wife Jenny (Wolfson, 1973). We spoke to Nick about his voyages as student, diplomat, and explorer, and taking a path less travelled.

Can you share a favourite memory from your time at Queen’s?

A favourite memory was learning to row. I’m not athletic, but as a young boy I’d seen the University Boat Race on television every year and this is one thing I’d associated with Oxford. So, I decided to give College rowing a try. As a rather shy Fresher it was a great way to get to know people I’d not otherwise have met, as we gathered outside the Florey Building early on chilly mornings, then jogged down to the boathouses in the mist to learn the basics.

The first summer, I made the Third Eight in the bow position, then the following year became a Coxswain. Even though every oarsman in the crew was a far better and stronger rower than I had ever been, the bends in the river and in-line pursuit did call for some skill and judgment over when to move in for a prized Bump. And, of course, there was responsibility in deciding when to increase the pace or the power of the Eight. Looking back, it was a great exercise in confidence-building.

How did your degree in Modern Languages prepare you for life and your worldwide travels?

In my third year at Queen’s, like most Modern Languages students, I opted to spend the year abroad – in my case, at a teacher-training institute attached to the ancient University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

It was a wonderful, eye-opening time as I found myself plunged – alone – into a foreign culture, forced to put into practice the conditional tense and the subjunctive that in the classroom had sometimes seemed so tedious. The process of uprooting myself from one place to reinsert myself in another, with a whole new set of challenges, became an addictive one that I’d come later to repeat and love as the Canadian foreign service sent me to six overseas postings. Santiago was the practice run. And our parallel lives as long-distance sailors saw my wife Jenny and I transition to, and out of, even more different cultures as we meandered through the South Pacific and beyond.

That long-ago year in Spain (1975-6) happened to coincide with the death of the country’s longtime dictator, General Francisco Franco. It would become the most tumultuous year in Spain’s post-civil war history, and in a university town – as I was – I was at the heart of things. Simply trying to understand history being made – while you are in the middle of it – was something I’d find myself doing much later as a diplomat serving in Mexico as the long reign of the PRI party came to an end, in Islamabad as the war raged up the hill in Afghanistan, and in Juba (South Sudan) when civil war broke out in 2013.

And then there was the literature, which stayed with me always. A peak of my teaching career – one that came only in hindsight – was when a girl I remembered as a quiet student who said little, always sitting at the back, wrote to me years later to say that studying José María Arguedas’ Los Ríos Profundos had made her look at life in a different way; I’d first read it at Queen’s. I recall also losing myself one summer in the magical world of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, in the Upper Library. A high point of my diplomatic career one morning many years later was meeting García Márquez himself over breakfast at the Convent of Santa Teresa, in Cartagena, for a wide-ranging discussion on Colombian and Cuban politics. My inscribed edition of his masterpiece – “For Nicholas, named like my grandfather” – is one of my most prized possessions.

Whenever possible, when dispatching diplomatic cables to Ottawa from Mexico or Colombia, I’d try to make appropriate literary references. But I have to admit that my biggest hit was a cable on the economic crisis in Mexico featuring the less august Jimmy Buffet: “Wasting Away in Margaritaville”.

Why was it important to you to travel to Japan in particular?

Like most people who served in combat in World War Two, my father hardly ever talked about his experiences. But one day he shocked me by saying that the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima was one of the best days of his life. He went on to explain that – following the end of the war in Europe – he, along with thousands of other infantrymen, had been given their embarkation orders for Japan. And that he dreaded it, more even than the Herman Goering Division he’d faced in Italy. The men had been briefed that allied forces expected 250,000 casualties when the land invasion of Japan’s Home Islands was launched; horrifying stories of the Japanese treatment of western POWs were well known. So, you could say that I inherited a certain prejudice, or at least curiosity.

I wanted to see Japan for myself, to try to get to know the culture, to learn how the Japanese saw the war today, to try to understand my father’s loathing of all things Japanese, which he held for the rest of his life. This is why, faced with the challenge of sailing home to Canada from New Zealand, my wife Jenny and I decided to take the little-used option of sailing via Japan.

What have you learnt from your exploration of places less travelled?

When I was a student at Queen’s, I was awarded a Heath Harrison Travelling Scholarship, which I used to travel to Mexico and follow in the footsteps of conquistador Hernán Cortés. In those days, this was an exotic adventure: most of Mexico was still very much off the beaten track for foreign travellers. Now the world seems a much smaller place. The then-empty strand marked on the map as Cancún, close to where Cortés first landed, has a population that has just reached one million and its airport receives dozens of daily international flights.

But my wife Jenny and I have found that by travelling the world’s oceans – the world’s last unregulated spaces – by sailboat, you can find destinations still un-reached by 747s and discover the world as it was before: less homogeneous, more intriguing, often puzzling but usually welcoming. Even in hyper-modern and over-populated Japan, cruising the Inland Sea under sail took us to places that are today quieter than they have been in a thousand years. It’s hard to deplore the new accessibility of international travel (its democratisation, if you like) but the fact is that these days, by leaving home, you are much less likely to be challenged. Which to me is the whole point of going.

What has been the most challenging part of sailing 70,000 miles?

There’s great romance attached to the idea of untying your shore lines and setting off to sail beyond the horizon. As a boy I’d devoured – alternately – stories of mountaineering in the Himalayas and the adventures of Francis Chichester and Joshua Slocum as they sailed single-handed around the world. When Herman Melville died (in obscurity), it’s said that on his desk they found a slip of paper that read “Stay true to the dreams of thy youth”, and that is a philosophy that has impelled me. My favourite poem – which I have drawn upon in the title of my latest book, is one by that great romantic Robert Louis Stevenson: “Requiem”.

But there are often uncomfortable practicalities associated with fulfilling your dreams. As not-especially-practical people, learning the principles of sailing, of maintaining a small diesel engine, of interpreting synoptic weather charts, of mastering celestial navigation – these were all practical challenges that Jenny and I had to force ourselves to address. Even my degree in Spanish was not especially helpful when it came to recruiting a mechanic in Argentine Patagonia to help us extract a sheared bolt in the crankcase of our small diesel. But there’s a unique satisfaction in preparing for a diverse set of eventualities and threats, then surviving one such event – a gale, a catastrophic equipment failure, landfall on a coral atoll that rises only a few centimetres above sea level – and knowing that you did so because you’d prepared well and without any external assistance.

My favourite places are as much to do with who I was, at a particular moment, as with place itself.

Do you have a favourite place (and why)?

I loved and relished each of my six diplomatic assignments for different reasons: Khartoum for the unexpected kindness and hospitality of the ordinary people of conflict-ridden Sudan, Mexico for the excitement of my first posting at a time of political upheaval, Pakistan for the unforgettable three-week trek we made to the foot of K2 (the second highest mountain in the world), Bogotá for the friends I made among the Afro-Colombian communities resisting aggression by right-wing militias in the jungles of Darién.

