Wolfson College Record 2021

The caption with its M.A. HITCHMAN reminds me of Sir Isaiah’s story of his
younger days when he worked for the British embassies in Washington and
Moscow. In 1944 Winston Churchill asked his wife to arrange for Mr Berlin to
come to lunch with them. This she did, and when he was sitting next to Churchill
the PM asked him: ‘Mr Berlin, what do you think is the most important piece
of work you have done for us lately?’ Mr Berlin seemed rather bemused by the
question and after some hesitation replied: ‘I don’t know; it would be A White
Christmas, I guess.’ Mrs Churchill had mixed up the two Berlins, Irving and Isaiah!
Sir Isaiah would surely have smiled if he saw that, not unexpectedly, the two
Michael Hitchmans have likewise been confused in the photo.
Memories
Life is like a book. It’s a series of chapters, some short, some longer, and like any
good book, all fascinating and unputdownable. The Wolfson chapter was a short
couple of years, but it turned out to be one of the most influential periods in my
life. As I have tried to show, one aspect of College life was that it was a fellowship
for all: ‘Open, Inclusive, Welcoming’. I had come from a rather sheltered, rural
background, and 60 Banbury Road was instrumental in broadening my outlook
and horizons. I went on to work in six countries worldwide and to have research
collaborators of over thirty different nationalities.
The second formative aspect of Wolfson I would emphasise is its eclecticism. My
research time in Oxford was consumed with physical chemistry, but Wolfson
showed me that there were other worlds to be explored. So, over the years I
have ventured into other disciplines, such as materials science, semiconductor
devices, chemical engineering, plasma physics, environmental and industrial process
analysis, pharmaceutical analysis and instrumentation, gas sensors, virology.
Recently I gave a presentation on the C P Snow cultural divide by looking at the
parallelism between the thought processes associated with Schrödinger’s quantum
mechanical cat, the cat that is simultaneously alive and dead, and the appreciation
of Shakespearean sonnets. My first book was initiated whilst at Wolfson and six
others followed, and I became the founding editor of an international journal.
I have also developed commercial interests and set up three companies which
achieved modest degrees of success.
Yes, I was privileged to spend a short time at 60 Banbury Road and I owe so much
to Wolfson. Thank you, for opening up new horizons to me, for enriching my
intellectual and personal life, and for all the joy and fun that have resulted over the
last fifty marvellous years. Thank you!
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college record 2021