John Wesley “JACK” MITCHELL FRS
(1913-2007)
An outstanding international scientist from New Zealand whose work in chemistry
and physics examined the properties of materials and extended the possibilities
of high speed photography
Work in progress, fuller
memoir being developed, see explanatory notes at the end roger@kosmoid.net
Early Life
Jack Mitchell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand on 3 December 1913. His parents were John Wesley Mitchell,
born 1885 in Derby, Connecticut, USA, a
surveyor’s chain-man (later a jewellery salesman) who’d worked in Chile and Western
Australia, and his wife Lucy Ruth Snowball,
born at Inglewood near Mount Egmont in Taranaki, New Zealand in 1887.
They had married in Waimate, South
Canterbury, New Zealand in 1911.
The Mitchells had come
originally from Edinburgh via Bermuda and then Maryland in the
seventeenth century. Jack’s father John
Wesley Mitchell IV had trained as a civil engineer at the Stevens Institute, Hoboken before
travelling and settling in New Zealand. Jack’s mother’s family the Snowballs came
originally from around Teesside in County Durham, later a
heartland of chemical industries. Jack’s
mother’s great uncle was Edward Snowball; a prodigious locomotive engineer, he
had married a daughter of Robert Stephenson and became the chief draughtsman of
the North British Locomotive Company’s Hyde Park Works in Glasgow. On the
Snowball maternal side were Allports, descended from
a Birmingham silversmith.
The Allports had scratched a living at Stoke near
Nelson, NZ, not far from the birthplace of Ernest Rutherford. Jack’s Allport
great-grandmother lived to a great age in Picton in
1921. She’d been born Rachel Willett in Shenley, Buckinghamshire in 1831, her parents emigrated to
New South Wales, and she met her Alport husband when he was looking for work there.
Jack was an only child. Living in the Christchurch railway
suburb of Sydenham in a small house at 92 King
Street off the southern end of Colombo
Street, Jack was baptised into the Anglican
communion by Reverend Hugh S. Leach in April
1915. After the War he was educated at Sydenham
Primary where he became Dux of the school, and in 1926 he started at Christchurch Boys High School.
But it was his home environment that nurtured
Jack’s interest in nature, his aptitude for careful exploration and
recording. His father had built up a
library of books about New Zealand flora and
geology, most of them well-illustrated. These the boy studied from an early
age. Jack recalled that from the first his father and mother encouraged him “to
recognise the native birds and their songs and to learn about their
habits. I collected, pressed and mounted
specimens and learned the names of the native ferns, plants, shrubs and trees,
grouping them in their ecological associations. I also collected specimens and
thin chips from the andesitic and basaltic lava flows
and radiating trachyte dykes around the crater rim of
the Lyttleton volcano, being particularly fascinated
by cavities lined by beautiful transparent crystallites which I later learned
to be chabazite, heulandite
and other zeolites”.
Brought up by his father to appreciate the wider
relationships of botany and geology and avoid blinkered specialism,
Jack had a precocious aptitude for practical correlative science in the
tradition of naturalists like Edward
Forbes (1815-1854) and TH Huxley
(1825-1895). Their holistic and geographically-mindful approach animated
many panoramic teachers around the world, some extremely controversial like AW Bickerton
(1842-1929) in New Zealand, Patrick Geddes
in Scotland (1854-1932), or correlative geographer TG Taylor in
Australia (1880-1963), some less so like New Zealand’s level-headed political
historian James Hight
(1870-1958). Jack Mitchell was ever-ready to connect and respond to the
influences of this broader world-view.
Alert to the possibilities for extending his field studies among
the panoramas that surrounded him on his doorstep, Jack joined the Canterbury
Mountaineering Club with his father after its formation in 1925. He spent weekends with his father and with
Club groups tramping and climbing on the Banks Peninsula and the
peaks of the foothills. He also developed early skills in practical
photography and microscopic slide preparation.
Christchurch’s Port
Hills above Lyttleton and the Banks Peninsula beyond
As he grew older and –with the members of the club– more
experienced, the range of their expeditions extended to the upper Waimakariri river valley between the foothills and the
Southern Alps and the other high mountain passes to Westland. They climbed many
peaks in these areas and encountered snowfields and glacier ice for the first
time.
Jack visited South Westland several
times and after his sixteenth birthday travelled by train via Hokitika to Ross on the West Coast, then by bike for ninety
miles through the dense rain forest to Waiho and the
Franz Josef Glacier. “I found what were for me entirely new associations in the flora of the rain
forest and, for the first time, metamorphic rocks”.
Old flumes at Ross ; Franz
Josef Glacier beyond the Waiho suspension
bridge
Later, still aged 16, Jack spent three weeks in 1930 in the old
lake bed of the upper Rakaia Valley in Canterbury
with Carl Caldenius of the Geochronological
Institute of Stockholm, smoothing vertical strips on the cliffs and cutting out
sections of the varved glacial silt deposits for
comparison with other worldwide studies for Baron Gerard de Geer’s Swedish
Time Scale and Caldenius’s earlier work in Argentina.
Canterbury College
Building on his school
performance in the qualifying examinations to select University candidates in
1927, Jack had won a scholarship to Canterbury University College at Christchurch in 1930 and
began study there for a Bachelor of Science in 1931, with an initial spread of
Mathematics, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry.
Canterbury College master and pupil: Bickerton and Rutherford -practical experiments, wide-ranging
thoughts
Here in the heart of the city was the
Department of Chemistry that Bickerton had
established nearly sixty years earlier. Its perspectives reflected Bickerton’s keen interest in physics and it had nurtured Bickerton’s brilliant pupil Ernest
Rutherford. The legendary and wayward Bickerton
had long since left the college amidst controversy. A key early influence on Jack, he died in
1929. The Chemistry Department was now
in the hands of Liverpool and Heidelberg trained Henry George Denham, an
inspiring demonstrator and able administrator.
Denham’s public spirited outlook and active interest in the applications
of science later earned him a key role in the Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research and honorary membership of the Society of Chemical
Industry. Denham was better at encouraging students on the nursery slopes
than engaging with their higher research.
He no doubt found the phenomenon of Jack Mitchell a little too hot to
handle. But under his general direction Jack took a First in Chemistry and won
many prizes and awards.