On our oceanic travels, there was Robinson Crusoe Island, the lonely rock off the west coast of Chile that inspired Daniel Defoe; the similarly dramatic and then-inaccessible Saint Helena, the site of Napoleon’s exile and home to Jonathan, the world’s oldest living land creature; strange Palmerston Island, where all 50 inhabitants are direct descendants of a 19th Century British privateer and his three Polynesian wives. But when I’m asked where I would most likely go back to, they aren’t necessarily these places. I recognise that my favourite places are as much to do with who I was, at a particular moment, as with place itself. In that regard, I’d have to say San Francisco: the moment of passing under the Golden Gate bridge under sail after our first offshore passage from Canada, and having an exiting American aircraft carrier inform us courteously that he was slowing down so as to give our little 27-footer sea-room.

Please tell us about a book you have recently finished reading and enjoyed.

I’ve recently finished Elif Shafak’s Three Daughters of Eve. It’s set alternately in Oxford around 2001 and Istanbul 15 years later. It recalled to me the intensity of student life among the Dreaming Spires; although if you’re reading it the age of 70 – as I was – it’s hard not to be a little maudlin as you rediscover that now-gone sense of every road being open to you. But I was also intrigued, having lived in the Muslim world and experienced directly the consequences of extremism (in Pakistan in particular), by its exploration of the competing attractions of religion and secularism in the modern world.

book cover for Under Wide and Starry Skies: 50 sailing destinations in seas less travelled by Nicholas Coghlan with text overlaid on a background of deep blue ocean and palm fronds hanging down from the top

read under wide and starry skies

book cover for Sailing to the Heart of Japan with a background photo of the sea with a small sailing boat and Japanese style gateway between two islands

READ SAILING TO THE HEART OF JAPAN

Nick Coghlan (Modern Languages, 1973) worked as a teacher after graduation, initially in Argentina, then British Columbia (Canada). Subsequently he switched careers, acquired Canadian citizenship and joined the Canadian Foreign Service. A succession of overseas postings took him from Mexico via Colombia and Pakistan to Juba, South Sudan, where his tenure as Canada’s ambassador coincided with that of Tim Morris (also a former Queen’s student of Modern Languages) as British Ambassador.

In between careers and diplomatic postings, Nick and his wife Jenny (Wolfson College, 1973) have sailed the world’s oceans, covering 70,000 miles in a succession of two 27-ft vessels.

Header image: St Helena, South Atlantic

Former Laming Resident Fellow Professor Sir Peter Russell’s fascinating worlds are brought to life in a new biography by Bruce Taylor. Old Member Colin Wight (Modern Languages, 1973) reviews the new book and reflects on his own experiences as a student who attended Sir Peter’s lectures and seminars.

A review of Scholar-Spy: The Worlds of Professor Sir Peter Russell by Bruce Taylor

Appointed at the age of 39, Peter Russell was King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies from 1953 until his retirement in 1981. He remained intellectually active until shortly before his death on 22 June 2006.

In October 1973, as a first-year undergraduate attending Professor Russell’s popular lectures in the Taylorian, I knew almost nothing about this impressive, leonine figure — apart from the fact that he had edited and written key chapters of one of the most useful books in my modest library, Spain: A Companion to Spanish Studies (1973). A decade later, back at Queen’s as a graduate student, I came to admire his intellect and achievements but still knew little about the man. Dr Bruce Taylor — an Oxford-educated historian — became Russell’s friend and confidant in the 1990s. He has enjoyed unrestricted access to Russell’s journals and literary archive and has spoken to many of his former colleagues and students. The result is this comprehensive and beautifully-written 430-page biography.

Peter Wheeler was born in New Zealand on 24 October 1913. At the age of 12 he moved with his mother and younger brother to England. Shortly afterwards Mrs Wheeler changed the family name to Russell. After attending Cheltenham College, Peter Russell came up to The Queen’s College to study Modern Languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese), graduating with a First in 1935. During both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, he served as an intelligence officer in Europe and further afield. One of his duties was to keep an eye on the Duke of Windsor, en route from Madrid via Lisbon to the Bahamas, with orders to shoot the former King if the situation called for it — or so the story goes. He left with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

One of his duties was to keep an eye on the Duke of Windsor…with orders to shoot the former King if the situation called for it.

In 1946 Russell was appointed university lecturer in Spanish and a Fellow of Queen’s. He went on to make huge contributions to both historical and literary studies, beginning with his work on the activities of the Plantagenets on the Iberian peninsula, eventually published as The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (1955). He gained a reputation as a fearless iconoclast, publishing work which, informed by painstaking research in neglected archives and a knowledge of medieval diplomatic, went against received wisdom. In 1952 he published a paper that challenged the generally accepted date and authorship of the Spanish national epic, the Cantar (or Poema) de Mio Cid. Had he not done so, Russell’s academic status in Spain would have been higher than it was. Then, in 1960, he upset the Portuguese cultural establishment by demolishing the nationalist myth of Prince Henry and his (non-existent) Algarvian school of navigation. Peter Russell’s reassessment of Henry as fundamentally a crusading imperialist, a prince of his time rather than a visionary man of science, was based, as always, on sound, objective reasoning and a meticulous examination of primary sources. That did not prevent him from being persona non grata during the Salazar regime. At last, and somewhat ironically, he was awarded the Order of Infante Dom Henrique in 1993.

book cover for 'Prince Henry 'the navigator' A Life' by Peter Russell with a painting of Prince Henry and a map illustration next to him

In another influential article, published in 1969, Russell pointed out what critics since the Romantic era had chosen to ignore: for all its brilliant originality, Don Quixote is not the story of a tragic idealist, let alone an exploration of the Spanish national character. The soi-disant knight errant is a silly old fool — although sane people, as Cervantes demonstrates, are also capable of behaving like lunatics. A funny book can also be a great book.

A funny book can also be a great book.

I mention in Taylor’s book an incident that took place in 1982 during one of the weekly seminars at St Giles’ which I attended as a graduate student. One of those present (not me, fortunately) said that it must have been dangerous, if not impossible, for Lorca to ‘come out’ in the 1930s. Russell replied, with a wry smile: ‘I think I am correct in saying that I am the only person in this room who knew Lorca, and I can assure you that being homosexual in Spain in the 1930s was not a problem’. I can’t be certain these were his exact words but that was the gist. Russell’s private journal makes it clear that he, too, was homosexual, but he seems to have shunned physical intimacy with men and women alike and lived a celibate life. Though sociable and apparently at ease with everyone, including himself, he had lived alone in Belsyre Court up the Woodstock Road for as long as anyone could remember.

Peter Russell’s battles with depression and his long-term treatment by psychoanalysis are described in some depth here and come as a revelation. Likewise the details of his wartime service, largely a mystery during his lifetime, are clarified and add considerably to our knowledge of MI5 operations.

Older contemporaries at Oxford (e.g. Enid Starkie, John Betjeman, George Kolkhorst) frequently appear in his diaries, and Taylor has done a fine job in selecting snippets which will be of interest to historians of the period. Copious photographs help round out the story. In addition to a comprehensive index there is a bibliography of Russell’s nearly 200 published works, sources both published and unpublished, and resumés of the careers of the 40 or so graduates he supervised over the years, including my own tutor at Queen’s, John Rutherford.

