Part 2 in process - Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS)

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kangaroo around the digs and streets. After all, caffeine is not much different from quinine and heroin. His intention was to keep awake in the night for last minute revision. The others did not seem to prepare very much for exams., but my method of preparation was strictly methodical, based on revision which began weeks before the examinations. Having memorized the notes there was little chance of running in to an unforeseen problem. The exception was mathematics, where one could be hit with a stinker of a paper no matter how much revision you had made. In this sense chemistry was the safest subject to take. It had continuous assessment for some practical courses. Some poor students were hit really hard with examination nerves and could not finish the course. Others would waffle their way through to a lower second or third. To get a first class degree the work had to be good for the whole three years. As usual I started slowly and was not fully aware of things until about half way through the Christmas term. As soon as I heard that there were going to be examinations the methods of the Grammar School were used, that meant reading and memorizing a really good set of notes. The atmosphere at the time was that of the late sixties, with student uprisings and general discontent. None of that could be allowed to interfere in my aim of getting a first class degree and doing as well as I could. I was a most sincere student in most cynical world, and so it has remained ever since. None of my immediate family had ever been to university or even a grammar school, so I was completely on my own. I did not ever ask questions of lecturers or tutors, but in a sense took over the material for myself. I quickly realized that there was to be no time for any distraction, with the exception of Saturday afternoons, some walks and that one exhilarating bike ride in a wonderful new country. Of that first term there are only shards of memory, because all my concentration was focused on getting good marks. I cannot remember whether the assessment of practical classes as continuous or by examination. The practical class in physical and inorganic chemistry took place in the upper level of the new wing of the EDCL, built in 1962, destroyed by 1993. This is appalling maladministration. The new wing was built because money became available, and that seems to be all. There was no thought as to the number of students likely to be available from Wales, so this stupidity was bound to harm the Welsh language very greatly. Each student was assigned some laboratory apparatus in physical, inorganic and organic chemistry, and I recall that there was a mania for making the students wash glassware until their fingers dissolved. The apparatus differed from the school in that it had ground glass stoppers in place of corks. The class was administered by lecturers and demonstrators who used to deliver the occasional sarcasm and little else. There were small rooms off the main laboratory, which was filled with far too many benches for student numbers, but the first years were not allowed in them. There was a furnace for crucibles near the windows, which looked out over a mass of greyness - the damp town of Aberystwyth - then out over the cold black sea. Each experiment came with a set of instructions, often incomprehensible, and there were long stools to perch on like chickens. The heaviest days were those of a lecture at nine followed by a practical class. Then the notes had to be written up the following day or as soon as I could in the library. As the examinations approached there was the additional work of memorizing and revising. It is impossible to know at this distance in time how I managed to memorize those notes in a crowded alcoholic room filled with students
who seemed to never to work at all. I have a vague recollection that the worst experience in practical classes was physics. It was a long walk stuffed with bacon up to physics on the Penglais campus, through Aberystwyth and on to the Machynlleth road, up a hill past the hospital and entrance to the National Library of Wales, past Pant y Celyn Hall and cutting through the campus past the biology building. Physics seemed as dry as dust, the main lecture theatre was used because there should have been a hundred or so students, but there never was. It was an entirely dark theatre with no windows and was filled with irrelevance, spotlights, large boards, projectors, and a vast number of seats for a small number of scraped up students. One lecturer called Kersley used an overhead projector and a roll of transparency on which he scribbled in between loud bouts of sniffing. Maybe he was blowing last night’s snuff or heroin out of his long nose. The scribbles were in red, white and blue. He was a permanently irritated Scot loaded with a first year class. I forget entirely what he taught, which is not the greatest of commendations. There was one revolting course in thermodynamics for which a course book by McGraw Hill had to be bought, making me even hungrier. I have never come across anyone who could teach thermodynamics, least of all Morrison of chemistry. There must have been the usual physics courses, but I am sure that they never got as far as the Maxwell Heaviside equations. The physics practical courses were held in cubicles called laboratories hidden inside the Penglais concrete maze. Again there were set experiments with instructions to get through each as best as I could. The school work was not coordinated with the work at first year undergraduate, so it was matter of following a set of instructions like Mecano. Obviously I learnt nothing, but I must have got through them somehow until I could ditch physics as soon as I could at the end of that first year. In the first few weeks of that term in the autumn of 1968 time stood still, one interminable, ugly, day following the other. There was no common room for