Robert Speight
(1867-1949)
Canterbury’s
ever-active and interested Professor of Geology
Jack Mitchell had continued
his adventures with the Canterbury Mountaineering Club, and indeed it was his
scientific findings in the mountains that most engaged his enthusiasm. In
this his natural ally was the retired Canterbury geology professor, Robert Speight, a co-founder of the Club, now curator of the
University museum and president of the New Zealand Institute, soon to become
the Royal Society of New Zealand. Speight
shared Jack’s ecological perspectives and was the true mentor of his university
education in New Zealand.
The University Library has a series
of 1932 climbing pictures of Jack and his friends Alex Graham, Anne Stevenson,
Louie Roberts and Tom Sheenan. On all his
climbing expeditions Jack carried a geological hammer, collected specimens from
the different regional zones of metamorphic rocks of the Southern Alps, and
made thin sections of them when he returned to Christchurch.
Jack’s original intention had been
to study geology at the university, but Professor Speight,
who had made such major contributions to knowledge of the Lyttleton
and Akaroa volcanoes of the Banks Peninsula, had retired
and become Curator of the Canterbury Museum. Formal geology teaching was now led by a palaeontologist
and a stratigrapher and Jack had no interest in these
areas. “I began to accompany ‘Bobby’ Speight on his field expeditions in 1930 and was given a
thorough and systematic training in crystallography, optical mineralogy, and
the petrology of igneous and metamorphic rocks by him.” Jack made many hundreds of thin sections of
exceptional quality, including sections of nephrite in which the individual actinolite crystals were fully resolved, and learned to use
the polarizing microscope as a scientific instrument. “I owe much of my lifelong interest in
crystalline solids and the processes of physical and chemical change in the
solid state to this informal work which satisfied my research interests”. But
Jack was warned by Professor Denham, as head of the Chemistry Department, that
he would fail his final BSc examinations if he spent so much time on outside
interests. “Without being aware of
it, I was laying sound foundations for the future.”
Though Jack Mitchell placed a
high value on his practical training, he gained a lot too from the lectures he
attended. “I learned systematic
inorganic and physical chemistry from the excellent lectures of H. G. Denham
and organic chemistry from those of J. Packer.
In mathematics, I was particularly interested in all aspects of geometry
and symmetry, in vector methods and vector analysis, and in linear algebra and
matrix methods. The lectures of C. C. Farr
FRS and the laboratory work in the Department of Physics failed to challenge me
although I was keenly interested in the subject.”
As a teenager
during the summer vacations of 1931-1933 Jack worked first as a porter and then
as a guide at the Franz Josef Glacier Hotel. Wide knowledge and keen observation in one so
young made him a popular and long-remembered guide for many overseas visitors
and their expeditions. Jack always made
the effort to collect and press specimens from the successive zones of vegetation
between the rain forest at sea level to the highest
alpine levels. During this time Jack accompanied Lord
Bledisloe the Governor-General of New Zealand and
Lady Bledisloe on botanical expeditions where they
collected the ferns of the rain forest.
This extensive botanical work led to Jack’s first paper, The
Vegetation of the Arthur Pass National Park, later published as part of the
Handbook to the Park in 1935.
Lord and Lady
Bledisloe
Professor Speight
refers to Jack in generous terms in the paper he gave to the Philosophical
Institute of Canterbury in April 1934: Mitchell had lent him useful 1929
pictures of the glacier, and had told Speight a
theory of his own about the vegetation on the glaciated level valley walls: “there
is a lower belt where the trees are stunted, and a higher belt where they are
larger, and it is usually assumed that the difference is due to the more recent
abandonment of the lower levels by the ice. Mr J. Mitchell, one of the
guides at the glacier and a keen observer of natural history, has mentioned to
me that the large trees correspond to a belt of crushed rock, probably due to
the over-thrusting of the schist by the greywacke, the movement being from the
east, and that the difference in growth of the trees may be due to the
difference in the nature of the ground on which the trees have been
established, the lower part being solid inhospitable schist, and the top the
more kindly broken greywacke. If the divergence in the character of the
vegetation is really due to delayed evacuation of the lower levels by the ice
as compared to the upper levels, then the lower belt of stunted trees extending
along the valley walls should rise as steeply as the valley gradient, if not
more steeply, and it does not do so. This is in favour of Mr Mitchell’s
contention, but the point needs further investigation.”
In 1934 Jack was awarded the
Charles Cook Memorial Prize of Canterbury University College for his work on metamorphic
petrology. He would be heading for Oxford. But first, in the name of science and of his
native New Zealand, Jack was
determined to pull together all his talents for exploration and practical study
to the utmost. He spent his final eight
months in New Zealand in 1934-1935
on the West Coast of the South Island, where he
systematically examined the zones of regional metamorphism in the Southern
Alps and the nephrite masses of the Pounamou
formation on the Griffin Range and in the Arahura Valley of northern Westland. “I left this open air life with great
reluctance but always retained my interest in natural history”.
In this last careful
photographic and geological survey of tracts of New Zealand’s Southern Alps,
preparing hundreds of thin-section slides from the rock samples he
took, Jack had found some astonishing and unexpected similarities with
equivalent rock studies of Unst in Shetland recorded
by Herbert Harold
Read, the former head of the Scottish Geological Survey who had taken up a
professorship at Liverpool University.
Governor-General Bledisloe took a personal
interest in the results of Jack’s work, which seemed to show such individual,
academic, scientific and economic promise. Canterbury’s Rector,
James Hight, was a wise and influential supporter.
Henry George Denham
(1880-1943) Dr James Hight
(1870-1958) ,
Canterbury’s Professor
of Chemistry
Rector of Canterbury University College
By the time he was ready to
leave his homeland, Jack Mitchell had become confident of his abilities, and
assured of excellent contacts in the scientific world. His cryptic academic
record card of progress 1927-1935 among those on deposit in the New Zealand archives is
headed with the pencilled word Brick –someone clearly considered
him a solid and dependable prospect. By now Jack had become heir to the
late Professor Bickerton’s notes. Eager to pass on
what he had learned, to serve and be served, he made
it his business to communicate with the people he met –testimonials from Denham
and Hight describing him as probably the most
brilliant student in New Zealand today.