Javier Marías, Spain’s most famous and successful novelist from the 1980s until his early death in 2022, became fascinated by Russell during his time in Oxford and based ‘Toby Rylands’ on him in Todas las almas (All Souls, 1989). Later he made ‘Peter Wheeler’ the central character of Tu rostro mañana (Your Face Tomorrow), a trilogy of well-received novels. Russell did not object to his depiction and corresponded regularly with Marías. Whilst Javier Marías’s fictional works continue to sell in their thousands, both in Spanish and in translation, there is now nothing in print by Sir Peter Russell (he was knighted in 1995). Such is the fate of the academic today, no matter how distinguished.

Scholar-Spy: The Worlds of Professor Sir Peter Russell by Bruce Taylor (London, SPLASH Editions, 2024). ISBN 9781912399406

Colin Wight was at Queen’s as an undergraduate (1973-1977), and as a graduate student (1978-1984).

Where can a STEM degree take you? We spoke to Old Member Dr Hassanatu B. Mansaray (DPhil in Inorganic Chemistry, 2007) whose multifaceted career draws on her problem-solving skills to drive social progress in Africa, and earned her an award for being one of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under 40.

How are you working to promote sustainable development and social progress in Africa?

As the CEO of HBM Advisory, I am deeply involved in promoting sustainable development in Africa. Our approach focuses on identifying and unlocking high-impact opportunities that bring about transformative results for communities. For instance, our work in infrastructure development transcends the mere construction of roads and energy grids. We ensure that these projects, whether in the public or private sector, yield lasting social and economic benefits for citizens, such as improved access to quality education, healthcare, and markets for women and the youth.

My work with the Women in Science, Technology and Innovation (WoSTI) Foundation is a testament to my commitment to promoting social progress in Africa. We support girls and young women in STEM, equipping them with the skills needed to drive future progress. My vision for Africa is one of inclusivity, where every citizen, particularly women, actively participates in shaping our Continent’s future. I see a future where Africa is a global leader in sustainable development and innovation, and I am dedicated to making this vision a reality.

My vision for Africa is one of inclusivity, where every citizen, particularly women, actively participates in shaping our Continent’s future.

What drives you in your work?

As CEO, my goal is to help African businesses and governments navigate an ever-changing global landscape with innovative and sustainable solutions. What truly drives me is the opportunity to create long-lasting value that uplifts communities and empowers individuals. I deeply believe in the potential of African economies but equally in the importance of aligning growth with sustainability and social progress to improve the quality of life of people. Whether we’re advising on national development strategies, investor relations, or developing risk management systems, the goal is always to push for solutions that deliver both economic and social returns, ensuring a responsible and balanced approach to development.

How do you bring together all the different strands of your work and operate effectively across many different areas?

My career is multifaceted, but I see it as a continuous thread where each role builds on the others. My background in Chemistry instilled precision and problem-solving skills, which I’ve applied in policy and strategy development, infrastructure projects, and business development. Whether working on national development plans or corporate strategies, I draw on my scientific rigour and development finance experience to approach challenges holistically, allowing me to see unique opportunities.

You held several roles at the African Development Bank Group for over a decade. What changes have you seen in Africa’s socio-economic landscape during that time?

During my time at the African Development Bank, I witnessed remarkable transformations in Africa’s socio-economic landscape. Over the past decade, Africa’s emerging economies thrived, the private sector expanded, and technological advancements surged, leading to a growing middle class until the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this progress.

Despite the challenges in the last decade, the Continent has made significant strides in economic diversification and promotion of value addition across many sectors, including agriculture, mining, and renewable energy technologies, for global competitiveness.

Private sector involvement in infrastructure and social development has also increased, highlighting the need for strong policies to ensure inclusive growth.

Commitment to sustainable development has grown, evident in initiatives like the Climate Change and Green Growth Strategic Framework, which I helped develop. These changes showcase Africa’s expanding role on the global stage and its potential for leadership in innovation and sustainability, inspiring confidence in its future.

How did your DPhil in Chemistry and your work as a scientist prepare you for the work you do now?

My DPhil in Chemistry taught me to approach challenges with a methodical and analytical mindset, which has been invaluable in every role I’ve held since. Whether I’m formulating long-term corporate strategies or advising on policy development, the scientific method —hypothesis, testing, refining — guides my work. Chemistry also fostered a deep appreciation for innovation, and I’ve carried that with me into my roles in business and international development, always looking for new ways to solve problems. Moreover, science is inherently collaborative, and that has shaped how I approach leadership, fostering teamwork and open dialogue.

My DPhil in Chemistry taught me to approach challenges with a methodical and analytical mindset, which has been invaluable in every role I’ve held since.

In 2021 you received an award for being one of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under 40 in the Business and Entrepreneurship category. How did this make you feel and what advice would you give to others aiming high?

Receiving this award was both humbling and empowering. It validated the hard work and dedication that I’ve poured into my career, but more importantly, it reminded me of the responsibility we all carry to uplift others. My advice to others is to remain focused on their purpose. Success isn’t just about personal achievements — it’s about using your platform to make a difference in your community. Dare to DREAM BIG, but always stay grounded in how your work impacts the world around you.

Dare to DREAM BIG, but always stay grounded in how your work impacts the world around you.

What makes a good leader?

A good leader must have vision, but also the humility to listen and learn from others. Leadership, to me, is about empowering those around you and creating an environment where everyone can contribute their best. It’s also about resilience — knowing that challenges will come but having the determination and creativity to overcome them. Most importantly, a good leader must act with integrity, always considering the long-term impacts of their decisions on people, the environment, and society.

What is needed in a workforce to bring about positive and transformative change?

To bring about transformative change, a workforce needs diversity of thought, continuous learning, and a shared commitment to innovation. It’s also critical to cultivate a sense of ownership and purpose. When employees feel connected to the broader mission, whether it’s infrastructure development or sustainable business, their work becomes more than just a job — it becomes a driving force for positive change. At HBM Advisory, we place great emphasis on fostering a culture of growth and collaboration where everyone’s unique perspective and innovative ideas are valued and integral to our success.

What are your happiest memories of being at Queen’s?

Some of my happiest memories at Queen’s are of the quiet moments in the library, fully immersed in learning and reflection. The library’s history and beauty inspired me to think bigger and aim higher, and it was there that I began to envision using my scientific training to make a real-world impact.

The library’s history and beauty inspired me to think bigger and aim higher, and it was there that I began to envision using my scientific training to make a real-world impact.

I also loved the MCR formal dinners, especially the year I was Social Secretary. The sumptuous meals and warm ambience were a welcome reward after long hours in the lab. I still miss the special “Bombe Alaska” dessert reserved for those special occasions.

Can you recommend a book?

The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa by Dayo Olopade offers an insightful and optimistic view of innovation and development across Africa, emphasising local ingenuity and adaptive solutions. Olopade’s work challenges traditional narratives about the Continent, showcasing how African communities are creatively overcoming challenges. It’s an inspiring read for anyone interested in sustainable development, as it highlights grassroots initiatives that can provide a model for impactful change.

