Physics is Fun Memoires of Richard Wilson Version of September 25th 2009

Mrs Wilsons’ at Hillend Farm
In 1944 Geoffrey, began work in the Clarendon Laboratory with Dr Kurt Mendelsohn, another German refugee physicist, on some radar problem, and then in 1946 continued to work with him on low temperature problems. Geoffrey and I agreed to share lodgings up in Summertown. This lasted till May 1947 when we went out to Hillend Farm as “caretakers” with free lodgings. There was one building: the “Green Dragon” which had a kitchen where we lived; we put out our beds in the adjacent part of the building. Heat was from leaving the gas stove on.
Hillend Farm on Wytham estate was set up by the late owner, Colonel ffennel (always spelled with two small “effs”) as a summer camp for miscellaneous children. It was unused during the war, but I think that it was in summer 1944 that we spent 4 weeks out in Hillend Farm with Oxford University Rover Scouts running a camp for 100 or so scouts from various places who had not been able to get to camp during the war. It was thus that we got to know Hillend. It is 4 miles due west of Oxford on the Botley Road.
Milk, electricity and gas bills were delivered to us. But the milk supplier could not believe that “Wilsons” were two brothers and the bills were sent to “Mrs Wilson”. Joining us very shortly was David Clayson, studying for a D. Phil in chemistry and Peter Lund, lecturing in engineering. Others spent short periods. George Mayo, John Owens, and David Lancaster. In Summer 1947 it was time for a party to be held in the big barn. It was Mrs Wilson’s first birthday party. We sent out written invitations to join us on Mrs Wilson’s first birthday. The invitations confused many people and confuses the historians of Hillend to this day. One of the guests was Eleanor Milne, who had been introduced to us by Margaret Chaundy. Her father was very protective and a little concerned that it would be an “unchaperoned party”. I could not do much about that but personally went round to collect her from their house in north Oxford and bicycled out with her. I hoped that I would be considered serious enough. So it transpired.

It was during this year that I bought my motor cycle from D.K.C.(Keith) MacDonald who had used it in driving from his home in Shrivenham to Oxford for a year before he found a house in north Oxford. I paid 80 pounds for this second hand Royal Enfield 350 cc bike with hydraulic front forks. With it came a crash helmet and a Government surplus flying suit for the cold weather. I was not content with the way it ran, so I followed Geoffrey’s lead in putting in new piston rings one fine summer weekend. Geoffrey left Hillend in 1948 when he took up an appointment firstly with the Admiralty in Portland, and then with the underwater sound laboratory of the Admiralty in Greenock, Scotland. David Clayson got his D.Phil and headed up to the University of Leeds where he taught rats and mice to smoke cigarettes to see whether they got lung cancer. I lost track of David, but 25 years later David invited me (not realizing I was the same Wilson) to talk on Risk Analysis at a meeting of the Toxicology Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

I left Hillend, but not Oxford, shortly thereafter when I was appointed Research Lecturer at Christ Church. I lived, rent free, in Christ Church lodgings at 2 Brewer Street until I left for the USA in June 1950. Peter Lund stayed at Hillend longer. Indeed when he got married in July 1950 he brought his bride (Heather) to live in the building next to the Green Dragon until Christ Church found him a house - “The Old School House” in Binsey.
When I got my position as Research Lecturer I kept the motor cycle in a little shed in the meadows just behind the police station. I used it to go up to London, On one occasion I remember taking another lecturer (Tony Flew) up to North Wales on the pillion. We got there in late afternoon, parked the bike one mile east of Idwal cottage, and promptly scaled Milestone Buttress. We climbed for another couple of days and at the bottom of a cliff on Glyder Fach met Bill Stock, who had been the senior boy at Alderbrook in 1939 - 10 years before. He was half way up the cliff. I had not seen him for 10 years. Tony Flew went on to be a Professor at the University of Warwick. This was my last trip to the North Wales mountain region apart from driving through Bethelgert with Andrée in summer 1998.

As a boy I was always very impatient and sometimes in conversation I was completely tongue tied trying to get a word out. I was told:

“There was a young man of Calcutta,

who had an intolerable stutter.

