II
A
Personal Account
Prehistory
To put the building of the laboratory into
its context we must go back a little. The Honours School of Natural Science was
established in l850 - just two years later than the Natural Sciences Tripos at
Cambridge. The University Museum, started in l855, originated in the
recommendations of the Commissioners of l850-54. They felt that provision for
the sciences was a task for the University rather than for the individual
Colleges. The Museum was not only to house the University's scattered
scientific collections but also to provide lecture rooms and laboratories for
the different sciences. The chemistry laboratory, placed just to the south of
the main building, was a copy of the Abbot's kitchen at Glastonbury - John
Ruskin had a great influence on the design of the Museum and he had a fixed
idea that the Gothic style was best for all purposes. An additional large
building, also in Victorian Gothic, and like the Kitchen still in use, was
added in l876 and both inorganic and organic chemistry went on there until the
first world war. Physical chemistry continued to be done in the Balliol and
Trinity Laboratories as it had been since the l850's (the first College
laboratory had been built by Balliol in 1855) and, after l907, in the Jesus
laboratories up above Ship Street.
Shortly after W.H. Perkin was appointed
Waynflete Professor in 1912 a new laboratory was started in South Parks Road
with the help of benefactions from Mr. Dyson Perrins of the Worcestershire
sauce family. After delay caused by the outbreak of war it was finished in 1916
and organic chemistry moved over from the original Museum laboratory which then
became known as `The Old Chemistry Department'. Although the words `School of
Chemistry' are carved over its front door the Dyson Perrins laboratory has
always been exclusively for organic, and physical organic, chemistry.
Teaching and research in physical chemistry
continued in the Balliol and Trinity Laboratory, which consisted mostly of
cellars round Balliol quad and disused bathrooms and lavatories behind Trinity.
By the 1930's the increasing numbers reading chemistry were putting severe
strains on these laboratories. In 1935 the St. John's contingent were, in fact,
farmed out to the Jesus Laboratory for a term - probably because their tutor,
Tommy Thompson, had forgotten to put their names on the Balliol-Trinity list.
This was a very active period for physical chemistry with important
developments and increasing numbers wanting to do research. New accommodation
was desperately needed.
The immediate stumbling block was Professor
Soddy who had been Dr.Lee's Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry since
1919. He had done good work on the radioactive disintegration series in the
first decade of the century (having worked briefly in Canada with Rutherford).
He had initiated the concept of isotopes, had become an F.R.S. at the age of
33, and had been awarded the Nobel prize in l921. But by the 1930's he had lost
almost all interest in chemistry. He did no research and his lectures were
extremely boring and elementary. Someone once remarked that `The Old Chemistry
Department' was an odd name for a laboratory. Sidgwick (who was an ad
hominem Professor and chemistry Fellow of Lincoln, and had one of the
sharpest tongues in Oxford) replied that the name was exactly right: `That is
what Soddy lectures on - Old Chemistry'. Soddy also became rather eccentric. He
became interested in economics, in unusual mechanical problems and in minor
mathematical puzzles - such as how many circles could be drawn, each one of
which touched all the others tangentially; he even sent a contribution to Nature
on this subject in verse.
It was clear that progress towards a new
laboratory for physical chemistry would not be made while Soddy occupied the
professorship. Although he appeared to be very elderly and grey he was, in
fact, then not yet 60. Somehow, and history does not reveal how it was done, he
was persuaded to retire in 1937. Then followed some fast footwork. The Statute
for Dr. Lee's Professorship required him to give instruction in inorganic and
physical chemistry. In the 1930's this was clearly ridiculous. The Statute was
changed to allow the Professor to give instruction in inorganic or
physical chemistry while being responsible for the organisation of teaching and
research in both inorganic and physical chemistry. C.N. Hinshelwood was then
elected to the chair. Hinsh, as he was universally known, was, of course, a key
figure in Oxford chemistry and on a wider stage, from the 1920's till his death
in l967. He had written two books before he was 30 - Thermodynamics for
Students of Chemistry and The Kinetics of Chemical Change in Gaseous
Systems (a Clarendon Press book which went through several editions). He
was elected to the Royal Society at the age of 32; by that time he had done
most of the work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. It is
interesting that at that time routine chemistry course lectures were being
given by three people who were then, or later, Nobel prizewinners (Soddy,
Hinshelwood and Robinson) and by no less that eight who were then, or later,
Fellows of the Royal Society.
The building
Once Hinsh was in post things moved quickly.
In l934 a site had been allocated for a building for Forestry in South Parks
Road between the Dyson Perrins and the Pathology Laboratory. There was space
between the Dyson Perrins and the proposed Forestry building (which was not, in
fact built until 1950) for a long narrow building for Physical Chemistry
running northwards towards the Parks. The space available in this direction was
limited by an agreement that nothing should be built inside a 100 foot circle
round the University Observatory that might prevent sunlight reaching the very
high resolution solar spectrographs there which were doing important work. The
next thing was money. We have not been able to find out exactly who approached
Lord Nuffield but he executed a Covenant and Trust on 16 November l937 giving
the University the sum of £100,000 for Physical Chemistry. So, within about six
months the whole project had been set in motion.