A bonus read is The Innovator’s Dilemma by another Old Member of Queen’s Clayton Christensen (MPhil, 1975). It offers valuable insights into how even successful companies can fail if they don’t innovate.

The Eglesfield Society’s summer show is an annual highlight in the Queen’s Trinity Term calendar of events. This year, our beautiful gardens provided the backdrop for Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Director I-Cenay Trim (Literae Humaniores, 2021) recalls her vision for the show and the process of staging it at Queen’s.

“Without doubt, directing Into The Woods has been the highlight of my time at Queen’s. Seeing that there was an annual summer musical is what led me to apply to Queen’s originally, and I cannot express how fabulous it was to get involved with the Eglesfield musical in such a major role. I have loved Into The Woods for many years, so getting to direct the musical was a dream come true for me.

Into The Woods is a beautiful and mind-boggling musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, set in a fantastical world of beloved fairytales and featuring characters such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Ridinghood and Jack (of the Beanstalk). The story follows a Baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wishes to attend the King’s Festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. When the Baker and his wife learn that they cannot have a child because of a Witch’s curse, the two set off on a journey into the woods to break the spell. Everyone’s wish is granted, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later with disastrous results.

We used the entire garden as our stage for the show, focusing mainly in a cross-section, with stage platforms of different heights allowing for audience viewing in the round. Our 17-person live band were stationed in Drawda garden, and our cast were constantly running around “through the woods”, trying and failing to avoid the dangers of the unknown. Sondheim writes his lyrics with the utmost intention and deliberation, and Into the Woods was written for a proscenium stage, thus it was important to me that we did not lose the intimacy of certain moments throughout the musical with such a larger playing space than originally intended. I worked a lot with the cast on shifting tone between Act One and Act Two to make sure we were able to have fun exploring the world and the archetypal, silly, unassuming characters of Act One whilst simultaneously allowing the stakes and rising danger of Act Two to feel real and threatening to our audience.

It was important to me to ensure we keep the allusion that we are no longer watching a musical in Queen’s College Oxford, but we are now in the woods, entering the unknown.

My creative vision for the musical could not have been realised without the support of Ben Gilchrist, our producer, Harry Brook, our set designer, our music directors Hattie Twigger-Ross and Kyle Siwek, and the staff at Queen’s. Transforming the garden into the woods was no easy feat, but to explore that space with our 16-person cast in such an innovative, all-encompassing way was exhilarating. We worked on the musical for four months, scheduling and leading countless of rehearsals a week with behind-the-scenes preparation alongside our degrees. Whilst it was certainly the busiest I’ve ever been, it was also the most fun I’ve ever had. If you ever get the chance to get involved with a musical at Queen’s or anywhere else in the world, take it!

Thank you to all who supported our production, and I hope you enjoyed watching our wonderful cast as much as I did!”

On Saturday 29 June, Old Members, Fellows and staff across the generations, gathered together to celebrate the life of Dr Martin Edwards in a fitting sports tribute at the Queen’s Sports Ground. We were graced with beautiful weather, a wonderful cricket match, delicious food, fond memories and great company. Thanks to everyone who came, and very special thanks to Old Member Jervis Smith (Jurisprudence, 1978) and Honorary Fellow Claire Taylor (Maths, 1994) who arranged the cricket, and to all the players too! Below, Jervis provides us with an excellent match report of the game and day.

Emeritus Fellow and Old Member Dr Martin Edwards (Maths, 1960), for many Queen’s Old Members, “the Dean”, was not only a huge fan of cricket but also a talented cricketer himself. In a fitting tribute to his memory, over 30 cricketers, spanning nearly sixty years of matriculants, offered themselves for selection. To preserve some of the traditional competitiveness, the teams were selected based around two groups: the Lemmings (Old Members’ XI from the 1990’s) and the Martin Edwards Invitation XI (the Crocodiles of 1964-1984 reinforced by recent generations) gathered for a match that was destined to be filled with excitement and nostalgia at the College Ground. Danny English and his crew had prepared a picture-perfect pitch and raised a marquee so all those not participating in the match could attend and pay their respects (from the comfort of the shade).

Although the game was scheduled to begin at the unearthly hour of 11am, everyone (apart from the usual drop-outs on the day) was present and correctly attired for the toss. Led by inspirational Captain and Honorary Fellow Claire Taylor MBE (Maths, 1994), Wisden’s first female Cricketer of the Year, the Lemmings won the toss and elected to bat. The stage was set for a memorable day of cricket as John Greany (Theology, 1994) and Gary Hukins (Maths, 1993), the opening batsmen for the Lemmings, stepped up to the crease, ready to showcase their skills in honour of the esteemed Dean. Spurning the usual grit and determination renowned of generations of Queen’s students, they reached their half-centuries in fast time, setting a solid foundation for the Lemmings’ innings at 8-9 runs per over.

Charlie Anderson (Modern History, 1978), with his deceptive left-arm spin, collected his usual wicket against the Lemmings, supported by Nick Beecroft (Physics, 1978) and the young talent Ed Greany (whose father, John (Theology, 1994), and grandfather, Andrew (Classics and Theology, 1963), are Old Members) impressed with their bowling performances. The Invitation XI captain, Louis Pincott (PPE, 2017), undaunted by his opposite number’s heritage, and despite Simon Sutcliffe’s (Chemistry, 1989) unfortunate hamstring injury after just one legitimate delivery, ensured the bowling unit remained strong and determined to defend their total in honour of the late Dean. The fielding, despite a dropped catch early on, was keen and energetic (especially from players such as Jim Houlden (Modern History, 1970) and Rick Haythornthwaite (Geology, 1975)) and Jack Straker’s (2010, Modern Languages) enthusiastic repartee from behind the stumps ensured the field were kept on their toes.

Nonetheless, the Lemmings put in a dominant display with the bat, amassing a total of 199 runs in just 25 overs. Claire Taylor led a wag from the middle order when the momentum dipped, guiding her team to a formidable total that would test the skills of the Invitation XI.

The College treated us to an extra-long lunch interval with a lavish BBQ and a moving memorial to Martin. Guest stars included: Martin’s daughter, Jennie Phillips, and extended family, Martin and Shirley Cross, themselves custodians of the ground for decades, and Paul Newton (Chemistry, 1975), former President of the Old Members’ Association. Marvellous speeches from the Provost, her predecessor and Honorary Fellow Paul Madden, and Claire Taylor, were delivered to accompany the unveiling of a beautifully worded plaque in honour of Martin, which will be installed at the Pavilion. Paul’s words commemorated Martin’s heartfelt commitment to the traditional Queen’s ethos that the time spent at Oxford should encompass all-round development, in which sport could play a huge part.

As the Invitation XI padded up to chase down the target, the effect of a heavy lunch and substantial liquid refreshment took its effect. They were met with a disciplined bowling attack led by the three brothers Baker (James (Maths, 1992), Matthew (Maths, 1998), and Peter (Maths, 2000), who, in addition to confusing the scorer with their bowling changes, kept the runs in check and applied pressure on the opposition batsmen, stifling any chance of building momentum.