He said: if you please

will you pass me the cheese

and the bbbbb... bbbutter.”
I have got rid of that stutter by now, not so much as by being less impatient, but by lecturing to undergraduates. Also marrying Andrée went a long way to reducing that trait as it also reduced my hiccups.
I cannot now remember the exact date in 1949, but I had gone up to London and stayed at home for a week’s holiday. As I left mother was unwell. She insisted I go back to work anyway which I did early Monday morning. Our regular doctor was away on holiday so mother saw a locum who diagnosed an intestinal obstruction. She was operated on immediately but never was able to clear the obstruction. On Wednesday there was a message left at the porter’s lodge to call home. I did so about 7 pm. Laurie told me mother was dying in hospital. So I went home at once, getting there about 9.30 pm and was at her bedside with Laurie and my father when she died 2 hours later. I tried to be cheerful but it was hard. I remember her last words. “I am proud of my children, not because of what they have accomplished but because they have been so good to me”. I did not feel that I had been particularly good to her at all. I loved my mother, and was closer to her than to my father - largely probably because of the walks we took from an early age till 1939. When I was a boy I never thought of her as beautiful but when I look at old photographs I realize that she was. No wonder that my father fell for her. After I was in college and in graduate work she confided in me a bit more. I was just beginning to be very aware of young ladies and their attractions. Mother particularly was concerned that I would make too hasty a union when I brought Margaret Lahee home for tea one day. She told me that she was never really in love with my father but admired him immensely. She had hoped that after us children were born sex would cease to be a major interest for my father. I did not know what to say. I was sad. I would not know what to say even now, 60 years later. Even at ages when children can no longer be conceived and physical energy is reduced, sex is still of interest and enjoyment to many people. My mother also commented that when she and my father visited Grandpa and Grandma Wilson in Halifax during the courtship, she was disturbed that they would not leave the young people alone but were always entering the room. That infuriated my father. But it was, and is, understandable. My father was born only a few months after his parents wedding. As one biologist pointed out to me, we know fairly well the duration of the second and subsequent pregnancies. It is a little over 9 months. But the duration of the first pregnancy is highly variable. My grandparents wanted their son and his lady love to be careful. Likewise my mother wanted me to be careful. “If you can’t be good be careful” was the motto at the time. To which my college friends would add: “If you can’t be careful remember the date”.
As noted above, my mother was introduced to Margaret Lahee, my first girl friend. But I never had the opportunity to introduce her to any of my other girl friends, and in particular I would have liked her to meet Andrée I know that she would have loved Andrée and Andrée would have loved her. But that was not to be.
The funeral was at Wimbledon spiritualist church. I went in the car with my father and Uncle Charlie. I remember my father saying a couple of times; “Charlie; I still find it hard to believe it”. I cannot remember the service but do remember our physician, Dr Kelly, a Roman Catholic, coming up and saying to my father afterwards that it was beautiful service. But did I go on to the crematorium in Mitcham where the ashes were disposed next to those of Arthur? If not why not? . I have blanked that all out as I had blanked out my thoughts when Arthur had died 12 ½ years before. I often wonder what that means about life and in particular about me. Andrée has always wondered why I was not concerned about the crematorium in Michigan and where both Arthur’s and mother’s ashes were scattered Should I not have a little plaque there? And later at the site where my father’s and Laurie’s ashes are scattered in Headington? Neither Geoffrey nor I are concerned. We prefer to remember our loved ones by other tokens - such as the charities mother sponsored in Arthur’s memory. But my children wondered why I did not weep and publicly grieve. I was taught to be stoic in such matters and perhaps that was an old, somewhat stupid, English custom. Women may weep but men may not. But as noted elsewhere I do weep when utter frustration comes and I do not know what to do.