Lanchester and Lodge, who were already
engaged on the new Clarendon Laboratory, were appointed as architects. Much of
the detailed design was due to Lanchester who was killed in the R.A.F. during
the war. Building started at the end of 1938. The University accepted the
lowest tender from a rather small firm called Godson. They excavated and laid
the foundations and had built the walls of the semi-basement in the central and
north end of the building up to a height of about 5 feet when they ran into
cash flow problems and went into liquidation. There were delays while a new
contract was negotiated with Benfield and Loxley. The quality of the work done
by Godson's was high. When, later, holes had to be knocked in the walls in the
semi-basement the mortar between the bricks turned out to be iron hard up to
the level at which they ceased work; above that level Benfield and Loxley's
mortar is much softer. The beginning of the war in September 1939 led to fears
that the 36 inch steel I-beams needed to span the 50 foot wide undergraduate
teaching laboratory, which could only be obtained from one rolling mill in
Cleveland, might not be available. Later, in the autumn of l940, there were
threats that if the bombing of London produced very large numbers of casualties
the building might have to be completed as a hospital. We were lucky and work
went ahead. It is interesting that both the Dyson Perrins and Physical
Chemistry laboratories were built in wartime.
Firewatching
The main structure of the building was
complete by the end of l940 although the work of installing services and
decoration had a long way to go. Orders came on January 1 1941 for the building
to have firewatchers. From then until September 1944 when firewatching stopped
two of us slept there every night. The record book still exists and contains
details of who the firewatchers were each night, if there was an air raid alert
and any other nocturnal happenings. Only on one or two occasions over the whole
period did a firewatcher fail to turn up. John Danby had the job of arranging
the rota and of collecting and distributing the 3 shillings per night
subsistence allowances. The book shows that Richard Barrow, the other original
inhabitant who is still around, spent 132 nights in the building; while Danby
slept there on 197 nights - the price of being the chap who had to arrange the
rota. From January l941 to September l944 the sirens sounded on 130 occasions.
No bombs ever fell on Oxford but they were sometimes to be heard not far away
and quite often there were flares and pyrotechnics in the sky. The main concern
of firewatchers was fending off air raid wardens who came to complain of
inadequate blackout.
Initially, firewatching was exceedingly
uncomfortable but after a while we acquired reasonable beds and blankets. Much
of the building had no blackout curtains; one became adept at finding ones way
around in the dark. The blackout had its advantages; if one went up on the roof
to check the buckets of sand and the stirrup pumps on clear winter moonless
nights the sky was bright with stars with the great sweep of the Milky Way
arching overhead. Nowadays with all the scattered light from thousands of
street lamps only a few of the brightest stars can be seen unless one goes out
into the remote country.
Completion
By the summer of 1941 the laboratory was
more or less complete. The basic cost of the building and furniture was about
£63,000 (about £1.5 M, at 1990 prices). Incidentally, the annual stipend of a
Schedule A professor, such as Dr. Lee's professor, was £1600 (about £30,000 at
1990) at the end of the war. The workshop machine tools and a good deal of new
apparatus and equipment still left over £20,000 out of Nuffield's original
benefaction and this was an important contribution towards the cost of the
South East extension begun in the late 1950's.
The Laboratory was the subject of the 1942
Oxford Almanac. The photograph was taken by the President of Trinity, J.R.H.
Weaver, a distinguished photographer who had published a remarkable collection
of photographs of Spanish church interiors. He used a 10 inch by 8 inch glass
plate in a vintage camera of polished mahogany and brass.
The contributions of Balliol and Trinity to
Physical Chemistry at Oxford is commemorated by the arms of the two Colleges
carved on the front of the building. Nuffield's coat of arms, complete with
supporters and crest, is over the front door and the University Arms over the
south door.
Occupation
During the summer of 1941 the move from the
Balliol-Trinity laboratory was completed. Physical chemistry at that time
involved very few instruments as we know them today. Most work, both on the
undergraduate practical course and for research, was done with the classical
chemical glassware of flasks, beakers, burettes and pipettes with simple
electrical components, rheostats, ammeters, resistance boxes and galvanometers.
Almost all of it was carried easily by hand. In the light of experience it
would have been better if the north end of the laboratory on all three floors
had been on the same levels as the rest of the building, instead of being up
three steps. This has caused major problems in the installation and moving of
large and heavy pieces of equipment but it would have required a powerful
crystal ball in l938 to have foreseen that within a few years physical
chemistry would involve magnets and others items weighing several tons apiece.
Also the price of maintaining a constant level would have been to lower the
semi-basement, which now enjoys a good deal of direct daylight, to being a full
basement with little natural light.
