The Newsletter of Homerton College, Cambridge & The Homerton Roll

OBITUARIES OF
FORMER COLLEAGUES
Portrait by Anastasia Sotiropoulos
Professor Tjeerd Van Andel
(1923–2010)
Homerton has
unquestionably
lost a most
distinguished
associate with
the death in
September of
the Principal’s
husband. The College has its formal
‘members’ by virtue of their matriculation,
past or present employment, or election
into Fellowship; but the College also has
others who are just solidly associated with
the heart of its life. We commemorate the
man who was spouse and companion to Dr
Pretty over some 23 years and who enjoyed,
as he remarked, “the honour of being in
Kate’s shadow”. Professor van Andel made a
lifelong contribution to a breadth of natural
sciences, being indisputably both a physical
and intellectual adventurer and a scholar
of distinction. Tjeerd, or in his anglicised
form just ‘Jerry’, was a warm, witty Dutch
American whose quiet genial presence
among us was one that many students,
former staff and Fellows will recall with
appreciation.
Reared in colonial Dutch Indonesia, Tjeerd
van Andel grew up with a passion for travel,
human prehistory and the natural world. As
an archaeology undergraduate student in
Nazi-occupied Holland he was part of the
Resistance movement, unbeknown to his
German-born mother. A second degree in
geology and a doctorate in sedimentology
took him to work with Shell in Venezuela,
studying for the first time how marine
oil-forming sediments are built up. Then
with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography
he initiated the push for sub-oceanic
exploration and soon had launched a major
investment from the USA in the study
of Quaternary events – so becoming an
authority on past sea-level changes. His
career peaked in 1977 when, on board
the 22 foot submersible Alvin, two miles
down in the deeps, he was amongst the
first to witness the now famous geothermal
springs of the Galapagos Rift. He came to
Cambridge in 1987, where he first met Dr
Pretty, and became in 1988 Cambridge’s
first honorary professor. A protagonist of
interdisciplinary and collaborative research,
he ended his career by bringing together
the climatic and geological studies of a
major past ice-age with his own research
into Neanderthal archaeology. As a great
teacher he gave a polymathic range of
science lectures in several universities over
some 50 years. Passionate also about the
arts, in particular painting, he donated the
cost of the Principal’s College portrait, on
her arrival at Homerton, and enthusiastically
supported life classes in the Homerton
Art Department. Lord Rees, President of
the Royal Society, in tribute, remarked that
Tjeerd van Andel “will certainly live in the
annals of Science” to which we can append
“and Homerton College also”.
Stephen Tomkins
Emeritus Fellow
& Elaine Wilson
Fellow
Tim Everton (1951–2011)
Deputy Principal of Homerton College,
1992–2001
Tim Everton joined
Homerton in
October 1992 as
Deputy Principal,
having previously
been Head of PGCE
at the University
of Leicester. Born
in the West Midlands in 1951, Tim went to
Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall,
and then read Mathematics at Keble
College, Oxford. He became a secondary
Mathematics teacher in Walsall and
Shrewsbury before taking a Masters at
Keele and starting in teacher education in
Ulster, from where he moved to Leicester.
This career trajectory was ideal for
Homerton. Tim’s early experience of college
life at Oxford, his period as a secondary
teacher and his knowledge of initial
teacher training and research gave him
enormous strengths with which to tackle
Homerton’s development. He was a perfect
complement to me and I owe him a great
deal, as does the College.
He began work even before he and Val
moved to Cambridge to set up a household
comprising three daughters, three little
black cats and two dogs. Early in June
1992 Homerton had been advised to make
an entry for the Research Assessment
Exercise. Tim had done an RAE before at
Leicester and he volunteered to oversee
Homerton’s entry, tirelessly travelling from
Leicester to encourage, exhort and oversee
the offerings from a staff who had never
encountered such an exercise. The College,
the staff and Tim emerged triumphant at
the end of the year with money to spend
on research. It was the beginning of a
ten-year period in which Tim, together
with John Gray and Jean Rudduck, put
Homerton on the research map. At the
same time he somehow managed to
maintain his own writing.
Tim’s extensive knowledge of teacher
education was an asset to all staff. Under
his leadership they found a balance
between teaching and research which
helped Homerton to emerge as “a leading
national provider of teacher education
with outstanding Ofsted grades”. Tim
understood how best to handle Ofsted as
the inspectorate became more draconian
and less interested in dialogue about best
practice. This he did with his customary
patience and calm, achieving outstanding
results from hard-pressed colleagues
and students.
Tim’s mathematical background was
essential for Homerton’s development.
Faced with an innumerate Principal whose
Homerton College 21