Then I went with my father, at his request, by train to Bradford to see his father. It was good to be alone with him and share his grief. My grandfather was already a widower, and this was the last time I saw him alive. I continually regret that when Andrée and I drove north to the lake district in April 1953 that we did not detour through Bradford on the way back so that he could have meet his first grandson, the baby Christopher.
Morris Dancing
The Oxford University Scout Club enjoyed English, and Scottish, country dancing. But about 1945 I decided to join the Oxford City country dance group meeting on High Street. There also I learned Morris dancing. I first saw a Morris dance on May 1st 1944 . There was a long tradition of many hundred years of the Magdalen College Choir singing a pagan hymn from Magdalen College Tower at 6 am on May 1st. The first year at Oxford in 1944, I joined others in listening from a punt under Magdalen bridge and then taking breakfast on the river. The next year, 1945, and all subsequent years, I watched the Morris dancing just after 6 am outside St Hilda’s - a tradition started by my mathematics tutor Theodore Chaundy about 1924. I decided to learn Morris dancing and by 1946 I myself was dancing with them. A photograph was taken of the Morris dancing for the Oxford Mail on May 1st 1946. The photo, of which I still have a copy, shows the six dancers including myself with back to the camera. The others included two stone masons from Headington, Mr Ludlam a Summertown Bank Manager; Fred Rock an Income Tax inspector. I forget the profession of the sixth. In the audience were two sisters, Margaret Leach and Eleanor Leach. Margaret was a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary and was my next girl friend after Margaret Lahee. That lasted perhaps a year and a half after Margaret had moved to the Children’s hospital on Great Ormond Street in London. On 1st August 1947 there was a folk dance festival at Stratford on Avon. I arranged to go, but instead of staying in what were for me expensive accommodation in Stratford, I organized a camp for a dozen impecunious youthful dancers including David Chaundy mentioed earlier, and one sixty year old retired civil servant, Leonard Bardwell, 5 miles south. I borrowed tents from the Scout club. They were dropped off by a trucker I had hired for a few quid. Again we danced in the streets and a photograph of us, including David, appeared in the Birmingham Mail and I have a copy.
In college I had got to know the sons of my tutor, Christopher Chaundy and David Chaundy. While playing our very inexpert tennis with Christopher one afternoon in May 1945, a young girl of 13 or 14 came out to invite us for tea; it was Margaret Chaundy inviting us to the Chaundy house which backed onto the tennis court. That was the first meeting of Margaret and myself. I suppose it was about three years before I realized that she was no longer a young girl but was capable of bewitching unsuspecting, or suspecting, young men. She also was a country dancer and also brought her friend Eleanor Milne to the dances. Eleanor was the eldest daughter of a mathematics Professor EA Milne whose lectures on Vector and Tensor calculus I attended. In the ring of four during “La Russe” or other eightsome dances, Margaret Chaundy, like Margaret Leach before her would delight in throwing her feet back and letting the men swing her around. Alas, Andrée who is somewhat taller cannot do this as easily. In the summers of 1948 and 1949 Margaret and I would bicycle around the countryside together and end up for tea at some interesting little inn. At Christmas 1948 the senior common room had a winter party and dance in Christ Church hall. I cannot remember whether Margaret came as my date or whether she came as Theo and Hilda’s daughter - as several other young ladies came as daughters of dons. But of course we danced together and I remember that we were complimented on our Viennese Waltz by the Steward (called Hookey because of his characteristic stroke when he played cricket for Warwickshire) ) among others. That became a sine-qua-non of any relationship I had with young ladies. They had to waltz well. Margaret had not done well in her examinations and wanted to wait before our relationship ripened at all. But I was impatient and looked elsewhere. Eventually I chose someone, Andrée, who also loves the Viennese waltz. Andrée and I also danced in Christ Church Hall (in December 1954) and in the Shoenbrum Palace at each of a couple of conferences in Vienna; a High Energy physics (Rochester) conference in 1968 and the Young President’s Association, at which I talked about energy, in 1978 and all too few times in Boston. Alas, Americans in general seem to think that a waltz should be slow.