Virtually all the electrical equipment
brought over from the old laboratories was for 100 volts DC and, in fact,
small-slow speed alternating current motors such as are needed for working the
stirrers in thermostats and so on were not readily available in the 1930's. So
the building was wired for 100 volts DC as well as single phase AC and a 500
amp mercury arc rectifier was installed in the basement. It soon became clear
that this vastly overestimated the demand for DC and was expensive to run even
on no load. Before very long it was dispensed with. There was another
electrical aberration, John Wolfenden, the chemistry Fellow of Exeter, had been
making very precise measurements of the heat evolved in chemical reactions in
the cellar under staircase 22 in Balliol. His calorimeter had to be stirred at
a very constant speed so that the heat input by the stirrer would not vary. He
acquired an American 110 volt 3-phase induction motor while on a trip to the
U.S. He seems to have persuaded everybody that this would become a standard
requirement and many research rooms were provided with an outlet for 110 volt
3-phase AC. As Wolfenden shortly returned to Washington and remained in America
after the war as Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, this facility was
never used.
Another aberration with the services was the
fault of the builders. We soon noticed that the main cold water supply pipe for
the whole of the north end of the building was out in the open air, running
round the inside of the parapet wall with branches going down through the roof
to the rooms below. It seemed clear that it had been forgotten until the
building was almost finished and this was then the only place it could be put.
Although it had some rather basic lagging secured with chicken wire we felt
sure it would freeze. After evasive replies from the builders Hinsh finally
wrote to the consulting engineer - Mr. Stinton Jones. He replied: `I can
positively guarantee that you will have no trouble with freezing'. During the
winter of l941/2 the pipe froze and burst in 13 different places. We eventually
fitted an electrical heating cable inside the insulation which worked
reasonably well until l964 when the extra floors were added to the building and
the pipes accommodated inside.
The party which moved into the new building
in 1941 was a very small one. The Professor and Ted Bowen from the old college
laboratory, Leslie Sutton who came over from the Dyson Perrins with his
electron diffraction equipment and Tommy Thompson from the Inorganic laboratory
with the beginnings of infra-red spectroscopy. Wolfenden was in America, Ronnie
Bell at Chatham House (The Royal Institute for International Affairs) and James
Lambert was in the army as a chemical officer.
On the technical staff side were James Warrell
who had been in the old laboratory for almost 50 years, Harry Hall his No. 2,
and Ken Bricknell the lab boy. In the 1930's there was a notice in the Harold
Hartley/Ronnie Bell laboratory in the basement of staircase 16 in Balliol which
read: `Action in the Event of a Flood. 1. Call Harry. 2. Go out to Coffee.'
Harry Hall was equally indispensable after the move to South Parks Road. The
experiments on the undergraduate practical course which were brought over from
the old laboratory required over one hundred different standard solutions:
Harry and James Warrell made and standardised them all. Both in the teaching
laboratory and in the research rooms there was a large collection of thermostat
tanks operated by home-made electrics. Harry had green fingers for keeping
them, and many other pieces of apparatus in going order. Fred March, who had
been Soddy's workshop mechanic, came over from the Old Chemistry Department to
set up the new workshop. His choice of machine tools from the restricted range
available in war time was well made - at least one lathe is still in use after
50 years. He was a resourceful man. Early in the war we needed to make an
electrolytic cell to produce fluorine and for this we needed some stout copper
tube about 2 inches in diameter. Because of the war this turned out to be
unavailable from commercial sources. March told Danby to come with him on a
bicycle and he led him under the bridge at the station and then north on the
far side of the tracks. Eventually they went through a gap in a hedge and
arrived at the G.W.R. engine sheds where overhauls and repairs for the steam
engines were done. To Danby's surprise everyone in the shed touched their caps
and said `Good morning Mr. March'. It turned out that he was the secretary of
the local AEU branch. In no time two men appeared carrying a great length of
exactly the copper tubing that was needed - it was used for boiler tubes. A
suitable piece was cut off and tied with string to the frame of March's bicycle
and they left as they had come, through the hole in the hedge. Alas the steam
engines and their engine sheds like the G.W.R. itself are no more, but at least
Danby no longer fears arrest for stealing railway property.
There were six D.Phil students: Richard
Barrow with Bowen, Douglas Everett with Ronnie Bell, and four with Hinsh, two
Canadian Rhodes Scholars, Gordon Davoud and Roddy Smith, Reggie Lodge and John
Danby. Most of us, together with some people in the Inorganic laboratory, had
been working since September 1939 as an extra-mural research team concerned
with defence against chemical warfare - associated with the Ministry of Supply
establishment at Porton.
War work
Jack Linnett from the Inorganic laboratory
paid a visit to Porton just after the outbreak of the war. He came back with a
shocked expression and the remark: `My God, they have done nothing since 1918'.
