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

on the Debye plateau. I thought that this was a place in Antarctica that I was going to explore. It
turned out to be the end point of the Debye relaxation theory, the point at which the theory went
bananas. I have been interested in such things ever since.
Pardoe had been a Ph. D. Student of Mansel Davies and had worked at the
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) with Gebbie, Chantry and Chamberlain. The NPL had
developed Fourier transform spectroscopy in the far infra red and had given Mansel Davies a
spectrometer on permanent loan. I may have been allowed a glance at this spectrometer on that
day in June 1971. I studied the Thesis very closely and many times, but making little sense out
of it. I was also very tired after three years as undergraduate so increasingly turned
to”Civilization”. The book opens with a Viking raid on Paris, the Viking art being contrasted
with that of the classical world, a world which fell apart because it was paradoxically barbaric.
Its art became stylized to the point of catatonia, one marble column looking exactly like the
other. The Vikings (my ancestors in some branches) carved vigorously in wood and built ships,
and could navigate brilliantly. They could be a little cutting on occasions, but so could the
Romans and Greeks. The high point of Celtic art, the Book of Kells, seemed to outshine them
all. This was the insular style that started under my distant ancestor, St. David, and spread to
Ireland. Kenneth Clark mentioned that he had a home near Iona off Mull as a young man, and I
was fascinated by this mysterious island that had produced such brilliance, a manuscript of the
type that the world had never seen before, and scribed among the pounding waves and rocks.
In contrast Pardoe’s Thesis read like the dead, it was produced with the best that
science could provide, but the result of that work needed something much more. It needed the
input that my own mind could provide, new ideas that the world had not seen before. It needed
the imagination of the scribes who produced the Book of Kells. I began to feel that this was my
way in life, to produce something new like an artist within the rigours of science. I had to learn,
master then add to the learning and I could never let anything get in my way. This is what
happened in Europe from late mediaeval times onwards, the great flowering of architecture
known as the perpendicular and Gothic styles, the eternal questioning of someone like Peter
Abelard, and the manuscript work of the great scribes. I began to realize that undergraduate
work had been drudgery, a blotting paper existence. Things were not fully formed in my mind at
that point in time as the degree ceremony approached, but for the first time I felt that I wanted to
get back to Aberystwyth. In 1968 I had not wanted to go there at all. The return was helped a
good deal by the fact that my father had bought a new car and let me have the use of his old one.
This meant that I could drive up to the computer unit from the EDCL to process data - contained
in a pack of cards and a roll of paper tape. So perhaps he was pleased after all.
The degree ceremony was at the Great Hall in Aberystwyth, a place that I had
never been to before. Less than half of the class of 1971 attended and I did not meet any of
them, but it was a way of thanking my parents for their efforts on my behalf. I was dressed up in
the gown and cap when it arrived and sent to Swansea for a portrait in a suit and tie. This
mediaeval intrusion was photographed in the field, as I held a rake and pretended to turn the
already harvested hay. Those blistering days of the fifties had resulted in this meeting of mind
and time. The programme for the degree ceremony indicated that it would be in the Great Hall at
Aberystwyth, a place that I had never seen. The area was populated with parents and students
walking around like owls in broad daylight. When my name was announced I walked up to get