I think it must have been Harold Hartley’s sense of history which first marked me down for his attention. In 1950 he had been President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 1951 was the centenary year of the Great Exhibition, inspired and largely managed by Prince Albert. Harold apparently made up his mind that it would be appropriate for me to succeed him as President of the British Association for that anniversary year. Furthermore, he hoped thereby to enlist my interest in all things scientific in the expectation that this connexion would give encouragement to scientists. In this way, at the age of 30, I was ‘Hartled’ into a position for which I had absolutely no qualifications whatever and which is usually reserved for the most distinguished scientists of the day. What is more, I was a serving Naval Officer with the Mediterranean Fleet and therefore not entirely unoccupied. It was Sir David Martin who first publicly referred to the verb ‘to Hartle’ which is declined like this: ‘I think’, ‘You do’, ‘It is successfully accomplished.’ Sir David Martin explained the process this way: ‘If Harold, in his persuasive way, says he thinks something or other should be done and convinces you that you can help, you don’t gripe about it, you put off other things to do what he suggests and do it much better than you thought you were capable of doing it.’