He did not exaggerate. The service respirator of 1939 had a large heavy
canister of rather inferior charcoal carried in a haversack which was hung round
the neck and was connected to the face-piece by a large corrugated rubber hose
- a very clumsy device. Most, if not all, other armies had much less cumbersome
designs with small charcoal canisters attached to the face-piece. The head of
the chemistry section at Porton one day said to Hinsh `To try to improve the
British respirator is like gilding the lily'. What annoyed Hinsh most was that
he had got the quotation wrong. What the Bard wrote, was, of course `To gild
refined gold and paint the lily'.
A lot of work was done, many reports written
and many frustrating meetings attended at Porton or in London . We established
a good understanding of the physical chemistry of the action of respirators and
of how to make better charcoal. Because of this, or in spite of it, the army on
D-day had much better and less awkward respirators. Mercifully they were never
called on to use them.
Work was also done on coloured flares, time
fuses and smoke generators but a major development was Tommy Thompson's work on
infrared spectroscopy. Infrared detectors produce tiny electrical potentials
and before the development of electronics small potentials had to be detected
by sensitive galvanometers which were very slow in response and sensitive to
vibration. The basement of the laboratory with this in mind had been provided
with so-called vibration-proof pillars, which were sections of the floor
separated from the structure of the building and resting on their own
foundations running down into the gravel. The whole floor of the workshop is an
isolated concrete raft resting on a deep bed of sand and separated from the
basement floor, in the hope of limiting vibrations caused by the machine tools.
During the war, using largely home made apparatus and helped by improvements in
infrared detectors, Thompson's team were able to measure the infrared spectra
of liquids and solids. Libraries of the spectra of hydrocarbons and the simpler
organic chemicals were built up. These made it possible to identify the
individual components of fuels from crashed enemy aircraft and captured tanks.
The Germans were relying on synthetic fuels of various kinds to an increasing
extent as the war went on and the analyses provided valuable intelligence about
their sources. Tommy's suggestion at one point that he told Bomber Command each
night which refinery to bomb was greeted with mirth but there is no doubt that
the work of his research group contributed to the fact that the Luftwaffe was
virtually grounded towards the end of the war by lack of fuel. This work, of
course, developed into Thompson's very distinguished contributions to all
branches of infrared spectroscopy which continued up to his retirement.
He had conspicuously successful pupils.
These included three Vice-Chancellors, the professors of physical chemistry at
both Oxford and Cambridge, at least 20 others who were either professors or
readers and many who distinguished themselves in industry - such as Lord
Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds.
Miss Binnie
In 1941 Miss Marjorie Binnie became
professor's secretary, a position she occupied till the mid l960's. She was a
powerful and very effective person - for many years Commissioner for the Girl
Guides in Oxfordshire -with very firm opinions about the way everything should
be done. She dealt with all Hinshelwood's correspondence, which must have been
heavy, particularly in the years in which he was, in succession, President of
the Chemical Society, Foreign Secretary and then President of the Royal
Society. She did all the typing of wartime reports and of papers, typed all the
orders for equipment, paid all the bills and kept all the accounts. For over 20
years the Department had its own bank account and the professor or John Danby
signed all the cheques. Every week Miss Binnie would go down to the Bank in the
High Street, collect the money for the technical staff wages, make up the pay
packets and stick the necessary stamps on the cards, which is how National
Insurance payments were made. At the end of each University financial year in
July it was a point of honour for her to have the laboratory accounts finalised
and ready for the visit of the auditor first of all University Departments. As
remarked above, she had strong views about most things. Dr. Berman relates that
when his wife was helping Miss Binnie in a part-time capacity after the war she
was given detailed instructions exactly how stamps should be stuck on letters.
She also kept an eagle eye on other things in the laboratory; one January she
was found in her office tearing some cardboard into small pieces. She said: `A
calendar came today from an engineering firm, addressed to the workshop - I had
to destroy it!'. Miss Binnie is a kind and indefatigable lady and everyone who
worked in the laboratory over nearly a quarter of a century has countless reasons
for being grateful to her.
From Michaelmas l941 undergraduate lectures
and practical work were transferred to the new laboratory. Many of those doing
Part II joined the groups doing war-work. Teaching was also provided for RAF
and Royal Engineer cadets in physics and mathematics. Some research not
connected with the war work was kept going, mostly in evenings and weekends and
a few papers appeared each year. The dramatic developments in electronics
during the war in radar and electronic warfare soon began to influence physical
chemistry and as we learned about it boxes of electronics were built to control
temperatures, amplify small signals, measure pressures and so on. These were
frequently made from components from surplus military equipment, and, at that
date, they were all operated by valves.
|
Lord Nuffield (courtesy
of Mail Newspapers plc) |
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The Opening
The laboratory was formally opened by Lord
Nuffield in the summer of l942. John Danby was stationed at the front door to
direct the great man inside: he was expecting a substantial limousine and
chauffeur. Instead a small Wolseley drove up, beautifully maintained but dating
from the early l930's and a small rather shy man got out and asked `Is it all
right for me to park it here?' He was received in the Library by Hinsh and by
Ross of Oriel who was Vice-Chancellor, and we drank his health in champagne - he
declined a glass, he said on his doctor's orders. He was then taken round the
laboratory showing great interest in the workshops. He was interested in a new
analytical balance on Danby's bench and asked where it was made. He seemed to
be glad to hear it was made in London. He asked how accurately it could weigh
and Danby said to one tenthousandth of a gram. Nuffield defeated him by asking
what that was in ounces but Hinsh immediately stepped in and said it was about
a two hundred and fifty thousandth of an ounce.
