scholarly journals Richard Evelyn Donohue Bishop, 1 January 1925 - 12 September 1989

1994 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 1-29

Richard Evelyn Donohue Bishop, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Brunei University, Uxbridge, died after a short illness at Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Portsmouth, on Tuesday 12 September 1989. Although he suffered a mild heart attack some 14 months earlier, his death was caused by the combined effects of a hepatic abscess and septicaemia. Ironically, for this very active individual, his heart had fully recovered from the earlier damage. Dick had a fine, clear mind which brought him significant achievements and honours in the scientific world. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1980), a Vice-President and Member of the Council of the Royal Society (1986-1988), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1977), a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, a Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a Chartered Engineer. Other awards bestowed upon him were Commonwealth Fund Fellow (1949-1951), Fellow of University College London (1964), President of the British Acoustical Society (now the Institute of Acoustics, 1966-1968), Hon. Member, Royal Corps of Naval Constructors (1968), CBE (1979), and Hon. Fellow, Portsmouth Polytechnic (now University, 1982). A distinguished engineer with an international reputation both in mechanical engineering and naval architecture, Dick was recognized as a communicator par excellence in matters of science and engineering. In technical matters he was a man of vision, able to discuss the principles of mathematics and engineering. He sought academic excellence and scholarship in the tasks he set himself and had the ability to take a complex dynamics problem and reduce it to a discussion or analysis of the fundamental principles involved. Although trained as a mechanical engineer, when asked about his professional background the usual response was ‘a dynamicist and a sort of engineer’. There is no doubting his love for dynamics. He enjoyed change - even change for change’s sake - and quickly became bored by statics and steady state, both professionally and in administration.

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  

Charles Lovatt Evans, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, University of London, and a former Vice-President of the Royal Society, died on 29 August 1968, at the age of 84, at his home at Winterslow, near Salisbury. He was the foremost pupil and a lifelong associate of E. H. Starling, Jodrell Professor of Physiology at University College London, and eventually occupied the same chair. Lovatt Evans was born in Birmingham and spent the whole of his childhood and early manhood there. His father Charles Evans taught music— piano and violin—and was a man of many interests, of which ancient history was one, and he started to learn Greek when in his sixties. Although a humorist he had somewhat rigid views on religion, life and death, and held the view that the more you do for people the less they do for themselves, so Lovatt Evans was largely left to himself to decide upon his future and surmount the difficulties of finding ways and means. His mother seemed to him to be of rather an aloof nature, spending much of her time in intellectual pursuits often at the expense of her domestic duties. The result was that in his home life he was lonely.


2016 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 213-232
Author(s):  
J. D. Denton ◽  
J. P. Gostelow

John Harold Horlock was one of the outstanding engineers of his generation. His expertise was in the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics of turbines and compressors, as used for jet engines and for power generation. He made major contributions to this field over 60 years. After graduating from Cambridge he worked for Rolls-Royce for two years before returning to Cambridge to study for his PhD, and was subsequently appointed a lecturer in engineering and a Fellow of St John's College. At the age of 30 he was elected to the Harrison Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Liverpool, where he remained for nine years, producing an impressive amount of individual research as well as transforming the department into one of the best in the country. Returning to a chair at Cambridge he reorganized the Mechanical Sciences Tripos and founded the Whittle Laboratory, which became one of the world's leading centres for turbomachinery research. He then became Vice-Chancellor of Salford University, remaining there for seven years before moving on to become Vice-Chancellor of the Open University. After retirement at the of age 62 he continued to be very active: as a consultant, as Treasurer and Vice President of the Royal Society, as a frequent visitor to the Whittle Laboratory and as the author of many papers and several books. Knighted in 1996, Sir John Horlock will be remembered not only for his intellectual abilities but also for his personal skills, which enabled him to interact freely with all levels of society, from cabinet ministers to graduate students.


2015 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Sir Dai Rees

Struther Arnott worked tirelessly as a researcher, teacher, leader and maker and implementer of policy in universities in Britain and the USA, always carrying his colleagues along with him through his infectious energy and breadth of academic enthusiasms and values. His outlook was shaped by the stimulus of a broad Scottish education that launched wide interests inside and outside science, including the history and literature of classical civilizations. His early research, with John Monteath Robertson FRS, was into structure determination by X-ray diffraction methods for single crystals, at a time when the full power of computers was just becoming realized for solution of the phase problem. With tenacity and originality, he then extended these approaches to materials that were to a greater or lesser extent disordered and even more difficult to solve because their diffraction patterns were poorer in information content. He brought many problems to definitive and detailed conclusion in a field that had been notable for solutions that were partial or vague, especially with oriented fibres of DNA and RNA but also various polysaccharides and synthetic polymers. His first approach was to use molecular model building in combination with difference Fourier analysis. This was followed later, and to even greater effect, by a computer refinement method that he developed himself and called linkedatom least-squares refinement. This has now been adopted as the standard approach by most serious centres of fibre diffraction analysis throughout the world. After the 10 years in which he consolidated his initial reputation at the Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King's College, London, in association with Maurice Wilkins FRS, he moved to Purdue University in the USA, first as Professor of Biology then becoming successively Head of the Department of Biological Sciences and Vice-President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. As well as continuing his research, he contributed to the transformation of biological sciences at that university and to the development of the university's general management. He finally returned to his roots in Scotland as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, to draw on his now formidable experience of international scholarship and institutional management, to reshape the patterns of academic life and mission to sit more happily and successfully within an environment that had become beset with conflict and change. He achieved this without disturbance to the harmony and wisdom embodied in the venerable traditions of that ancient Scottish yet cosmopolitan university.


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