Depleted by the enforced absence of key batters Honorary Fellow and Old Member Adrian Beecroft (Physics, 1965) and Hamish Tester (Literae Humaniores, 2012), the Invitation XI innings was bolstered by the stalwart performance of Clive Rolt (PPE, 1981), whose gritty half-century added valuable runs to the team’s total. Meanwhile, Jon Pritchard (PPE, 1990), Mike Knight (Literae Humaniores, 1985) and Louis Pincott provided a quick burst of runs with their cameo performances, before Pincott was well caught on the boundary by the tallest man on the pitch, one of the three Bakers, who showcased his fielding prowess to add to his steady tight bowling line.

The weather was idyllic, the pitch played perfectly, John Pheasant (Modern Languages, 1972) and Jervis Smith (Jurisprudence, 1978) umpired throughout, and the atmosphere in the marquee was filled with a mix of nostalgia and excitement as the large crowd cheered on their favourite players. With every wicket that fell and every run scored, the presence of Martin Edwards was felt throughout the match, reminding everyone of his passion for the game and the joy and encouragement he brought to all who knew him.

In the end, the Lemmings emerged victorious, their all-round performance with the bat and ball paying a fitting tribute to Martin’s memory. As the players and spectators mingled in celebration, sharing stories and memories of the Dean, it was clear that his spirit would always live on in the hearts of those who loved the game of cricket and our wonderful College.

Old Member Bill Kroeger read an MLitt at Queen’s and is now undertaking doctoral studies at the University of Toronto. As part of his Earthsongs project, he came back to Oxford in Trinity Term 2024 and we asked him to tell us more about his research.

Tell us about Earthsongs, your workshops on poetry and gardening, and how they relate to your dissertation at the University of Toronto.

Earthsongs is a project that combines gardening and poetry – hopefully to the benefit of both. Historically, some environmental humanists have focused on “nature writing” – narratives and poems that celebrate green life and our experience of it; Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is an example. Other environmentalists in humanities fields have defined their work in terms of helping to communicate scientific discoveries and experiments – often by writing essays or stories.

In addition to these valuable projects, ecocritics from Lawrence Buell, Jonathan Bate and Ursula Heise to Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour have attempted to theorise how humans relate with the other-than-human world. Recently, literary theorists such as Caroline Levine have been asking how writers and critics might be able to impact cultural attitudes toward climate and ecology.

Taking up this challenge, Earthsongs focuses on human gardening experiences, especially in terms of relations with other species: we garden and then we write poetry based on our gardening tasks. My hope is that this enables us to rethink material relationships – touching the soil, planting, observing plant-animal symbiosis – through poetic re-imagining of these connections with our community (both human and other-than-human). In other words, our poetry helps us reconsider our ecological interrelatedness, and potentially our cooperation with the places we are inhabiting. The physical materiality of our gardening experiences may also help shape and ground our poetry.

My dissertation is about how ethical ecological relationships are articulated in different genres. Drawing on Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s vision of human/other-than-human interconnectedness, I trace how prose novelists, poets, filmmakers, and environmental protesters have reached out to their audiences with implied or overt “calls” to ecological conscience. For example, in addition to Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, I work with Richard Powers’ The Overstory, Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved – this is the chapter on novels, which emphasises how these writers have envisioned human-tree relations.

I consider the poetry of Walt Whitman, Joy Harjo, and Mary Oliver. I analyse documentary and narrative films – The Biggest Little Farm, The Territory, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. My chapter on protest literature centres around resistance to the conversion of a traditional green quad at the heart of the University of Toronto campus into a single-use artificial turf pitch (in 2013). Although my gardening and poetry project is not technically a part of the thesis, Earthsongs is inspired by Kimmerer’s focus on relation with companion species and local places, and by many of the articulations of relation and ecological conscience in the texts I research.

What has led you to this work?

I have been gardening since just after finishing college: I hoped to grow food that wasn’t produced with chemicals and sold in supermarkets. I have wanted to see whether organic farming could be a way of life. As people realise that agriculture can have a dangerous carbon footprint, there is increasing controversy over what kinds of growing, if any, can be sustainable. With Earthsongs, I am considering this difficult question – which relates to scale, measurement, and scientific observation – from the perspective of how people feel and how they relate to the places they inhabit.

I’ve kept gardening in my life as a way to connect with community (both at Oxford and now at the University of Toronto) and to ground myself with relation to my scholarship. As an amateur poet and teacher of writing, I saw the materiality of gardening as a way to facilitate creative writing – for accomplished poets and new writers alike. At the centre of this project is a question about how different disciplines can connect, and how literary endeavours can bring us closer to our own local communities as well as to the climate crisis we face.

What do you enjoy most about your research?

I like gardening because it provides a chance to engage materially with places and the species around us – to hear and touch and see. I enjoy writing poetry too, especially the release and engagement of allowing myself to be creative. With this project, I am continually surprised at how participants all seem to find new connections when they combine poetry, growing, and thinking about relation – even when they are accomplished in one or all of these fields.

In terms of my dissertation research of ecocriticism and environmental literature, I am excited by the chance to think with eminent ecocritics and literary artists about how cultures are responding to ecological crisis.

You are President of the Graduate Environmental Students Association at the University of Toronto. What does this role involve? And what kinds of action and activities has the Association carried out?

GESA members are students who are connected with the U of T School of the Environment, either working toward their MES (Masters of Environmental Science) or as part of a collaborative specialisation combining environmental studies with their home field. For example, I am pursing a collaborative specialisation in English literature and Environmental Studies.

The Graduate Environmental Students’ Association provides academic and social programmes for GESA members, and these events tend to provide other students on campus a chance to engage with environmental scholarship. This year, we hosted a debate on the relative merits of “green growth” and “de-growth”: the speakers were two U of T professors and a local activist/economist.

GESA also facilitates opportunities for students to learn about Toronto’s ecology and world environmental issues – from farm visits and nature hikes to film screenings and guest lectures. As president of GESA this year, I’ve helped organise these events and tried to provide the kind of programming our members seek.

You are also involved with the U of T/Oxford/UPenn environmental humanities inter-doctoral cluster – what does this cluster aim to do and how?

The interdoctoral cluster creates opportunities for dialogue in the environmental humanities. This includes inviting eminent scholars to lecture virtually or in a hybrid format; Dr Linda Tuhawai Smith, Dr Justin Hosbey, and Dr Amanda Power have all addressed our group recently. The cluster also makes it possible for students to visit each other’s institutions, which can be helpful for learning how this relatively young and developing field is practiced in different places. One of the great things about the cluster is its interdisciplinarity, so that even though we are all roughly described as “humanists,” we benefit from a diverse range of methods, foci, and specific areas of expertise.

What research did you do when you read for an MLitt here at Queen’s?

My MLitt dissertation is an ecocritical reading of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. I suggested that this play is not simply a romantic comedy, but a complex articulation of how diverse and eclectic perspectives connect with each other. I traced how characters were rooted in quite specific historical and/or literary contexts – that Corin is historically related to both the Kenilworth pageant of 1575 and to literary treatments of pastoral in Sidney and Spenser, for example, and that Touchstone’s attention to time evokes cultural transformation of agricultural as well as industrial labor. My reading was ecocritical because I focused on the interconnectedness of characters, their values, and their language in the mutually influencing ecological forest web of Arden, which Shakespeare constructs as a unique setting of personal development and self-discovery.