Ted Bowen had laid on a demonstration of
fluorescence and phosphorescence with his usual enthusiasm. Explaining that one
could distinguish real teeth from dentures because real ones fluoresced he
tried to force the great man under an ultraviolet lamp. Nuffield explained that
it was no use trying it on him as he had none of his own teeth left. Bowen at
once grabbed the Vice Chancellor, forced his mouth open and pointed out the
false teeth with glee.
As he left Nuffield said he was delighted
with the laboratory and that it was just the sort of thing he wanted to give
the University. `Very different from my experience with Nuffield College -
cheated me he did, that man'. Lindsay was a pro Vice-Chancellor at the time but
was not present. Lord Nuffield expressed a similar sentiment on other
occasions.
Administration
With the end of the war the laboratory began
to get very busy and the amount of general administration increased. At that
time the work of the Bursar in many Colleges was done by one of the Tutorial
Fellows in his spare moments with the help of a Bursary clerk. A science
professor in a large and active laboratory was expected to perform his academic
duties, carry out research and administer his Department with only the help of
a secretary. This became impossible even with a secretary with Miss Binnie's
talents. In l945 Hinsh asked Danby if he would become Assistant to Dr. Lee's
Professor - a new kind of post, equivalent to a University lecturer, in which
he was required to demonstrate to undergraduate classes, engage in research and
assist Dr. Lee's professor in the administration of the laboratory in term and
vacation, but was not required to lecture. Over the years he assisted four
Professors in this way later combining the job with a Tutorial Fellowship at
Worcester. From the mid l960's a full-time administrator was needed as well to
cope with the increasing bureaucracy.
There are two ways in which money for
apparatus and equipment can be allocated in a laboratory in which there is a
substantial number of independent and autonomous research groups. One is to
divide it up fairly between the various research groups each year and let them
buy what they need. There is then a natural temptation for a group to buy
things not immediately required, rather than be left with a cash balance at the
end of the year. So it happens that one group is held up for the lack of a
vacuum pump or simple instrument when another group has just such an item
tucked away unused in a cupboard. From the beginning Hinsh instituted a system
in which part of the money available for equipment was used to establish and
maintain a central stock of generally used things which were handed out to
whoever required them on the understanding that they went back into stock when
no longer in use. Hinsh used to make a grand tour once a year, visiting every
research room to ensure that useful but unused items were not hidden away. This
system worked well and has been continued but the increasing specialisation of
the equipment used by different research groups has made it rather less
necessary. Incidentally these annual tours were the only occasions on which
Hinsh actually went into the research rooms of his colleagues. He would greatly
have resented the intrusion of others in his research activities and in return
he kept well away from theirs. On the other hand the door of his room was
literally always wide open when he was in the laboratory; he was always ready
to discuss problems with his colleagues and his understanding and wisdom were valued.
Similarly, although nominally responsible for the Inorganic Laboratory he
virtually never visited it. He left the running of that laboratory entirely to
its senior member - initially Bertram Lambert and later Freddie Brewer. The
University accounts show that a generous fraction - frequently the larger part
- of the General Board grant to the joint Department went to Inorganic
Chemistry, even though some members of that laboratory always believed
otherwise.
Research work
After the war Hinsh's own research in the
fields of gas phase chemical kinetics and the physical chemistry of bacterial
growth continued and developed. A major problem in gas phase kinetics was that
the analysis of the products of the reactions, containing many different
substances in minute amounts, presented insuperable problems for the classical
`chemical' methods of gas analysis. Work in America had suggested that mass
spectrometry might offer a much better method and it was learned that the firm
of Metropolitan-Vickers, encouraged by Shell, I.C.I. and the nascent Atomic
Energy Authority, were designing such an instrument. Hinsh and Danby put in an
application to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research for one.
They were allocated the first production instrument which was eventually
delivered towards the end of l949. It was a great big beast which filled a
small room with three units about six feet high and five feet wide. It
contained about 60 radio valves. Nothing of this degree of electronic
complexity had come our way before, and the experience of mastering it and
acquiring the skills required to get results with it was traumatic. The people
who built it had spent the war making boxes of electronics to go in aeroplanes
where the saving of every little bit of weight was important and many parts of
the electronics were overrated, became overheated, and frequently burnt out. It
took a long time, too, to realise that the secret of a long life for a radio
valve was never to turn it off. In the interests of economy we initially turned
as much as possible off at night, and suffered in consequence. It had also been
an error to be too eager and to acquire the first one which, of course, had
teething troubles - when we ran into problems Metro-Vickers tended to leave us
to solve them while profiting from our experience to modify the subsequent
instruments on the production line. In the end we tamed it and were able to
achieve effective analyses on a routine basis.