Across the Tasman
to Sydney
Jack Mitchell came to England as an 1851
Exhibition Scholar from Canterbury University
College, New Zealand in
1935. This was a Research Fellowship awarded annually by Royal
Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 as a three-year research scholarship to
around eight "young scientists or engineers of exceptional
promise" across the British Empire. Ernest Rutherford and Dr
Denham had been Exhibition Scholars from Canterbury before
him. Jack Mitchell was destined for Oxford, where Rutherford’s old
collaborator the Nobel Laureate Frederick Soddy was the
Dr Lee Professor of Chemistry.
Jack Mitchell travelled to England with another
student from Canterbury. On his way to Oriel
College Oxford was the Rhodes Scholar in history Winston Monk (1912-1954)
-who at once became a close friend. Also travelling ware a number of young New Zealand academics including J.P. Belshaw and
Don McElwain. Awarded a free passage
as part of his research scholarship, Jack was able to reach England in a little
more luxury than most NZ students. He sailed first in the Marama across the Tasman Sea from Wellington to Sydney, to transfer
there with Monk to the P&O liner Maloja
for the long journey to England.
Their Sydney stopover in
August 1935 gave them time to meet old and new friends (often more than once).
Jack and Winston made contact with A. K. Anderson and his family, Winston’s old
headmaster at St Andrew’s Christchurch, who was now
head at Scots College
and who took them later to St Stephens in Macquarie Street, at that
time “the newest great church in the Empire”. Jack’s friend
Clare, daughter of Rabbi
Danglow of Melbourne, showed the pair the sights
and surroundings in a chauffeur-driven car, and they yarned with Harley, a
mutual friend from New Zealand employed by the Davis Gelatine Company which
made “60% of the gelatine of the Empire” in conjunction with the Michaelis
Hallenstein tannery combine of Australia and New
Zealand. Walks through the city centre gave Jack’s interest in economic
geology full rein in identifying and enjoying the stone of the great new
buildings -he could hardly keep his hands off the Commonwealth of Australia
Savings Bank. There were plenty of opportunities
for him to take photographs.
On August 16th Jack
and Winston were shown Sydney University and bowled
over with the magnificence of its appointments and endowments: 15 faculties,
almost each of them subdivided, and a sound and underworked
professorial staff. The Geological Buildings alone were larger than most
of Canterbury College and held a
museum arranged and cared for much more effectively than anything they had seen
in New Zealand. They
met Dr G.D. Osborne, a friendly young lecturer fresh from Cambridge: “Jack
says he’s a specialist (that damning him in his eyes though not necessarily in
mine)”. Later a Professor, Osborne became President of
the Royal Society of New South Wales and first Patron of The Gemmological
Association of Australia. When Jack elaborated on his own 8
months of survey in the Southern Alps, his 900 hand-made slide-mounted
rock-samples worked over 150 miles coast-to-coast in places, and his discovery
of practically identical formations to those H.H. Read had found in the
Shetland Islands, he was not sure that Osborne fully understood.
But Jack had further
opportunities to impress his elders at a meeting of East
Australia’s geological establishment at the Geological Society in Gloucester
Street with such worthies as Osborne,
Andrews “lucid”, Ryder Brown “accomplished, confident, bigger than his subject” and Queensland’s Wauchope “highly thought
of”. Jack and Winston had supper with Osborne in George
Street, and returned to the University five
days later, showing some of Jack’s rock slides to Osborne and Jocelyn through
the microscope. “They thought his work marvellous, but obviously couldn’t
appreciate it”.
At La Perouse,
Botany Bay on 25 August Jack introduced Winston
to the botany of the sand hills, demonstrating the characteristics of the pea,
the heath, the myrtle, the thyme, and the pine, and telling him he could learn
the fundamentals of Botany in a week. Later, describing the elements of geology
and chemistry plainly and lucidly in a way that his companion could easily
understand, Jack said he always studied a subject as if he were required to
teach it. He described the natural origin of the earth, solar system, universe
and island universes following the lines of Professor Bickerton’s
hypothesis. On the strength of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Jack talked of
an original uniformity of matter in space, and a tendency for change towards
maximum probability; these he regarded as evidenced by experience and more than
mere assumptions. He’d concluded that “the historical mind is also the
scientific mind”.
Athough starting in
a series of unsatisfactory Sydney lodgings
-one turned out to be a brothel- for most of their time Jack and Winston were
able to use their cabins on the Maloja,
berthed at Pyrmont prior to final departure from
Circular Quay. One day Jack returned to his cabin and left his coat on
the bed. Returning a few minutes later he discovered the steward going through
his pockets. He called for the Chief Officer and they found the steward with a
pound note, of which Jack had the number, caught red-handed. In the
evening, having thought things over and the steward had approached him with the
story of a wife and family, clean record and all that, Jack relented his
original intention to pursue the matter. Prickly and ready for combat
when his blood was up, Jack was equally notable for the gentle and forgiving
side of his nature.
Boy with pigeons at Circular Quay,
mid
1935
Bligh’s Log
Before they left Sydney, Jack and
Winston visited the Mitchell Library and were shown some of its most valuable
records: Tasman, Banks, Cook, and Marsden
originals, Captain Bligh’s log from the Bounty, and a
first folio of Shakespeare. They found the Sydney Art Gallery in the
Botanical Gardens was much better than their own familiar McDougall
Gallery in Christchurch. They
were entertained by the family of Don McElwayn –also
heading for England on the Maloja. Belshaw
and Eric Haslam had left Sydney already on
August 17 on the Orient Line’s Oronsay.
Now as the Maloja moved away from Circular
Quay, their own journey to England began.