What’s your favourite thing about Queen’s (and Oxford)?

Just one thing? I will try to relate it with a brief description. One rainy day toward the end of my time at Oxford, I had a number of appointments in college – one of them was with my advisor. I got there early and spent some time in the MCR, and I think I also went to the library to collect or return a book. I often visited the lovely, peaceful, Fellows’ garden, but I don’t think I was there that rainy afternoon… after my appointments, I walked out toward the Front Quad to find a beautiful blue sky and a full rainbow over the chapel (I was on the west side of the quad looking northeast). That’s the moment I remember best, and I relate it because it encompasses a lot of what I remember – the beauty of the grounds, the splendour of the library, and the sense of friendly community that could change your mood like the weather.

I think people recognise how wonderful it is to have a place like Oxford, where so many brilliant thinkers from every discipline can come together to learn and share. Their collective strength enables them to think about goals and solutions with a rare optimism for cooperative action.

At its best, Oxford is a space where unique conversations can happen, where people remember to value their cultural differences, and where people strive to cultivate mutual respect.

Old Member and coach Kate Jones (Modern Languages, 1988) was the keynote speaker at the first ever “Finding Our Voices” event and dinner in March. The event brought together current and former Queen’s students for an evening of networking and story sharing, in celebration of 45 years of co-education at the College.

Her five “provisional conclusions” about the great questions of life and work were so insightful, funny and encouraging that we asked her to pass them on to our New Old Members especially – and everyone else who is in need of finding their voice – or feet.

Provisional conclusion No 1: The Truth About Planning

Planning is over-rated and knowing is over-glorified. The truth is that cluelessness is one of the best tickets around to a life and career of adventure, stimulation, self-discovery and fulfilment.

I was as clueless when I graduated as I was when I matriculated about what my career might look like. But that has led to three wonderful chapters in my career so far: in social work and probation, in management consulting and in running my own business.

So if you are feeling lost, stuck or clueless about what next, congratulations! You are onto something.

Provisional conclusion No 2: Life after Finals

Everything is a breeze after Finals. Period.

Provisional conclusion No 3: Defining Success

The second hardest thing (after Finals) is figuring out how YOU define success. Not how your family, friends, university peers or community define it. Not how society defines it. But how you define it.

Or perhaps to put it differently – figuring out how you define fulfilment, or what is enough or what it means to you to live or work well.

A lot of my coaching work is with individuals who are in the process of redefining success for themselves – often in their mid- to late 30s, and realising they want something different. In my experience it has definitely been an evolving process and, I suspect, will always continue to be. Take your time. Savour the questions.

Provisional Conclusion No 4: Invest in Self-Compassion

Self-doubt, anxiety and the inner critic can be one of the most pernicious destroyers of wellbeing in life and work. And one of the greatest derailers of people forging their own path.

So one of the greatest investments of time and energy we can make is in the development of our capacity for self-compassion and self-belief. A poem I sometimes offer to my clients for additional inspiration is Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson. I love those lines:

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
Marianne Williamson, Our Deepest Fear

Conclusion No 5 (nothing provisional here): We Need More Women in Positions of Leadership

Women remain under-represented in the world and we need more of them in positions of authority, leadership and influence in order to make the world a better place.

Did you know that just 5% of FTSE250 CEOs are women?
Or that just 13% of global world leaders are women?
Or that it was only in 2023 that the Royal Academy featured its first exhibition by a solo female artist?
Or that there are more statues of animals in London than there are of women??!

On that note, here’s to 450 more years of women at Queen’s!

Kate’s career has had three chapters to it so far. Chapter 1 was in social work and probation, as a front-line practitioner and consultant in London and Romania. Chapter 2 was in management consulting focussing on deliveirng leadership development and culture change programmes to the public sector at PA Consulting Group. And Chapter 3 has been running her own coaching and consulting business, Neon, where she specialises in building Deeply Human leadership capability in purpose-led organisations. She works with a wide range of clients ranging from Jesuit priests to submarine builders, tech entrepreneurs, humanitarians, lawyers, bankers and more. She also provides fulfilment coaching to dissatisfied professionals seeking big changes in life and work. The golden thread linking it all is a fascination with people and systems and what enables them to change, and a desire to make a difference.

The JCR and MCR Women’s Officers look back on “Finding our voices”, the first ever event bringing current students and Old Members together for an evening of networking and story-sharing, and reflect on the impact the evening had on them.

As Women’s Officers, one of our aims is to create a sense of community and support within the college. Many students are far from home, and graduate students whose lives and departments are scattered across the city often lack a sense of belonging. We also aim to support Queen’s students through hosting a variety of events. Last year, the MCR Women’s officers received a request from the student body to connect more with the Queen’s Women’s Network (QWN), and to host events that can help with professional development. We also wanted to foster more connections with the JCR, to create a stronger college-wide sense of community.

A year later, on 2 March 2024, our efforts came together in the truly intergenerational “Finding our voices” event as the first collaboration between JCR, MCR, and QWN, marking International Women’s day and celebrating 45 years of co-education at Queen’s.

The event began in the beautiful setting of the Upper Library. The Old Members who had volunteered to share their stories with the students were so warm and as eager to meet us as we were to meet them. Unlike a normal networking event, a sense of equality determined the evening. The story sharers were very kind and generous with their time. These were highly accomplished people who under other circumstances could be intimidating to approach, but in this case the atmosphere was intimate and supportive. The stories and vulnerabilities they shared resonated with students’ own experiences of gendered perspectives along with general difficulties of overcoming challenges. We didn’t have to come with impressively well-formulated questions to earn the right to be heard – we could simply talk and ask whatever came to mind – just being there was enough.

At the formal dinner that followed we continued frank and honest conversations about the ups and downs of studying at Queen’s – both past and present. The seating arrangement of the dinner helped the conversations flow – Old Members sat down first, then students could choose whomever they wished to sit next to. Kate Jones’ (Modern Languages, 1988) keynote speech ended the dinner on an inspiring note for the night.

Faith (JCR, BA History)

“Reflecting on 45 years of women granted admittance to Queen’s alongside Old Members was an incredibly meaningful and thought-provoking experience. As an undergraduate studying History, I have often thought that Oxford still bears vestiges of male exclusivity. The experience of Impostor Syndrome among myself and my friends, for instance, has been a deeply gendered one. This event gave us the opportunity to find community, not only among current members, but with those who have walked before us. It was so heart-warming and inspiring to hear the experiences of women from multiple different fields, and learn about their paths after Queen’s. The event reminded us all that none of us are alone in what can often be a daunting and isolating journey through university. Hearing from the Old Members made us truly feel that we had the support of wiser, well-travelled friends who knew our struggles and could empathise. Kate’s speech after dinner really felt like advice from an older sister, and I appreciated that very much. I hope this isn’t a one-off collaboration between the Queen’s Women’s Network and current students, and that many generations of students at Queen’s will be able to benefit from the care and sincere support shown by Old Members.”