Another celebration was the Corby Pole Fair, at Colby just north of Leicester on 26th May 1947. This fair occurs every 50 years. We were invited to dance there but the audience was very limited, and the small town ran out of beer, so to exhaust our frustration we danced at pubs that we passed on the way home. I particularly remember dancing outside the pub at Brackley.
May Day 1949 was a Sunday so we thought of spending the whole day dancing around the region. A group of us, including Peter Pauling, the second son of the later Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, had learned the North Skelton Sword Dance under the tutelage of Eleanor Leach, sister of my girl friend at the time. We added this to the repertoire of the Morris Men and danced it on May Day 1949 firstly outside the Radcliffe Camera, then later at Eynsham, Witney, Leafield (formerly Fieldtown) and probably Long Handborough before returning to a final big dance of the Cecil Sharp Club in Oxford I last danced with the Oxford Morris men on May Day 1961 when I was in Paris on sabbatical leave and the whole family came to England for two weeks. At that time we danced the Newbiggin sword dance on the steps of the Radcliffe Camera. Andrée took a picture thereof.
Some readers will know that a music historian, Cecil Sharp, in the late nineteenth century had written that the Morris Dance was extinct. But over Christmas 1899 he stayed with friends in Headington Cottage at the top of Headington Hill on the London Road. The day after Christmas, Boxing day, a group of Morris dancers led by William (Bill ) Kimber came to dance outside the cottage. The Headington Quarry Morris Men were not extinct. This changed Cecil Sharp’s life who set off on a study of the traditional English dances. He later found that the Bampton men also were still dancing on the traditional Whit Monday. So on Boxing day in 1949 we had a celebration with a day of dancing around Headington. By this time I was the fool and a photograph shows me dancing the Fool’s Jig outside the Fox inn. In 1999 I went back to Headington again, and this time danced the jig in Headington Quarry itself. On that occasion Annette, Michael and Lisa had joined Andrée and myself spend Christmas in England and came to watch. Lisa was already internationally known as a New England Country Dance caller. Some one in the audience, knowing Lisa and not me, asked why she was there!
Christ Church SCR.
In 1948 I applied for the position of research lecturer at Christ Church. This is a position for young scholars who are awaiting a more permanent employment, and at the time did not need a D Phil. I did not get my D. Phil. for another year.. I was fortunate to be selected. I was asked for an interview one afternoon. A couple of nights before, I was returning from Oxford to Hillend, with a pillion passenger, Peter Lund, on my motor cycle, which I had only had for 3 months. It was dark. I passed the sign marking the end of the speed limit sign on the Eynsham Road and opened up the throttle to 45 mph or so. Then ahead of me I saw in the headlight a dark car crossing the road in front of me. It was too late to stop although I tried to get in front. I was told later that a learner driver in the house nearby had got in his car, started the engine, and put his car in reverse without noticing - all with his lights off. Then he let the clutch in and sped across the road in the dark. I tried to avoid him but failed. I hit - with my head - the door of the car and the door handle made a scar just beside my right eye. I had insisted that Peter not hold on to my waist as a pillion passenger but hold on to my seat. He did so. He squashed the seat from the usual 18 inches to 6 inches! But he was unhurt. I got a concussion and was out for a few minutes. I am told that while I was lying on the ground a motor cycle passed at high speed (50 mph) within a foot from my head. I was taken by ambulance (or maybe a car from a friendly neighbor) to the Radcliffe Infirmary and was released to go to Hillend later.
Two days later in the afternoon I had my interview with a bandage over my eye. I remember John Lowe, Dean of Christ Church, asking me what spare time activities I had other than high speed motor cycling! Fixing the motor cycle cost 50. I claimed this of course from the other guy. I tried to claim for pain and suffering, noting the concussion and the dent next to my eye. But the lawyer I hired was not sympathetic. “If you were a girl it might get you 500. In Germany it might merely be a dueling scar. Then you might have to pay for it!” They gave me 20 for pain and suffering on top of the cost of repairing the motor cycle. I was not to get concussion again for 50 years. I recommend an even longer interval between such untoward events.