Mass spectrometry, although the only
possible one at the time, is, in fact, not at all a good way to analyze complex
mixtures. By the end of the l950's, the simple and powerful technique of gas
chromatography was devised; it has revolutionised many areas of analysis. As is
well known, the sample in the form of vapour is introduced into a long narrow
tube packed with an absorbent and slowly swept through it by a stream of inert
gas. Different components travel at different speeds and so emerge separately
from the end of the column where they can be detected and measured. Of course we
ought to have invented this method. We had spent the war studying the
adsorption, redistribution and desorption of gases from an air stream in
columns of charcoal. We knew in detail how different substances travelled
through at different speeds but our attention was on other objectives; we had
used short columns of absorbent and fast flow rates and the last thing we
wanted was for the gas to emerge from the end of the column. So we were too
slow, too preoccupied or just not clever enough; Martin and Synge in London
richly deserved their Nobel Prize for inventing gas chromatography. We, of
course made great use of it in studying reaction kinetics - releasing the mass
spectrometer and later developments of it to do what it is really good at, the
study of the energetics and mechanisms of reactions of small positively charged
ions.
Doug Cook
About this time the laboratory needed more
manpower in the workshop. We particularly wanted someone with experience of
fine instrument making. Rather than advertising a post in the usual way Fred
March suggested that he might make enquiries through the Engineering Union. As
a result Doug Cook, who had worked through the war at the instrument making
firm of Pye in Cambridge, joined our workshop. He was a wonderfully skilled
instrument maker and was to become an enormous asset. Not only was he able to
develop and make pieces of equipment on the scale of a watch, but he was
equally at home devising ways of getting a permanent magnet weighing more than
two tons into place through a doorway only a fraction of an inch wider than the
magnet. We later found that he also had a remarkable grasp of electronics and
eventually he took charge of both the mechanical and electronics workshops.
Over a period of about 30 years he made, directly or indirectly, important
contributions to the work of almost all sections of the laboratory. This was
recognised on his retirement by the University giving him the degree of
Honorary M.A.
Apparatus
On the subject of obtaining equipment or the
components from which it could be built we have always tended to try to go to
the original manufacturers. We found at one point we had dealt with almost 500
different firms. Of course there were a dozen or so retailers who issued vast
illustrated catalogues of apparatus but these often indicated things they could
obtain rather than items they carried as stock. One could run into amusing
problems. In the 1950's we urgently wanted a little item called a
haemocytometer for use in Hinsh's work on bacterial growth. This is a
microscope slide on which is engraved a minute chequerboard of squares - it was
used in medical labs to count blood cells under a microscope. In our case it
was used for counting bacteria. It was listed in the catalogues and we rang up
eight or ten firms: they all said they didn't have one in stock but would try
to get one and would let us know. It happened a day or two later that we met a
friend in the Pathology lab in South Parks Road and mentioned our problem. He
said at once: `They are all made by one little man in an attic in Clerkenwell
called Hawksley'. We rang him up. He said yes, he could supply one, normally in
a few days, but there was a problem - there had been a sudden and unexpected
large demand. We sorted that one out and received it by the end of the week.
Appointments
A word is perhaps necessary on the subject
of academic appointments in Physical Chemistry. Until Hinsh's retirement in
l964 these were made somewhat on the basis of Buggins's turn next, with the
professor having decisive influence. After completing a D.Phil there were a few
post-doctoral posts available in the laboratory - for example I.C.I. and
Pressed Steel Fellowships and Departmental Demonstratorships. These were open
to both internal and external candidates. A College looking for a physical
chemistry tutor could select, with professorial guidance, from this small pool
of available talent. Such a person would then be in line for a University
lectureship when one became available; in the meantime he usually held a
Departmental Demonstratorship. For example Brian Smith came from Liverpool as
an I.C.I. Fellow in l960. In l962 he was elected a Fellow of St. Catherine's,
and became a Departmental Demonstrator, becoming a University Lecturer in l964.
Similarly Robert Gasser, who had worked on magnetic resonance with Rex Richards
progressed through a Departmental Demonstratorship to a Fellowship at Corpus
and a University Lectureship. After the mid l960's Lectureships to be held
jointly with a College Fellowship have been publicly advertised and
appointments made after strongly competitive interviews. There is no evidence
that those appointed by this mechanism have turned out to be any more
distinguished than those appointed via the less defensible processes of long
ago.
The First Extension
By the 1950's the laboratory was getting
crowded. The numbers reading chemistry reached 100 per year and the laboratory
had nearly 70 Part II and D.Phil researchers. Well over 50 papers per year were
being published. A small extension to the South East standing on stilts over
the joint Forestry/Physical Chemistry bicycle shed was built in the late
l950's, partly paid for by the balance remaining from the original Nuffield
benefaction. It provided six research rooms, and six offices. By this time the
flat roof of the main laboratory was leaking badly and had to be entirely
replaced - after only 15 years. A sad commentary on current building practice
as Hinsh wrote in the Annual Report, still at that date published in the University
Gazette under the heading of the Report of the Delegates of the
University Museum.