Round the south of Australia
On their first day in Melbourne, Jack and
Winston went ashore in the heat of the morning and made their way to Flinders
and Collins Streets, St Kilda
Road, the Botanical Gardens, and the
Shrine of Remembrance. New Zealanders from Christchurch and Canterbury often feel
at home in Melbourne. They
were entranced by the verdure of the gardens, after Sydney, and
surprised at the number of horsemen and women in the city. The second day
was devoted to the University, where Jack went to meet Professor Stillwell of
the Geology department and his assistant Dr Edwards. Old Stillwell had
been geologist in Scott’s polar expeditions; young Edwards was just returned from
a year at Cambridge and now
engaged in government work. University buildings were not nearly as
satisfactory as Sydney, though the
residential colleges appeared impressive. The New Zealanders were surprised to
find them being run on denominational lines. In the Chemistry department
they met Dr Bayliss, expert in spectroscopy, a former
Australian Rhodes scholar and a friend of their countryman, Alex Haslam, Canterbury’s Rhodes scholar in Law. The head of the chemistry department,
Professor E J Hartung (1893-1979), a world expert in photographic
science, was on hand to talk to them. He
had studied the photolysis of silver halides with a
microbalance in the nineteen twenties and reminded Jack strongly of J H E Schroder, the Canterbury literary
commentator.
Ernst J Hartung (1893-1979) Raymond E Priestley (1886-1974)
Melbourne’s Professor
of Chemistry Chancellor of Melbourne University
Finally, Mitchell and Monk
were introduced to Dr R
E Priestley (1886-1974), Chancellor of Melbourne
University and a highly regarded former administrator at Cambridge -he had
begun his scientific career as a Bristol-trained geologist and polar
explorer. The gentle, brisk, quiet, precise Priestley
gave them a good deal of his time and advice, taking them off by train to an
excellent lunch at The Wattle. He was particularly keen that Jack should make
an effort to get into residence for some part of his time at Oxford (as a non
resident scholar, Jack was heading for St Catherines,
a non-collegiate Oxford students association at that time, and would have to
find digs). He couldn’t praise the residential life enough, in contrast to
views Dr Edwards had expressed earlier in the day.
To share on the voyage Jack
bought Jeans’ “New Background of Science” and Winston a title by Eddington at Cole’s Book Arcade, before they were picked up
by Jean Danglow and her friend Margaret, both history
students, and driven to the top of Mount Dandenong,
30 miles north. The group returned through the gloaming for dinner with
the family, Rabbi Danglow and his wife and son Frank at their house just
off St Kilda boulevard. The
Rabbi had just had his Plymouth car stolen
from the garage and smashed up, and was a little hurt by that. The
younger Danglows took Jack and Winston to the Athananeum to see Elizabeth Bergner
in Escape Me Never –a new film by her husband Paul Czinner
with the technical talents of David Lean, Freddie Young and William
Walton. They then drove the two New Zealanders back to the Maloja to see them off.
The ship travelled on to Adelaide, where Jack
and Winston trained from port to city to see its public buildings, parks and an
excellent layout. They thought the inhabitants seemed red or pale and
hot-looking. They were not unhappy to return to the boat, passing through
depressing slums and hovels and the particularly fine railway station.
Back on board the pair got a first taste of English social distinctions when
Jack’s companion had to leave the first class lounge (Jack alone had a first
class cabin and other passengers objected to his having a visitor from tourist
class). The next leg of the voyage across the Australian Bight was
stormy. Jack was wakened by a neighbouring woman’s screams that the ship
was sinking. Seawater came in through a ventilator and washed along the
corridor from a smashed forward hatch.
Photo given
to Winston by Nelly Steckler, a Swiss fellow
passenger on the Maloja,
inscribed Stürmische
See zwischen Adelaide u. Fremantle 31. Aug. 1935
A long haul to England
The rest of his journey was to
be very uncomfortable. Overdue at “grubby little Fremantle”
where Jack and Winston took a break ashore for a cup of tea at the Kia-Ora Café, the ship prepared to battle another storm in
the Indian Ocean on its ten day stretch to Colombo. As the Maloja
left Australasia behind, Jack
became quite seriously ill. While Winston regularly took morning
exercises, swam in the pool, dined daily with some of the younger tourist-class
fellow passengers, and danced a little with Nelly Steckler,
Jack progressively withdrew to his first-class saloon. He developed nasal
ulcers which were treated by the ship’s doctor, and then was stricken with
septic tonsils which gave him a lot of pain and distress. An operation in the
heat of the tropics was out of the question, he would just have to wait till London -rotten
luck for a chap. But Jack was not completely indisposed. He played
games, talked, and sat with his friend. In the evenings Winston would
take coffee in the tourist lounge and then go up to the boat deck to sit for an
hour with Jack, dreaming and meditating, and drinking in the intoxicating
atmosphere. It’s really an enchanting and romantic setting, strains of
orchestral music wafted lazily by the warm breeze from the dancing on the main
deck, soothing and spicy to the ear, the warmth of the wind itself as the ship
moves steadily across the water. It’s the Indian Ocean; the breezes
come from Africa and from India. The
moon above is pale but bright, with an electric lightness, partly obscuring the
lesser lights of the stars, and it casts its radiance broad across the expanse of
sea, rippling gently in its light, with its lightest wavelet flecking into
shreds of tired foam. The waters move so lazily, Jack says, because they
are so replete with organic life; forming a perfect natural incubator. Couples
sit in the gloom of the boat deck in their chairs; now and then a ship’s bell;
the noise of feet and voices below barely discernible, but the music
enchanting. After crossing the Equator, Jack felt able to join a larger
party for some beers. Four days later they arrived in Ceylon at Colombo, and Jack
made up a party of five for the 75 mile drive to the interior in a big Bean car
to visit Kandy.
Two days later the Maloja docked at Bombay; the passengers
had been warned of a smallpox outbreak there. Visiting the fish and meat
market, Jack was separated from the rest of his party for a while because he
couldn’t stand the smell. They saw the Zoo and Parks, Malabar
Hill, Towers of Silence and the Gateway of India before returning to the Maloja at Ballard Pier.
Finding himself with a new
whisky-soaked room-mate, Winston shifted to a joint cabin with Jack. As
the ship moved on through the days to Aden, Jack was
again unwell, with hardly a bite to eat since Bombay and indeed
precious little since Adelaide. Winston
tried painting his throat, but it only made Jack sick. At Aden the ship was
joined by a number of Naval officers, apparently
because of the Abyssinian dispute. Moving towards the cooler north up the
Red Sea, and sleeping out on the hatch
guarded by Winston and his companions, Jack was for the first time able to get
some decent sleep. The high cliffs of sandstone of the Sinai showing
their layered geological formations rose up abruptly on either side, and the Maloja was soon passing Port Tewfik
into the Suez Canal - Jack staying
up on the boat deck to watch progress almost as far as Port Said. As
more and more people came aboard to add to the ship’s malodorous
cosmopolitanism, he swore he’d never travel by P&O again.
