2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

130 OBITUARIES I Jesus College Annual Report 2012
CIVIL, Colin Trevor (1959) died on 5 November 2010 aged 71.
Colin Civil was born on 20 March 1939 in Northampton. He was educated at All Saints'
School, Bloxham. He came up to Jesus in 1959 and read Economics and Law, graduating
BA 1962; MA 1968. He married Bridget and they had three sons. The college has no
further information about his life after college.
CLOVER, Morriss Fairfax (1944) died on 6 March 2011 aged 84.
Morriss Clover was born on 25 August 1926 in Saltash, Cornwall. Educated at
St Edward’s School, Oxford, he came up in 1944 to read Mechanical Sciences.
He graduated BA 1947; MA 1951. Following graduation he undertook National Service in
the Royal Navy. After demobilisation he joined Paxman Diesels Limited; remaining with
the firm for 40 years. Whilst working at Paxman he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer
Reserve rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
He married Shirley Margaret Evans in 1957; the couple had two sons and two
daughters.
CROOK, John Hurrell (1954) died on 15 July 2011 aged 80.
John Crook was born on 27 November 1930 in Southampton. Educated at Sherbourne
School and the University of Southampton, he came up to Jesus in 1954 following
National Service in the Far East. He found his experiences during National Service very
enriching as he was introduced to Buddhism and also experienced the interplay of the
British class system. At Cambridge he undertook a thesis on The Comparative Ethology and
Social Organisation of the Weaver Birds. In his thesis he succeeded in tracing certain
correlations between the type of sexual display shown by each species and its habitat
selection, its sociality and its nest construction. He graduated, PhD 1958. In 1962, he
joined the psychology department at Bristol University, there his studies moved to
primates and he led field trips to Africa.
We are grateful to John's colleague, at Bristol University, Professor Innes Cuthill, for
the following:
"[he was] a pivotal figure in the rise of British primatology and socio-ecology ...
John’s work added ‘ecology’ to ‘ethology’, and he is widely regarded as having
introduced cross-species comparisons to the scientific toolkit of animal behaviour. His
pioneering studies of primates as well as birds had a large influence in the growth of the
fields now known as behavioural ecology ... Tackling one of the biggest questions in
psychology, his 1980 book “The Evolution of Human Consciousness” was also
influential in stimulating a new wave of evolutionary approaches to this age-old
problem. By the start of the 1990s, his attention had shifted to human social behaviour,
studying the polyandrous (‘multi-husband’) marriage system of the hill-tribes of Ladakh
and interpreting this as a social adaptation to the harsh farming conditions in the
Himalayas. However, with a long-standing personal interest in Buddhist philosophy, his
research moved away from ecology towards studying the social and spiritual lives of
these communities. Ultimately he also taught Western practitioners of Zen Buddhism
and wrote several books on Buddhist philosophy and its relationship to Western
humanism.”
From the 1980s he developed a meditation course called the Western Zen Retreat
which he ran from a farmhouse in Wales. In 1993, he received transmission from the