The second extensions
Through the l950's and l960's the number
reading chemistry continued to increase and appeared to be heading for 200 per
year (although they levelled off just short of this number). Work began on
adding two floors of research rooms at the north end and a second undergraduate
teaching laboratory at the south end. A large Common Room was added over the
lecture room. It could not be called a common room at the planning stage as the
U.G.C. rules did not allow this, but by calling it a Seminar Room it got by.
Luckily we were allowed to go back to Lanchester and Lodge for this extension.
Although we obtained an increase in space of over 40 per cent it is not
immediately obvious that the building has been extended - an advantage of
conventional brick construction and of going back to the original architects
for the work. The common room is a particularly valuable feature as it enables
the 100 or so research workers and members of the academic staff to meet for
coffee in the morning and for tea in the afternoon and discuss things in
comfort. Previously coffee was brewed in individual laboratories in grubby mugs
and there were few opportunities for discussions with people from other groups.
The Nuffield Foundation made a very generous
grant towards the cost of the extensions, being made aware that the inscription
in the entrance hall stated that the laboratory was the gift of Viscount
Nuffield (which would no longer be true if almost half of it had been financed
otherwise), but they did accuse Hinsh of twisting their arm by pointing it out.
Practical examinations
Until the mid 1960's Finals included
practical examinations in the three main branches of the subject lasting six
hours each. With almost 150 candidates it became increasingly difficult to do
this in physical chemistry. Clearly it was impossible to provide this number of
identical elaborate instruments for them to do the sort of experiments that now
formed a large part of the undergraduate practical course. The practical had to
involve a problem which could be done with the conventional chemical glassware
of flasks, beakers, and so on. This virtually limited the range of
possibilities to studies of rates of reaction in solution or of simple liquid
equilibria. Even then the provision of 25 or more items of apparatus and
glassware for each of 150 people was a major logistical exercise. There were
also hidden dangers for unwary examiners. There was an occasion in which they
had worked out six months in advance an elegant experiment involving
measurements of reaction rates. Unfortunately they had tried it out in the
Christmas vacation of a cold winter. On the day of the practical in June there
was a heat wave. Instead of taking place at a dignified rate over 10 minutes or
so which could accurately be measured, at the much higher temperature the
reactions were all over in a few seconds - almost before they could start their
stop watches. There was chaos! It was in the days before we had ice-making
refrigerators in the laboratory and the lab staff went rushing round all the
fishmongers in Oxford begging buckets of ice. This was not enough and we had to
arrange for a van to bring several huge blocks of ice from the Co-op in Reading
- the nearest bulk source. In the end practical exams were discontinued and
replaced by a record of work done by each candidate during their course. Even
here there are snags - it is very difficult to distinguish between a record of
an experiment which has actually been done from a copy of someone else's
results.
Dr Lee's Professors
Hinshelwood retired at the age limit in l964
having been in succession President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, five
years as Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society and five years as President
including the year in which it celebrated its tercentenary. In l959 he held the
unique distinction of being at the same time President of the Classical
Association and of the Royal Society. His knowledge of the classics and of
languages and literature in general made him undeniably worthy of this
distinction. He was a polymath and a polyglot - we shall not see his like
again.
Rex Richards became Dr. Lee's Professor in
l964. When the announcement was made Hinsh remarked that Rex was very young and
he hoped he would be able to cope. When asked how old he had been when he took
on the professorship, he laughed and said `Younger than Rex'.
At this point the extension of the building
was almost complete. In those days the U.G.C. made special grants for the
equipment of new laboratories. We thought we had opened our mouth quite wide in
drawing up our application for equipment for the extensions to the laboratory.
The U.G.C. appointed Professors Bawn of Liverpool and Douglas Everett of
Bristol as Assessors for our equipment application. Everett was, of course, an
old member of the laboratory. They quickly telephoned to say that, large though
our application was, other places had been asking for, and getting, very much
more. Rex and Danby had 24 hours to think up and cost a considerable additional
list of equipment and compile an amended application to be substituted for the
original one. The Assessors did us an exceedingly good turn.
The laboratory moved quite quickly when
computers first became available, installing an Elliott 903 in l969. Although
this comprised three units each the size of a large chest of drawers and was
advanced for its day, it had a store only of 16K of 16-bit words - only a
fraction of the capacity of the smallest present lap top computer. It had a
good Algol and a passable Fortran compiler and many of us had our original
education in computing on it. Over the intervening years it has been
superseded, first by a Data General Eclipse, and then by a large Norsk-Data
machine. More recently the availability of direct links to the Computing
Service machines has changed the picture again.