Across the Med
But things were getting
better. As the Maloja slipped out of
port, Port Said seemed like
a postcard with its great steamers, battle cruisers, aircraft carriers, and
little Arab yachts and dhows. As they left the greenish Nile waters
behind and moved steadily into the smooth blue Mediterranean, the heat
became less oppressive. Jack noticed some improvement in his nose and
throat. He’d lost over a stone in weight. He was able to eat a
little. He was also able to resume his scientific commentaries which Winston
occasionally found wearing.
Jack played chess with Wood,
an Australian history scholar headed for Balliol, a long angular, awkward,
decent aloof type. Winston played draughts with Andre Galiay, a 15-year-old French boy returning from Polynesia, All
of them tended to be beaten by the scruffy old Irish habitué of the ship’s
bar. Retiring to bed at 2am after one such evening, Winston had a bit
of a word with Jack which he took rather seriously to heart, about his tendency
to be dogmatic. Next day Jack washed one of his friend’s shirts in
typical forgiveness.
Slipping past the formidable
Chateau d’If on the morning of September 27, the Maloja drew alongside the P&O dock at Marseilles. It was time
to say goodbye to young Andre Galiay and the
good-natured Nelly Steckler. Jack, Wood and
Winston strode manfully along the line of docks and up to town to the famous
Rue Canabiere. Jack pointed out that the
streets and lanes were cobbled with a beautiful building stone. They saw
workmen laying down the stones, setting them in fine sandstone. Microsyenite, a fine quarried granite, Jack said it
was. He contrasted it with the soft chalky marble that made up most of
the country areas around. Back at sea Winston had more words with Jack
and said under provocation that he didn’t want to hear any more on
certain scientific subjects. As a result, Jack refused to give the chemistry
and botany lessons he’d promised. But next day all was well, with Jack joining
in draughts and teaching Winston chess. September 30 saw Jack up before 6 to
see the sun rise out of Africa as the Maloja pulled in to Tangier.
Having disgorged its French
passengers, Maloja headed across the strait to
Gibraltar, and Jack and friends made a two hour tour of the rock in a six-seater –Jack pointing out the Canadian ash trees, a species
of pine with beautiful light green feathery leaves. Then two and a half days
across the bays of Trafalgar and Biscay to the first sight of Eddystone lighthouse in the early morning of October 3 and
the green fields and red cliffs of England’s rock-bound south west coast.
Work in progress, fuller page being developed roger@kosmoid.net
Arrived in London
Next morning the Maloja berthed at Tilbury and Jack, Wood and Winston
trained in to St Pancras. At the station they
were met by Canterbury University College man Stewart
Fitzgerald who’d been in England for a year
doing chemical research at London University supported by
his own savings. Fitzgerald shepherded them to New Zealand House, where
they met Una Powell, the CUC maths expert, and were
given the address of somewhere to stay: Mr Jones boarding house at 9 Taviton Street, Bloomsbury.
Walking through the streets
together in wind and rain on their first day Saturday 5 October, down
Southampton Row and Kingsway to the Strand, London seemed to
Jack and Winston disappointingly small, dead and dismal. The Thames was slushy
with rubbish floating down. Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament
(undergoing exterior renovation) looked dull and dirty, and notably inferior in
building stone to the great buildings they’d seen in Sydney. Later they were to sense that the dusty and
dismal exterior held the dignity and peculiar charm of trusty, solid, true,
imperturbable old England.
But the greyness showed up
their own lack of sparkle as companions.
Jack and I get on each other’s nerves…with my endless chatter and
chaff about things that don’t matter. And I, however much I admire him, and in
a sense like him, cannot but feel he’s far too staid and stiff, far too sincere
and earnest, far too serious and heavy, to be a good comrade for me for
long. He hasn’t the spark of mischief
that I like to see break out like an oasis in the dross and the dull and the
monotonous. Personally
since leaving N.Z. I’ve been stirred to continued joy and mischief in
the sights I’ve seen and the people I’ve met.
Jack responds but faintly, and it’s not because response alone is what’s
needed; one wants initiative. Perhaps
it’s too much brain. And I know we both
have a fund of obstinacy and self-will exercised though they be
in varied channels. Let’s make the best
of it, though. Our time abroad so far
has been very, very interesting and profitable indeed. That evening they had dinner at Slater’s
in the Strand for four shillings apiece, with New
Zealanders Fieldhouse (education & psychology,
Victoria College Wellington) and John D. White. Then a good picture-show double
bill: Noel Coward in The Scoundrel and Maurice Chevalier in The Man
from the Folies Bergere,
the latter’s phrase “Mademoiselle que
j’aime” giving Jack and Winston a lot of
amusement for some reason.
On Sunday 6 October they made
a visit to the meat and fish markets (which rather smacked of Bombay). They
watched a service at St Pauls which conveyed a sense
of timelessness and the beating heart of a nation. And they spent two hours
yarning with Ian
Milner’s friend the Hellenist Dale Trendall, a New Zealander who had all but disguised the
fact. They found him the queerest of fish but were impressed by his command of
European languages and encouraged to learn for themselves.
Milner in 1935 Trendall
twenty years later
Winston Monk
Work in progress, section being developed roger@kosmoid.net
Early days at Oxford: Soddy’s position in 1935
Arriving in Oxford, where he was to study in
the Trinity Labs, Jack had to look for somewhere to stay. Winston had a
Rhodes-funded place at Oriel College, but Jack’s position was
as a member of the St Catherines Society, a delegacy
of non-collegiate students offering university education at Oxford without the costs of
college membership.
Work in progress, section being developed
Frederick
Soddy
Cyril
Hinshelwood
Work in progress, section being developed
At Oriel, Winston shared rooms with German Rhodes Scholar Gunther Motz
Motz became a good friend of Jack
Mitchell.