Xinyue (MCR, DPhil Fine Art)

“One of my biggest takeaways from the evening is the extremely unique journey each person embarked on. While we are in education, it is easy to forget that life presents a myriad of opportunities and that this current status does not define who we are. We need not to be restricted by our discipline. We should believe in change instead. Seeing how the network reunited and stayed strong years after its members’ graduation gave me a sense of hope; I know that there will always be a collective out there that is rooting for us, whose spirit we may carry for as long as we wish.

I was incredibly proud of both JCR and MCR members who came and participated, as I was anxious that a dinner for International Women’s Day would be unpopular; instead it became one of the most successful events we have held as Women’s Officers. This, of course, cannot be uncoupled from the support of the Old Members’ Office and the QWN Committee. After dinner, MCR members congratulated us on this event. Although it had often felt like an ideal fantasy in our imaginations and took a long time to organise, it was rewarding to hear sincere words of appreciation. It made me feel like I had done something good. While our time as students is short, and our positions as Women’s Officers even more transient, it was a moment like this that validated our commitment. It has truly been an honour to serve this community. The Old Members have shown us camaraderie, kindness, and a keen faith in life.”

Melody (MCR, DPhil Archaeology)

“It is a privilege for anyone to study at university and especially at Oxford. But during deadlines, mountains of reading, research, writing, anxiety and stress it is easy to forget and to get caught up in piles of work. There are some days when my work is advancing by leaps and bounds, and others when it feels like a Sisyphean labour of pushing a boulder uphill only for it to roll down again. During the difficult times it is easy to fantasise about quitting my PhD. Lately I’ve been feeling anxious and insecure about my own work. But hearing all the stories that night was re-assuring and re-affirming. Every path has its difficulties, one is not better than the other or more ‘right’ than the other – only what is right for you matters. The difficulties along this path may be external or internal. Sometimes, our own weaknesses undermine us. Other times, it is possible to turn these weaknesses into our strengths. At the QWN event I was also reminded how difficult it has been for women historically to gain degrees at the University of Oxford, and at Queen’s College itself.

The Queen’s Women’s Network is an incredible collective body of knowledge – knowledge housed in each individual person through their experiences both within and outside Oxford. How much poorer the College would be without them. The QWN is an amazing resource that we want to share with the student body, and I am grateful that the members were generous with their experiences and knowledge. I take for granted the long road people have walked before me for co-education at Queen’s. It was validating and inspiring to be at the event because I realised, I absolutely cannot give up!”

I hope this isn’t a one-off collaboration between the Queen’s Women’s Network and current students, and that many generations of students at Queen’s will be able to benefit from the care and sincere support shown by Old Members.
Faith

Timothy Baker

The brief but brilliant career of Reginald Penrose (1921-1949; Queen’s, 1939) coincided with a ‘golden age’ of physics research at the Clarendon Laboratory. He was a pioneer with Brebis Bleaney in two new fields which developed into major branches of physics: microwave spectroscopy, and electron paramagnetic resonance. Penrose was poised for a distinguished career when he died unexpectedly in 1949 aged only 28.

In those days, scientists were known by their initials. In all his published papers, he was referred to as ‘R.P. Penrose’. When Bleaney died in 2007, the more circumspect obituarists stuck to these initials in describing their joint work. But some newspapers exercised ‘journalistic imagination’, and interpreted the name of Bleaney’s early collaborator as ‘Roger Penrose’. Even the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s entry on Bleaney, presumably taking its cue from the erring journalists, called him ‘Roger Penrose’ until it was corrected at my prompting in November 2022.

Being confused with a Nobel laureate is not an intrinsically bad fate (though Roger Penrose was only just starting as an undergraduate – at University College London – when Reginald Penrose died). But Reginald Penrose’s achievements – including in two pieces of work that were later considered for the Nobel Prize – stand on their own merits. Until the revised ODNB entry on Bleaney, Penrose’s correct Christian name had not appeared in print since the obituary that Bleaney published in Nature in 1949. Nearly three-quarters of a century on, it was high time that Reginald Penrose emerged from the shadows of history.

Matriculation photograph at The Queen’s College; Penrose is pictured 6th from the right in the 2nd row.

Reginald Percy Penrose was born on 6th January 1921 at Salford, Lancashire. He was educated at Altrincham Grammar School, Cheshire. He came up to Queen’s College in 1939 to read physics. Because of the war, his course was shortened to two years. So in 1941, remaining at Queen’s for his DPhil, he joined the Admiralty research group at the Clarendon Laboratory, which was working on magnetrons and klystrons as transmitters and receivers for centimetric-wavelength radar. His supervisor was Arthur Cooke, of New College, but he also worked closely with Brebis Bleaney, of St John’s.

Centimetric radar was a vital weapon of war, since the wavelength was short enough to detect U-boats’ conning towers in the wastes of the Atlantic. Because of the small size of these targets, the beam needed to be powerful so that its intrinsically weaker reflection could be detected. The prototype 10-centimetre cavity magnetron transmitter, invented at Birmingham University in 1940 by John Randall and Harry Boot, and taken to the United States for mass production, along with improved klystron transmitters developed at Oxford, was described by an American commentator as ‘the most valuable cargo ever to cross the Atlantic’. Centimetric microwave radar helped to turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic, assisted by the ‘transmit-receive’ switch, which Arthur Cooke invented in 1940. This switch enabled the same aerial to be used alternately for pulsed transmission and for reception of reflections, so that for the first time it was possible to instal radar in aircraft, which could thus attack submarines directly on the surface.

Reginald Penrose obtained his DPhil in 1946. Because of its military application, his thesis, Measurements on high frequency electromagnetic oscillations, now in the Bodleian Library, was originally stamped ‘Secret’. Because of the need to maximise the power of the transmitted radar pulses and their reflections, an important element of the Clarendon’s wartime research concerned measurement of the absorption of microwaves by various materials. Different substances absorb radiation at different wavelengths, because only photons of precise frequencies, and thus with precise quanta of energy, can be absorbed by their electrons to allow them to ‘jump’ between physically permitted energy levels in the atom. The phenomenon is familiar from the dark ‘Fraunhofer lines’ in the visible spectrum. In the microwave spectrum, water is an absorber (that is how microwave ovens work), so Arthur Cooke’s transmit-receive switch used water vapour to shield the receiver from the powerful transmitting pulses. Penrose’s DPhil research concerned the power characteristics of transmitters, and the absorption characteristics of solid dielectric insulators and of another gas: ammonia.

Geometry of ammonia inversion: the nitrogen atom (blue) flips between configurations within the triangle of hydrogen atoms (grey).

Penrose continued at Queen’s for post-doctoral research, and continued to work with Bleaney and others, including Bleaney’s future wife Betty Plumpton, as they ‘beat swords into plowshares’, using war-surplus radar equipment for fundamental research in microwave spectroscopy.

