Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge
Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge
70 OBITUARIES emphasised that scientific advances should be for the welfare of all. She was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Cold War, was committed to socialism and enthusiastically participated in anti-war demonstrations.At the ceremony at which she received her joint award of the Japan Prize, Anne chose to hear Where have all the flowers gone? sung by Joan Baez as “a lament for all wars”, and John Lennon’s Imagine, which she said is “about a world of peace and love and social harmony”. Anne and Donald Michie had three children together.Although they divorced in 1959, they remained good friends and started to live together again in 2005. They died together in a car accident on 7 July 2007, while travelling from Cambridge to London. Memorial funds in support of young scientists have been established in their memories. (Adapted from the obituary in Nature 448, August 2007, by Azim Surani (1994) and Jim Smith, with thanks.) GEORGE CHRISTOPHER STEAD (1931) George Stead was born in Wimbledon on 9 April 1913, the eldest of four children of Francis Bernard Stead (1891). Both sides of his family were well stocked with teachers, and his parents kept up their Greek and would take a Loeb edition away on holidays, together with collections of English poetry. Christopher’s academic promise led them to move him to the Dragon School at Oxford and he went on to Marlborough. As Christopher wrote later: “The fees were low; the teaching excellent; the living conditions crude; the sanitation unmentionable.” From the Classical Upper Sixth he won a Scholarship to King’s. “The atmosphere of intellectual excitement was
intoxicating; and most of us, Etonians excepted, had lived under a repressive regime; and now the cork was fairly out of the bottle.”The links to Bloomsbury represented by Maynard Keynes and Dadie Rylands were in the ascendant. Christopher read Classics: “Plato struck me like a lightning flash; what I read, in the Phaedrus and Symposium especially, was a vision of enlargement and delight, but could it possibly be true? … For new currents were stirring in Cambridge with Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein which threatened to strike a fatal blow at Platonism, and indeed at any philosophy which countenanced an immaterial world, whether as an absolute Good or as a God in heaven.” These misgivings led Christopher to the drastic step of deserting Classics to read what was then called Moral Science. He screwed up courage to ask Wittgenstein to tea, and felt he had gained approval when he recognised that the philosopher came in whistling the opening Kyrie from Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Nevertheless he felt compelled to ignore Wittgenstein’s advice never to read any philosophical books on the grounds that they would only muddle his thinking. Already the winner of a Pitt Scholarship for Classics, Christopher secured a First in Moral Science and King’s gave him a studentship and encouraged him to turn his hand to research. Meanwhile he was in the orbit of the Chaplain at King’s, a gifted Anglo-Chinese named Roy Bowyer-Yin, who was a versatile pianist with a devastating flair for parody. Roy Yin was not so much in thrall to the High Church Anglicanism inspired by Dean Milner-White as most other Chapel-goers, although throughYin he came under the influence of the group styled the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, and began to give much time to private prayer, and even private confessions. Another friend he met through Yin was a King’s ordinand, Michael Peck. Michael invited Christopher to go sailing on the Norfolk Broads with a group of teenagers, thus introducing him to a sport in which Christopher found a lifelong satisfaction. Christopher chose to research a dissertation on Kant’s teleology, a subject which he later came to feel was a mistaken choice. At the second time of submission he won election to a Fellowship in 1938, and a post as Lecturer in Divinity, but by this time he had offered himself for Ordination and 71 OBITUARIES
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- Page 22 and 23: 82 OBITUARIES GERALD CHARLES BAYFIE
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intoxicating; and most <strong>of</strong> us, Etonians excepted, had lived under a repressive<br />
regime; and now the cork was fairly out <strong>of</strong> the bottle.”The links to Bloomsbury<br />
represented by Maynard Keynes and Dadie Rylands were in the ascendant.<br />
Christopher read Classics: “Plato struck me like a lightning flash; what I read,<br />
in the Phaedrus and Symposium especially, was a vision <strong>of</strong> enlargement and<br />
delight, but could it possibly be true? … For new currents were stirring in<br />
<strong>Cambridge</strong> with Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein which threatened to strike a<br />
fatal blow at Platonism, and indeed at any philosophy which countenanced an<br />
immaterial world, whether as an absolute Good or as a God in heaven.”<br />
These misgivings led Christopher to the drastic step <strong>of</strong> deserting Classics to<br />
read what was then called Moral Science. He screwed up courage to ask<br />
Wittgenstein to tea, and felt he had gained approval when he recognised<br />
that the philosopher came in whistling the opening Kyrie from Bach’s Mass<br />
in B Minor. Nevertheless he felt compelled to ignore Wittgenstein’s advice<br />
never to read any philosophical books on the grounds that they would only<br />
muddle his thinking.<br />
Already the winner <strong>of</strong> a Pitt Scholarship for Classics, Christopher secured a<br />
First in Moral Science and King’s gave him a studentship and encouraged him<br />
to turn his hand to research. Meanwhile he was in the orbit <strong>of</strong> the Chaplain<br />
at King’s, a gifted Anglo-Chinese named Roy Bowyer-Yin, who was a versatile<br />
pianist with a devastating flair for parody. Roy Yin was not so much in thrall<br />
to the High Church Anglicanism inspired by Dean Milner-White as most other<br />
Chapel-goers, although throughYin he came under the influence <strong>of</strong> the group<br />
styled the Oratory <strong>of</strong> the Good Shepherd, and began to give much time to<br />
private prayer, and even private confessions. Another friend he met through<br />
Yin was a King’s ordinand, Michael Peck. Michael invited Christopher to go<br />
sailing on the Norfolk Broads with a group <strong>of</strong> teenagers, thus introducing him<br />
to a sport in which Christopher found a lifelong satisfaction.<br />
Christopher chose to research a dissertation on Kant’s teleology, a subject<br />
which he later came to feel was a mistaken choice. At the second time <strong>of</strong><br />
submission he won election to a Fellowship in 1938, and a post as Lecturer<br />
in Divinity, but by this time he had <strong>of</strong>fered himself for Ordination and<br />
71<br />
OBITUARIES