The salary for the research lectureship was a little greater than the DSIR research grant of 260 per year. It was 400 plus room and board in a rooming house across the street at 2 Brewer Street. One enormous advantage was that I was a member of the Senior Common Room. The more I look back on the 6 years I was an active member the more I realize how much my thoughts were influenced by the colleagues who I met there, and the guests they brought in. Not so much for the science and physics but for the understanding of public affairs which was a fine extension of what I had learned over the years from my father. I was told by the Common Room chairman, and on occasion repeat if the situation is appropriate:“once a member, always a member.” We ate at the high table and after dinner went downstairs to the Senior Common Room, where we sat around a table, talked and port circulated (clockwise of course).
There were several young brilliant tutors who were unmarried at the time. I met the historians Hugh Trevor Roper, (later Lord Dacre) and Charles Stuart, and Robert (Bobby) Blake (later Lord Blake). Lord Cherwell would drop in after dinner if he was in town, and sometimes bring a Cabinet minister to dinner. Roy Harrod, a married economics tutor was often there. Roy was a great admirer of Lord Cherwell and wrote his biography later. Hugh, aged 29 or so, was already famous for his book “The Last Days of Hitler” that he had researched as a young lieutenant in the army. Hugh later married and became a Professor of History and then moved to Cambridge as head of a college. There he was raised to the peerage as Lord Dacre. Bobby Blake, as a young army officer, was captured at Tobruk, but when Italy left the war in 1943, and the prison guards vanished, he walked south past the German army to reach the Americans coming north. In 1949 or so he stood as a Liberal candidate to representing Huddersfield, in a by election for the House of Commons, but was narrowly defeated in a three way race by the labour party candidate. He then became a conservative and wrote the definitive biographies of Bonar Law and Disraeli. For this he was gratefully raised to the peerage and became Warden of Queen’s College. Being a part of their evening discussions was an unusual privilege for a young man of 22. Bobby Blake told me of his interview a couple of years before. After dinner at high table, he walked down the spiral stone staircase to the senior common room. Just ahead of him was Canon Claude Jenkins, an eccentric but charming bachelor. Claude would take pieces of toast from high table and secrete them in the pocket of his MA gown to eat for breakfast the following morning. On the way down Canon Jenkins stumbled and the toast came out of his gown. This was a challenge for the aspiring Don. Should he stop and help the ageing prelate? He ducked the issue, paused and turned to the man behind him in a brief conversation.
One visitor I remember was Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve. My father had known him in 1941-45 when they sat together at night on fire watch duty in the otherwise empty government offices. After much of the City of London, between the Bank of England and St Paul’s cathedral was burnt down in an incendiary bomb raid in (if my memory is correct) December 1940, it was an offense to leave any building empty overnight. The City of London like many cities, had two million or so day time workers and only 200,000 or so night time residents. No one was exempt from this duty. Senior civil servants and company CEOs shared the task with junior clerks and janitors on shift. My father and Trustam Eve were also together on one or another government committees. In 1943 my father was in charge of post war planning at the Ministry of Transport under his immediate superior Sir John Tollerton who was Principal Assistant Secretary. The Minister at the time was Cyril Hurcomb - a man who had personal shipping interests before he was tapped for the government post by Winston Churchill. I never knew the details but Hurcomb instructed my father to take certain positions favoring the shipping industry. Both Tollerton and my father refused. Tollerton was given no more work and a year or so later died of ill health. My father had a nervous breakdown and retired at age 59. Cyril Hurcomb was first knighted and later raised to the peerage as Lord Hurcomb. Fortunately my father was more resilient than Sir John Tollerton. He created another job for himself as an audio engineering consultant. This job lasted till he was well over 80. Sir Malcolm clearly knew all about my father’s problem. I introduced myself to Sir Malcolm in the SCR. As he left he took me aside and said “I want you to know one thing: Your father was right.” I have always been grateful for this comment, and have always tried to emulate my father’s personal integrity.