In 1970 Rex Richards resigned the
professorship on being appointed Warden of Merton. Fred Dainton, a St. John's
man and pupil of Tommy Thompson's, who had been professor at Leeds and was
Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham, and who was a member of the electoral board for
the professorship, stood down from it and offered himself as a candidate. He
was duly elected but his reign was brief - he resigned in September l973 on
being appointed Chairman of the U.G.C.
John Rowlinson, a Trinity man of just
post-war vintage who had worked with James Lambert on ultrasonic dispersion in
gases, and who was professor of Chemical Technology at Imperial College was
appointed Dr. Lee's professor. As Dainton had departed just at the start of the
academic year there was a gap before he could take up the post; Richard Barrow
acted as deputy in the mean time. John Rowlinson is a theoretician, concerned
especially with the molecular theory of liquids and liquid mixtures. The
increasing availability and power of computers has, of course, had a major
influence and, in the last few years, an increasing number of people, quite
naturally, have been interested in theoretical and computational problems in
physical chemistry. As a consequence we have seen the removal of laboratory
benches from a number of research rooms and their replacement by writing desks
and computer terminals. This trend increased in the mid l980's when a number of
academic posts which became vacant were suspended rather than being filled,
because of the financial position of the University. To meet the teaching need
a number of temporary appointments were made. It is clearly not possible for an
experimentalist with a lot of elaborate equipment requiring time to set it up
to be appointed to a temporary post lasting only a year or two. So
theoreticians tended to be appointed - they travel light, requiring only a
pencil and paper, a desk to sit at and access to a computer. As we move into
the l990's this trend is being reversed and there is a move back into
experimental studies. This has, all the same, been a particularly busy time
with an increasing number of academic visitors in the laboratory and the number
of papers published annually rising to well over 130.
[Danby's prediction of a swing back to
experiment has been confirmed by the succession of Professor John Simons and
then Professor Jacob Klein as Dr Lee's Professor. John Simons' work is
described elsewhere, and Jacob Klein's interests are in the surface and
interfacial studies of soft matter, particularly polymeric systems.]
Retrospect
Looking back over the 50 years it is clear
that Physical Chemistry and the way in which it is done have changed a great
deal. In the place of the original simple glassware and electrics we find large
and complex commercially made instruments as well as quite elaborate
instruments made in the laboratory workshops. Many areas of spectroscopy are
now dominated by elaborate laser equipment. Calculations which used to be done
by slide rule or log tables soon gave way to hand-cranked mechanical
calculating machines, and these in turn were superseded by electronic
calculators and then by computers. In the old College laboratories almost all
the stocks of chemicals were on open shelves and in the new laboratory they
initially went on shelves in the teaching laboratory. There was no special
concern about toxic substances - cyanides, mercury salts and arsenic compounds
and so on were included with all the others. Nobody gave it a thought. During
the war we built many furnaces for making active charcoal which were insulated
with asbestos fibre and windings of asbestos string. If something was greasy it
was cleaned with 100 ml of benzene or carbon tetrachloride in an open beaker.
At one stage we used to make a substantial quantity of anhydrous hydrocyanic
acid almost every week. All these things and many others are regarded as
unacceptably dangerous today. But we had no mishaps and those of us who worked
in the laboratory in those days are still alive and kicking 50 years later.
Probably our generation had had more hands-on bench experience of handling
chemicals than have more recent generations; or perhaps the safety lobby has
overreacted. Some of us are thankful that we reached retiring age before the
bureaucrats of the Health and Safety Executive obtained their present powers to
exert their influence inside University laboratories and before the Control of
Substances Hazardous to Health regulations tended to restrict quick and easy
access to whatever was necessary for one's work. We certainly had a more
relaxed life in the laboratory, we had much more fun, and we came to no harm.
Similarly we have never had a fire in
Physical Chemistry but the fire experts have insisted on having every single
door in the building removed and replaced by a massive new one of solid
hardwood, as well as putting heavy and dangerous fire-doors in all corridors.
The cost must have been astronomical and a sizeable acreage of tropical rain
forest must have been felled to provide the timber.
It often used to be said that those who have
studied the Arts are good at managing people while scientists made bad civil servants
and administrators. Yet members of the PCL have played a significant role in
the upper echelons of the administration of the University in recent years;
thus, Robert Gasser and Brian Smith have served on the General Board as
Vice-Chairmen and members of the Hebdomadal Council. In fact Robert Gasser was
Vice-Chairman of the General Board when Rex Richards was Vice-Chancellor - a
remarkable concentration of power and influence in the hands of products of one
laboratory.
Over recent years no fewer than five heads
of Oxford Colleges have been Oxford chemists - three of them from Physical
Chemistry; Rex Richards at Merton, John Albery at Univ. and Brian Smith at St.
Catherine's. Can any other Faculty compete with this? It can fairly be said
that we have had a useful, eventful and successful half century: certainly the
authors of this brief history would not have wished to spend it in any other
way or in any other place.
