Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

and classification, taught by [Paul?] Gilmour. However, one of our lecturers was
Paul Richards FRS, an authority on the tropical rain forest and author of the standard
textbook on the subject. (Years later I was to work briefly in East African rain
forests). Harry Godwin FRS was doing very interesting work on quaternary studies.
Professor Brooks was into plant physiology and Thoday, and Catcheside, both later
FRSs, introduced us to plant genetics. We also had field excursions, collecting and
identifying plants, such as the chalk flora of Devil's dyke and the Gog Magog Hills,
also the Breckland sandy heath. We visited Wicken Fen (where we also had Zoology
field trips, seeing swallow-tailed butterflies for the first time), Hayley Wood and so
on; also studying aspects of their ecology.
In St Catharine's my Tutors in successive years were the Dean, Canon
Christopher Waddams, (an Anglican clergymen), Alfred Steers, Professor of
Geography, Donald Portway, later to become Master, and Fred Dainton, a chemist,
later FRS, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University, and a Life Peer. Red headed
Christopher was a very kind man, a mathematician, who was always good for a
discussion on philosophy, morals, or religion. He used to have us up to his rooms
for coffee after lunch or dinner, when we were required to grind the coffee beans in a
hand-grinder, an instrument of torture, which one usually had to clasp between the
knees with great difficulty, while grinding large quantities of beans. He prided
himself on not having a sense of humour, though perhaps this was his humorous
side; for he would listen to us tell a funny story and then very straight-faced say, "I
don't see what is funny about that. Please explain it to me". Of course there are few if
any funny stories that can stand up to that response! Yet, as I say he was a very kind
man.
In College my closest friend was Arthur Mansfield, who came from Wimbledon
and was also reading Zoology. Arthur too played rugger and we had many interests
in common. We enjoyed life to the full and talked about many kinds of ideas and
subjects. This was a friendship that continues today, although Arthur has lived in
Canada for many years and we hadn’t seen each other for some time, until he visited
in 2002 and 2003. (I was instrumental in him becoming a polar biologist, for I
persuaded him to join me on my second Antarctic trip in l950 (which is the subject of
chapter 8). Later he worked in the Canadian Arctic as Director of the Arctic
Biological Unit, located near Montreal. Others in our group were the Leeson twins,
Chris and Roland, who went on to become Professors in Anatomy, Alan Wallace
who became a GP in Tasmania, Peter Williams, also a Professor of Anatomy who
edited many editions of Gray’s Anatomy. There was Derek Thornton, a chemist who
went into industry, and John Temple who was reading geology and went on to
become a Professor at Birkbeck College. These were my closest academic friends in
college. Other friends were in on other colleges, of whom I suppose Norman Holme,
a large, blond, placid, west countryman from Trinity Hall, was closest for we took
supervisions in Zoology together for years and had similar interests in marine
biology. Norman and I had Zoology supervisions with Eric Smith, a quiet, reflective,
but thought-provoking man who was a fount of knowledge on marine biology, later
to become Sir Eric Smith, Director of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (and a fellow
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Director for a while). He like many
of my teachers was an FRS; I kept in touch with him until he died in l990.
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