The Dean, although head of the college, is only a guest in the SCR. I remember one summer (probably 1950 just before I left for the USA) when only four young research lecturers were dining and the Dean came in. I, at age 24, was the most senior. The Dean, Reverend John Lowe, was born in Calgary, Canada and brought up in Toronto. He regaled us with fascinating stories of his youth, which included ice sailing on Lake Ontario. He believed he had reached a speed of 120 mph in this endeavor. A year later when I went through Calgary I sent him a postcard with a picture of a “Mounty”.

As an MA from Christchurch I am entitled to dine at High Table 3 times a year. After I left Oxford in 1955 I did not often return to Oxford in term time and even then I was visiting my father who had moved from Merton Park to Headington in 1955 or my brother Laurie who moved firstly to Cranfield and then to Buckingham College about 1965. It was not till 2006 did I again dine at High Table. It is not as elegant as I remembered. There were not so many undergraduates dining in Hall. But there are the same historical portraits that had stirred my curiosity 60 years before. There was still the same Latin grace, read by the first scholar the almoner (the college servant in charge of the hall) could corral.

“Nos miseri homines et egeni, pro cibis quos nobis ad corporis subsidium benigne es largitus, tibi Deus onmipotens, pater caelestis, gratias reverenter agimus; simul obsecrantes, ut iis sobries, modeste, atque grate utamur. Insuper petimus, ut cibum angelorum, verum panem caelestem, verbum Dei aeternum, Dominum nostrun Jesum Christum, nobis impertiaris: utque illo mens nostra pascatur, et per carnem et snaguinem ejus foveamur, alamur, et corroboremur. Amen,”

With the English translation for those of us who forget our Latin:

“We unhappy and unworthy men do give thee most reverent thanks, almighty God, our heavenly Father, for the victuals which thou hast bestowed on us for the sustenance of the body, at the same time beseeching thee that we may use them soberly, modestly and gratefully. And above all we beseech thee to impart to us the food of angels, the true bread of heaven, the eternal word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, so that the mind of each of us may feed on him and that through his flesh and blood we may be sustained, nourished and strengthened. Amen.”

I no longer can say all of it from memory. I had to remind myself later by googling. What I quoted is not the exact version as read at Christ Church but a version I found on the web as read at Worcester college. The Christchuch version was slightly different. Indeed it ended “...per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum, Amen”. Unlike when the prayers were said at Colet Court I was unable to keep quiet as I said these words. When I visited C hristChuch in termtime in 2005 there was no formal sitting around the senior common room table and no formal circulation of the port in the SCR. Life moves on and changes occur.
As a member of the SCR I was entitled to attend the Christ Church “Gaudy”, the old members dinner held at the end of the trinity term on the day after the degree ceremony and “Encaenia”. The novelist Dorothy Sayers immortalized the Christ Church Gaudy in her novel “Gaudy Night”. At that time only old members with the MA degree, who compresied about 1/3 of those with the BA, were invited. They came in rotation every 3 years. Also at that time Christ Church had established the habit of inviting those who had received honorary degrees from the University in the morning to come and address us. Since then other colleges objected to this claim of “superiority” and by 2008 the honorees do not come, and now that all old members with BA degrees are invited the rotation is every 7 years or so. But again, I was lucky enough to listen to some of the fine after dinner speeches. Indeed giving a good after dinner speech is a skill Americans do not have seem to have acquired.

I was recently reminded of one which was by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I believe it was in 1947. He described his recent visit to America. He started with a joke, as so many good speeches do. He was being driven to his hotel in New York in a taxi, and the taxi driver made some illegal manoeuver. As the policeman put his head in the window to address the driver he saw the Archbishop’s clerical collar in the back seat. “I am sorry, father” was his comment. “But you had better be careful around the next corner, because the man there is a perishing protestant”. The Archbishop went on the say that America was a less class ridden society that England or other European countries with less upper class and lower class and more middle class than England. This we all applauded. We believed and I still believe, it was true. But as I contemplate the situation in 2008 the reverse seems now to be the case. The definition of classes is somewhat different with the financiers of Wall Street replacing the landed gentry of the early 19th century. In the subprime mortgage crisis, financiers who made mistakes in lending beyond the means of the company, lose their jobs with a $30 million handshake. The poor people who borrowed beyond their means whether from predatory lending or not, lose their homes But America has shown itself capable of change. I hope the trend toward inequality based on the Almighty Dollar will reverse itself.

Another memorable Gaudy speech was by Harry Truman. It must have been after he left office - probably in 1953. He discussed the cold war between USSR and USA and UK that had begun. ‘The communist regime in the USSR is not the progressive country in the world” he said. “The progressive countries are the USA with the New Deal and the UK with its’ National Health Service”. We all applauded and I suspect that there were very few in the audience who disagreed. But I was continually reminded of this as since 1990 the USA dismantled many of the New Deal guidance and restrictions on improper financial practices and the USA still has not succeeded in getting a national health service.