Impressions and the daily round
November 1935
Monday 25 Jack called for Winston at Oriel after dinner and they went round to the Hongi Club in Ian Milner’s rooms at New College. Milner, Davis, Cooper, Riddiford, Tucker and Mulgan were
there with Mitchell and Monk to hear Barney Ford, an economist and journalist,
talk about New Zealand’s debt, economy,
unemployment and the political situation. With an election there due within
hours, Ford expected Labour to get in, though on the merits of the parties he
repeated Professor Murphy’s words: “Oh I don’t think that one party in NZ is
worse than another. After all, it’s impossible that it could be”. Later
that week a Labour government was elected in New Zealand and Savage became prime
minister. The New Zealanders at Oxford saw a lot of each other.
Jack was round again to yarn with Winston at Oriel on
Friday and Winston called on Jack for a talk, chess and supper on Sunday 1
December.
December 1935
Tuesday 3: Jack Mitchell’s birthday today: I think 22 but
may be 23.
1935 Christmas in the Chilterns with the Oxford
Group
Work in progress, section being developed
January 1936
Erwin Schroedinger (1884-1961)
Saturday January 16 “…Round to Jack in
Trinity Lab after lunch; he doesn’t look over-well and was glad to come for a
stroll with me in Christchurch meadows. Next year,
after this year’s lab experimenting, he hopes to spend in luxury doing
theoretical work under the great scientist Schroedinger.
What an opportunity! And what a man to take advantage of it
to the full.”
This was around the time that Schroedinger
outlined his cat paradox, a reminder that whatever the probabilities
accommodated in theory, reality will always be something definite. Schroedinger used a photographic analogy that Mitchell
would have recognised: “There is a difference between a shaky or
out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” In
January it seemed likely that Schroedinger would be
taking up a post at Edinburgh University where Jack might have
joined him. But there were visa problems connected with his
unconventional ménage and in the autumn the great man went to Graz instead. Friday January 31: “…Dinner in hall for
almost the first time this week; even though abstention only saves my stomach
and not my pocket. Afterwards round for the evening to Jack Mitchell’s
where I played a game of chess. He gave me his ring to give back, saying
that I must keep it as my own if I heard that he had blown himself up, or done
anything like that. What he means I’m sure I don’t know, though I believe
he is working with some explosives. He mentions that in his four months
in digs, his landlady has changed his sheets etc., once, at the end of two
months: he expects the next change to come shortly. He is boiling with
anger at her, and intends leaving her during next term, when he will go into
Winkler’s digs up Headington way, that worthy being
off on a tour of Spain, after having completed
his D.Phil.”.
Winkler [Carl Arthur Winkler (1909-1978)] was a Rhodes Scholar and physical
chemist who had been studying the kinetics of decomposition reactions with Hinshelwood; he had previously researched at McGill University under the prodigious
Canadian scientist Otto
Maass. After Oxford, Winkler returned to Canada to work for the National Research
Council, and later became Head of Chemistry and a vice-principal at McGill.
February 1936
Sunday 23 “…Jack is thinking of
going to Munich to study next year as he is not, he says, going ahead at
Oxford” Sunday 27 “…Tea at Balliol, when Jack
dropped in, and went, God alone knows why. He’s beyond me completely
these days.”
March 1936
Saturday 7 “…In the afternoon
Mitchell in for some hours; he may go with Motz on
the cycling tour” Thursday 12 “…Jack
and Motz listened in to Hitler’s speech at Karlsruhe in the Rhineland. … -Jack gave me some
camera instruction. He’s the soul of goodness to me: it’s
better we don’t see too much of each other.”
German troops entered the demilitarised Rhineland and Hitler
dissolved the Reichstag on 7 March.
France, Britain and Italy did not
intervene and German elections on 27 March gave a 98% endorsement.
During the Easter vacation, Jack considered a cycling holiday
with Gunther Motz, but his
Trinity lab work offered little break. Winston arranged a few weeks inexpensive
study and travel in Spain in the company of history colleague the American
Matthew Fitzsimons, and Fitz’s
friend at Cambridge, the physics student (and later Nobel laureate) Norman
Ramsay.
April 1936
On Wednesday 22 Winston was in London
at New Zealand House and “met Dr. Denham, looking just a bit dowdy, going up
to Oxford in a week to see Hinshelwood and Jack
Mitchell.” Denham was pleased with the new Labour government in New Zealand which was getting things
done. He was diffident about guaranteed prices however.
Oriel College
Back at Oxford on Friday 24, Jack
dropped in at Oriel having just returned from a week
in the Lake
District
with a friend whom he’d guided in New Zealand. Although they
looked very beautiful indeed in the spring when Jack saw them, the “lakes
and mountains were all on such a minute scale he thought he could traverse the
whole of the Lake District and climb every peak in a single full day. The
highest peak in England he didn’t take his hands
out of his pockets for. From it you could see Snowdon in Wales and look north across the
Scottish border. Jack looked much better for his holiday and even drank a
beer. He says he has cleared up his difficulties about his work and will
be staying on at Oxford next year.” The next
day, Anzac Day, Saturday 25 Jack came round to Oriel
in the evening.
With the promise of spring and summer, though the days of wet and cold were not
over, warmth radiated from the Oriel quads and
sweetened the joys of college life, even if the rooms were cold and damp.
Jack Mitchell, with his friends among the Rhodes scholars Winston Monk, Gunther Motz, Wilfred Sellars, Matthew Fitzsimons and
Charles Sleeth, went to see the film Stormy Weather
at the Scala starring Tom Wall, Yvonne Arnaud and
Robertson Hare. It was an enjoyable and slightly risqué Gainsborough
comedy of its time by Ben Travers.
The Scala, Oxford’s arthouse
cinema near Jack’s digs in
Yvonne Arnaud .
Walton St.., Jericho. Its proprietor Mr Poynz banned sweets and ice cream. .
Back at Oriel
later Motz put up a lovely painted blade of an oar
he’d won for Torpids. Apart from Jack, the five
friends had Sunday breakfast together at Lyons, and Jack came back to Oriel to spend Sunday evening with them. He’d been
motoring to Gloucester via Worcester, skirting the Cotswolds on
the north. Jack said he’d rather enjoyed it, but declared that “if you’ve
walked from Oxford to Wytham,
you’ve seen England”. From Oxford to Wytham
is just four miles.