Bleaney and Penrose first turned their attention to ammonia. The ammonia molecule consists of a triangle of hydrogen atoms, bonded tetrahedrally to a nitrogen atom. Absorbing a quantum of microwave radiation can make the nitrogen atom ‘flip’ from one side to the other of the hydrogen triangle. The absorption frequency gives rise to an ‘inversion spectrum’. The ability of the bonding electrons to ‘jump’ between different energy states gives rise to a ‘fine structure’ in the spectrum, with different absorption frequencies corresponding to different ‘jumps’. In 1945 Bleaney and Penrose were the first to discover this ‘fine structure’ in the ammonia spectrum.

Though they did not take this research much further, it had momentous consequences. In America Charles Townes was similarly using war surplus equipment to investigate ammonia’s inversion spectrum. He independently found the ‘fine structure’, but yielded priority to Bleaney and Penrose. Unlike the Oxford team, Townes did however continue in the field, and mapped the spectrum in detail. This work led on to the discovery that electrons in ammonia could be stimulated into long-lasting energy states, and so to Townes’s invention of the Maser (‘Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’), the first powerful source of coherent light. Further research by others led on to the invention of the Maser’s equivalent in the visible spectrum, the Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), one of the fundamental technologies of the modern world.

A graph of the microwave inversion spectrum of ammonia from Penrose’s and Bleaney’s 1946 paper. (By permission of The Royal Society.)

Townes recalled in How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist that, probably in the late 1950s, when Bleaney was nominated for it, this field was being considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Townes, later a Nobel laureate himself, pointed Bleaney’s priority out to the Nobel Committee; he suggested in his book that, though Bleaney was the discoverer, the fact that it was Townes who carried research forward might have prevented the Nobel Committee from coming to a clear conclusion about the appropriate recipient, so they awarded that Prize to another field. This was the first ‘Nobel near-miss’ to which Reginald Penrose contributed.

Bleaney and Penrose turned to another field in which the former had been one of the pioneers: electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), which chemists call electron spin resonance. Once again using war surplus radar equipment, Bleaney discovered EPR in 1945. Unknown to him, at Kazan in Russia Yevgeny Zavoisky had already found this phenomenon in 1944. This time, however, it was Zavoisky who did not follow up his discovery; and Bleaney, initially with Penrose’s and Plumpton’s help, who carried the work forward, and turned Oxford into the leading EPR research school in the world.

Members of the Clarendon Laboratory, late 1940s. Reginald Penrose is in the 3rd row, 4th from the left, in a Queen’s blazer. Arthur Cooke is in the 2nd row, 2nd from left. Brebis Bleaney is in the 2nd row, 3rd from right. (By permission of the University of Oxford Department of Physics.)

Electrons have a quantum property called ‘spin’ which makes them behave like tiny magnets. Paramagnetic materials have unpaired electrons in their atoms. So when an external magnetic field is applied, the unpaired electrons align with it, either parallel or antiparallel to the field, and the material becomes magnetic. The two alignments have different energy levels. Microwaves of the right ‘resonant’ frequency can make the electron absorb a photon and ‘flip’ from the lower to the higher energy level, causing a line in the spectrum. The electron’s interaction with the changing magnetic field caused by its own orbital motion within the atom causes this line to split, creating the ‘fine structure’ of the spectrum.

EPR spectroscopy is used to investigate paramagnetic substances whose atoms are ‘diluted’ in the lattice of a non-magnetic crystal, so that interference with other atoms is minimised. The sample was reduced to low temperature, close to Absolute Zero, to limit unwanted thermal vibration. A strong external magnetic field was applied, aligning the unpaired electrons in the two spin states, so when microwave radiation of the right frequency was shone through the sample, it could be absorbed by the electrons to ‘flip’ them between states. Each element has a characteristic electron structure, so the spectrum could be used to characterise the material. As in the case of ammonia, each element has a characteristic ‘fine structure’ corresponding to ‘jumps’ between a range of physically permitted energy levels. In the late 1940s Bleaney and Penrose developed this new technique into a powerful tool for measuring and investigating the magnetic properties of atoms and materials.

In 1948 Reginald Penrose was appointed to a lectureship at Leeds University. Before moving there, however, he went for a six-month posting to the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory at Leiden. Here he continued EPR research and, while analysing the EPR spectrum of a crystal of copper potassium sulphate, was the first to observe the ‘hyperfine structure’ in the electron transition, which results from the interaction between the electron and the atomic nucleus. Once again, this was the first step in a wide field of research in the magnetic spectroscopy of solids, which has resulted in many technological applications. My father, Michael Baker, who succeeded Penrose as a pupil and graduate student of Bleaney from 1948, recalled the excitement of discussing these new results in about 1950: ‘My lifelong association with hyperfine structure started with Brebis telling me in one tutorial about the six-line hyperfine structure of 55 Manganese; this must have been soon after Penrose published the first article on hyperfine structure in diluted paramagnetic salts, that of 63, 65 Copper in 1949’. The ‘hyperfine structure’ became a main focus of EPR research, and enabled the development of electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR), in which EPR and NMR are applied simultaneously to the same sample. ENDOR is able to amplify the nuclear signal, and therefore greatly expanded the scope of nuclear magnetic research.

In 1966, along with Zavoisky, Bleaney was nominated again for the Nobel Prize in Physics. This nomination must have been for the invention and exploitation of EPR spectroscopy. My father, who also considered Bleaney’s work on EPR worthy of the Nobel Prize, thought that the field might have been crowded out by NMR research, for which the Prize was awarded twice. It is good to know that Bleaney was at any rate considered for it. This is thus the second ‘Nobel near-miss’ that Reginald Penrose was involved with.

Publication of the ‘hyperfine’ result was delayed because Penrose became ill with a brain tumour in early 1949. Surgery appeared to have been successful, but shortly afterwards Penrose suddenly and unexpectedly died in hospital at Wassenaar, near Leiden, on 28 April 1949, aged only 28. So his last and greatest discovery was announced posthumously.

There is a poignancy in the obituary that Bleaney wrote for Nature, and the note that C. J. Gorter added to his write-up of Penrose’s laboratory notes for the same edition, on 25th June 1949. Bleaney wrote: ‘His life centred in his research, … and his enthusiasm in following up a new idea led him to make much of the apparatus himself, for he was a skilful machinist. A cheerful companion, he was liked by all; I was particularly fortunate in enjoying four years of close partnership with him in the Clarendon Laboratory. Our intimate relationship did not cease when he left Oxford, and the exchange of results and ideas with him will be greatly missed. His death at the age of 28 deprives microwave physics of one of its exponents, and his scientific papers (some of them yet to appear) form the memorial to his pioneer work in this field.’

Bleaney continued to research EPR for another eight years, until he succeeded as Dr Lee’s Professor of Experimental Philosophy in 1957. At this stage my father took over Bleaney’s research group. As a pioneer of ENDOR, and as the initiator of what has become an extensive field of scientific and technological innovation, EPR and ENDOR of impurities in diamond, Michael Baker’s career gives some idea of what Reginald Penrose might have gone on to achieve had he lived.

Let Reginald Penrose no longer be the ‘forgotten physicist’.

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