Keith Stewartson, one of the most mathematically profound of this century’s great applied mathematicians active in the mechanics of fluids, was brought up in Billingham, County Durham , where his father was a master baker. Keith was the youngest of three children, two boys and a girl, but his sister died very young and he was not subsequently able to remember her. Later on, an eminent academic career was nearly smothered at its inception when the eleven-plus examiners failed Keith Stewartson. Fortunately, however, they put him on a reserve list, from which he was in the end selected for entry to Stockton Secondary School. After a brilliant performance in the School Certificate Keith was encouraged to enter only a year later, in 1942, for the Higher School Certificate. Immediately after his extremely distinguished examination achievement leading to a State Scholarship and Kitchener Memorial Scholarship to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, the family home received a direct hit from a German bomb. Happily, however, the Stewartsons escaped owing to their air-raid shelter’s robust construction.
The Image of the Family and Family Home in Małgorzata Musierowicz’s Series of Novels, and the Stereotype of the Family in Contemporary Polish Society