Were events now moving towards some kind of
a crisis for Jack? Oxford on Monday 27 was
bathed in beautiful sunshine. Jack was becoming ever more devoted to Oxford, and to his friends.
But he was nobody’s fool. To protect the tender vulnerability of his ego
he could renounce all and everything bitterly if he was not properly
appreciated. On Tuesday 28 he stayed with Monk and Motz
all evening till supper at eleven, writing a letter. The next few days
seemed quiet. He knew that on Wednesday 29 their young New Zealand medical student friend, Alastair MacGibbon would be
presiding over the ceremonies to install Lord Allenby,
the hero of Damascus, as Rector of Edinburgh
University. In Oxford, the visit of Jack’s old New Zealand tutor was looming.
Dr Denham had helped him in the past. He was an unwelcome reminder: a man
for whom Jack had little respect.
May 1936
On Saturday 2, as Addis Ababa fell to the Italians, Jack
called at Oriel and went for a stroll across Christ Church meadows in late
afternoon. On Sunday 3 he arranged to give his friends Fitzsimons and Monk lunch at his digs in 29 Walton Crescent, then
they joined Motz for tennis for a whole afternoon at
the Oriel grounds in Southfield Road. As a group they
were all bad players, but patient enough to enjoy gradually improving their
game. Jack stayed in Oriel all evening while
Winston studied Trevelyan. He was there again the
next evening enjoying a little beer with Motz.
Jack was back the next weekend on Sunday 10 to walk with Monk round
Christ Church meadows, go for lunch with Motz, then
spend another joyous tennis afternoon at Southfield Road; Sellars
and Sleeth joining in to make it a six this
time. All had tea together in Monk’s room. Jack Mitchell stayed on
working at German texts for three hours while Winston Monk worked on at his Trevelyan.
An unexpected outburst
The next day Monday 11 Winston got a
surprising letter from Jack saying that he could no longer bear his ways which
irritated him, and that they had better part. He felt that Winston was
evoking a different self in him, one whom he loathed. This is how he put
it: “You have two manners of speaking both of which irritate. One time you
are flattering, soft-soaping, simpering, purring, or bull-shitting. The other
time you speak from bitterness of heart in a voice which stings. First
you flatter and glut your selfish instincts with the foolishness of the
flattered, and then you sting with ill-concealed contempt. One is as
painful as the other. Having stung the bitter heart relents and tries to
ease the wound by purring. The Mitchell whom the few that knew him
remember was a quiet, helpful, unobtrusive chap, not the loathsome,
intolerable, arrogant, overbearing, obnoxiously selfish, swollen-headed
specimen, capable of using every dishonest trick of intellect, whom you have evoked…… How is it that Motz induces the one yet never the other?” Winston
took this to heart as an echo of another old friend’s criticism and added: “Well
the fault is mine, partly my manner, and partly that
I’ve never understood Jack. God knows I don’t follow him now. We shall
see.”
On Tuesday 12 Jack came to lunch in
response to Winston’s invitation “…we walked hard for 3 hours in the
afternoon, scarcely hinted at row, and so, I take it, are friends again or
still. What came over him God knows; he ought to know me better by this
time; but is infernally sensitive. We walked up the river past punts with
women and punts with men, and finally crawled through fields to get to Elsfield, a village on a tidy little hillock, with a good
view of the spires of Oxford showing like teeth of a 
saw above the trees: on a
really clear day it should make a fine photo. (The writer John) Buchan’s place is a bare block-stone two-storey
building, fair on the footpath, and doesn’t look suitable for Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of the premier dominion.
It was fast shuttered.
“The fields and trees had a
lovely golden tinge in the sunlight among the green and were a very beautiful
sight below us. Jack told me innumerable names of English field flowers:
cowslips, forgetmenots, bluebells and others, the
wild varieties from which exciting lilies, primroses, etc. have been
cultivated. The paddocks are teeming with these beautiful wild weeds.”
In the week that followed it’s fair to guess
that Jack was engaged in shepherding his New Zealand chemistry lecturer Dr
Denham around some of Oxford’s scientific facilities
and inhabitants, and listening to what Denham and Hinshelwood
had to say to each other about scientific education and research. On
Friday came the disturbing news that a Balliol undergraduate had been found
murdered in a field near Stadhampton.
On Saturday 16 about 6pm Jack called on Winston so they
could go together for dinner with Dr Denham and his wife at Iffley Road. “We had a good meal
and quite a pleasant evening. The Doctor was very companionable and Mrs
Denham very homely in a prim sort of way. I drew a rather strained picture of
Oxford life to encourage Dr Denham to go ahead with the residential life at
Canterbury College; he is going to use every endeavour to get a warden system
and tutors going, but leaving to the chaps a maximum of self-government in
contrast to the Oxford system.”
St Catherines versus
Trinity: tug of war for Jack
-“what a dust-up!”
Nevil Sidgwick
FRS
Lord
Halifax
Lindsay of Balliol
Ross of Oriel “very intelligent and obliging”
There was much to-ing
and fro-ing on Sunday 17. Jack came
round to read in the morning, Winston returned to Jack’s for lunch, they played
tennis in the afternoon at Bartlemas, and Winston put
on tea for Jack. Clearly, their
skirmishes had ended for the moment. But
at another level, University tectonics were clashing
with Jack at the epicentre. In a visit to Winston at Oriel
late that evening, Jack confided “how he had had to fight -with Hinshelwood’s and Sidgwick’s
support- to be allowed to leave St Catherine’s Society and enter Trinity.
Trinity is one of the 2 colleges that can co-opt in that way. Brooks of
St Cath’s appealed to the Vice Chancellor, Lindsay,
who, finally, upheld him on the statute he quoted. Sidgwick
then sent an appeal to the Chancellor, Lord Halifax, a lawyer, who
asserted Trinity’s ancient right. The effort was being made to help Brooks save
his face, though whether Jack’s vicious letter of this right to the point,
seemed a different matter. Jack had dealings with Oriel’s
provost, Dr Ross, and found him very intelligent and obliging –he was
representative of St Cath’s. What a
dust-up!” Professor Nevil Sidgwick FRS of Lincoln College, the author of The
Relation of Physics to Chemistry (1931) was the senior figure in Oxford chemistry in the awkward
interregnum caused by Professor Soddy’s virtual departure –in fact he had
probably been wielding a good deal more clout than Soddy for almost a decade.