undergraduates, and at the end of the first year I still did not know who they were. It must have dawned on me at some point that there going to be examinations at the end of the first term in chemistry, physics and mathematics, but where and when was not made clear. In a very vague way I remember being told in an offhand kind of way that the purpose of these exams was to make sure that all the students were working, or whether some had blown a transistor or valve. I seemed to be working, but my ribs were protruding The most desiccated subject was mathematics, with lectures delivered in small rooms with windows. Probably there were very few mathematics students to be found. One course book from 1968 has survived, Stephenson’s “Mathematical Methods for Science Students”. I still use it now. It was taught by I forget whom by simply reading out the material. We were told that the mathematics may seem to be very boring now, and in fact it was very boring, but would be useful later. I vaguely remember a half bald red headed man whose task it was to make students enthusiastic about mathematics. He seemed to cough out his lectures as if under a great weight of being stuck in this place forever. Later on as a post doctoral I came across A. R. Davies, who told me that all students are morons. Naturally he became a full professor. The subject of mathematics was preferable to physics because it had no practical work but it was impossible to be enthusiastic about limit theorems. In later years I taught myself mathematics, and it is indeed useful and very elegant. One would never have guessed it in 1968. Everything was dominated by looming examinations. In the mathematics papers one
Page 1 and 2: AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME 2 (1968 - 1986
Page 3 and 4: for the year, I think it was 282 po
Page 5 and 6: walked my way out of hearing of the
Page 7 and 8: (late sixties) were, I suppose, pot
Page 9 and 10: I think it was called Christmas ter
Page 11: heard everywhere and I began to fee
Page 15 and 16: was another angry man with a gun. H
Page 17 and 18: after that first Aberystwyth term,
Page 19 and 20: prevent students writing crib notes
Page 21 and 22: The further from Aberystwyth the ha
Page 23 and 24: they were out of control. This was
Page 25 and 26: the second part of the physical sci
Page 27 and 28: asphyxiation. The noise woke up the
Page 29 and 30: son there seemed to be no thought g
Page 31 and 32: undergraduate and graduate. The ent
Page 33 and 34: Mansel Davies lectured on dielectri
Page 35 and 36: nineties I met Hoffmann at Cornell,
Page 37 and 38: him that it was an examination. At
Page 39 and 40: Birkbeck College but again was appo
Page 41 and 42: dynamics simulation. This course ha
Page 43 and 44: I walked out of the intensely stuff
Page 45 and 46: students in the digs congratulated
Page 47 and 48: the certificate and gave it to my p
Page 49 and 50: from a high pressure lamp was cut b
Page 51 and 52: while to work on a liquid crystal c
Page 53 and 54: For example he got annoyed when I u
Page 55 and 56: hundred committees a year or simila
Page 57 and 58: prohibited by law as in many other
Page 59 and 60: The theory of that cyanogen experim
Page 61 and 62: Provence, which was as foreign to t
Page 63 and 64:
Foundation of Modern Art where anot
Page 65 and 66:
in to his study and never took a wa
Page 67 and 68:
for me but he blasted away as usual
Page 69 and 70:
laboratory. The production of rotat
Page 71 and 72:
interference in thought and all tha
Page 73 and 74:
London as a distinction higher than
Page 75 and 76:
In the small village of Salen there
Page 77 and 78:
were: Colm Cile mac Fedelmtheo died
Page 79 and 80:
well try to organize the thought of
Page 81 and 82:
CHAPTER FIVE The decade from about
Page 83 and 84:
The original part of life was alway
Page 85 and 86:
submitted on 2 nd May 1975 from Oxf
Page 87 and 88:
the EDCL, and placed carefully on t
Page 89 and 90:
to keep it going. I should have tak
Page 91 and 92:
some participants loading up when t
Page 93 and 94:
turned out to be a very long walk,
Page 95 and 96:
them without reading them, and was
Page 97 and 98:
Coffey’s habit of dragging guests
Page 99 and 100:
that meant anything. The University
Page 101 and 102:
of ways of getting out of “the Sw
Page 103 and 104:
stated aim in awarding this fellows
Page 105 and 106:
Jones behind the scenes. Other cand
Page 107 and 108:
distance.Some time later he wrote m
Page 109 and 110:
evolution of the dynamics could be
Page 111 and 112:
to function. John Thomas had vanish
Page 113 and 114:
University of Brussels. By the time
Page 115 and 116:
the first time that this had been d
Page 117 and 118:
Dec. 1979, and OO88, submitted on 1
Page 119 and 120:
take this opportunity to lodge a st
Page 121 and 122:
1980. He had been on the edge of le
Page 123 and 124:
apparent. Computer simulation can c
Page 125 and 126:
He was offered a job at Trinity Col
Page 127 and 128:
overwhelm Veerappa. The latter was
Page 129 and 130:
glasshouse in the back garden. On t
Page 131 and 132:
had been completed as planned, data
Page 133 and 134:
the EDCL. After being appointed to
Page 135 and 136:
in general non Gaussian. This funda
Page 137 and 138:
difference was traced to a hitherto
Page 139 and 140:
that was the general opinion in int
Page 141 and 142:
appeared and showed that the whole
Page 143 and 144:
“reprimanded” by the so called
Page 145 and 146:
used producing many new results. I
Page 147 and 148:
electric field the cross correlatio
Page 149 and 150:
Ramsay Memorial Fellowship (1976);
Page 151 and 152:
to the slum digs at night from work
Page 153 and 154:
about June but still there in Septe
Page 155 and 156:
Covenant between Swansea and Prof.
Page 157 and 158:
and then I would be on the dole for
Page 159 and 160:
monolayers by power reflectivity, g
Page 161 and 162:
e away for only a year, and that th
Page 163 and 164:
lesson of history is that the poet
Page 165 and 166:
allowed to think freely. So the les
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