He was obviously determined to secure Jack’s services by going to the very top
– over the prominent head of Vice-Chancellor Lindsay of Balliol, to Lord
Halifax, former Viceroy of India and trusted member of prime minister Stanley
Baldwin’s inner cabinet. But no matter what sensible Thurso-born
Provost Ross of Oriel was prepared to concede on
behalf of St Cath’s, Brook
the combative head of this non-collegiate Society was not going to let Jack go
without a fight.
Thursday 21 saw the start of eights
week and Motz and his team kept Oriel
I at the head of the river. On Friday 22
they kept their place with New and Magdalen behind
them; Jack came over to Oriel in the evening to play
chess. On Saturday Jack Mitchell was
round again, and on Sunday 24 Fitz, Stewart, Sellars, Sleeth, Mitchell and
Monk played tennis at the Oriel courts, enjoying it
greatly: Jack returning with Winston for tea.
Jack Mitchell, Gunther
Motz and Winston Monk against Wilfrid
Sellars, Matthew Fitzsimons
and Charles Sleeth
On Monday 25 May Jack photographed Gunther
Motz at the start of the race, with great crowds
watching, Oriel kept the lead. Jack watched the
rowing on Tuesday and came over to Oriel bringing
medicine for Fitzsimons’ athletic foot. Eights
week ended on Wednesday 27, Oriel rowing flat out,
coming in a length and a half ahead of new and showing its clear supremacy on
the river, as a great many very beautiful visitors watched under overcast
skies. On Friday 29 Jack called
again for a walk with Winston out to Headington Hill,
to get a long view of Oxford spires from Pullen Lane, then back to beat him
badly at chess.
A curious discussion
Jack was over again for tea on Saturday
30 and a curious discussion about Dr Denham, who, in his recent
visit from New Zealand, had not taken the
slightest interest in the excellent labs he’d been shown at Oxford. He might have learned a
lot that would have been useful back in Canterbury University College. Instead, he’d quizzed
Jack about the different masters at the Christchurch Boys High School and criticized some of
them himself. Denham was looking to find
a new headmaster there. He was also
looking to change the nature of Rhodes scholarships in New Zealand. What he wanted to encourage was scholarships
to Oxford for graduates who’d done
some teaching work at home. These might then return to New Zealand to become headmasters of
schools for which there was a continuing paucity of good men. He had written to C. K. Allen at Rhodes
House along these lines. Wondering what chance Denham had of putting this idea
across, Jack was convinced that he must have an enormously swollen idea of his
own importance.
Jack had gathered that Denham and Hinshelwood shared a dislike of Rhodes scholars “from
unfortunate experience.” So he now
turned the spotlight on himself. He was not a Rhodes scholar
but something very similar. And he did not like what he saw, “thinking
inwardly a lot and disparaging himself for his lazyness
and complacency and lack of ambition to get ahead. He had been riding on the
crest of a wave and he felt if he didn’t look out it would soon deposit
him. His memory was so good that he had
not had to work as hard as others had, and he had become intellectually
lazy. Most of his cracks, I could see,
applied to me too. He said we would get
on better if I stopped regarding him as a tin god. Really he sets himself infernally high
standards.”
It was time for another uproariously
enjoyable tennis match on Sunday afternoon for Motz,
Stewart, Mitchell and Monk. Afterwards, joined by Sellars
and Fergusson, they had a solid argument about Germany and Hitler, Sellars and Stewart leading the charge and Monk backing up Motz.
June 1936
On Wednesday 3 Jack went out for
coffee after dinner with Motz and Monk to Stewart’s.
They discussed various ways to make money quickly, from gold in New Guinea to gold in South Westland, New Zealand.
“A good man
at Göttingen”
On
Saturday June 6, Jack talked for an hour or so with Winston and their American
friends Fitz and Sleeth.
Matthew A Fitzsimons was later professor of history
and psychology at Notre Dame, and Charles R Sleeth was
a philologist student of Tolkien and Onions who later
edited Webster’s Third. Sleeth had an
invitation to meet the Emperor of Abyssinia in London because he’d contributed a
pound to the Abyssinian defence fund, but Jack had his own tale to tell. “Jack
it seems has no option but to leave Oxford for Göttingen
because Brook, the censor of St Catherine’s Society, will resign if he is
admitted to Trinity. It is a real shame; though Brook (Revd. Victor
J. K. Brook 1887-1974) has some case, he is ruling out all possibility of
reasonable settlement by threat of going to resign if his view is not
upheld. It means that Jack will never have the advantage –however small
it may be- of belonging to an Oxford College. The old President
of Trinity, in his nineties, would admit Jack right away and let Brook, who is
hated here, resign and be damned to him. There is a good man at Göttingen: probably Jack will spend part of his time in Germany with me in the vac. Ods bods.”
The
long-serving, ever-partisan but not-quite-so-elderly President of Trinity was
Herbert Blakiston (1862-1942), and among the seven
younger Fellows (the fellaheen) on Trinity’s Governing Body available to fight
Jack’s corner were his tutor Cyril Hinshelwood and
the respected New Zealand ancient historian Ronald Syme.
For
a while the outcome of the battle was uncertain. On Thursday 11 June,
Jack called round to show Winston some Auckland Weeklys
he’d been sent and explained how he had got thoroughly tight with Hinshelwood the previous night. It was his first experience
of this, as he’d always held it before. Still dopy,
but glad; he was not too keen on things in general just now. After
Winston’s dinner in hall, Jack called in again, and the two of them walked for
an hour through Mesapotamia, the island between the
upper and lower Cherwell. “Jack is
definitely going to Göttingen.” They yarned and
worked into the night in Winston’s room at Oriel. “Then
Motz came in tight with Oliver from a pub crawl and
after we had all expressed our dissatisfaction with the world, in his old way,
threw the sherry glasses at the wall.” For this their scout Ashenhurst reported them a second time to the Dean.
July, August with Winston Monk and Gunther Motz at Engelskirchen
New friends at Trinity
1937
Haslam and Motz
Travels in Europe
Reaction Kinetics at Manchester September 1937
Back in Oxford again
On 12 October Winston called to find Jack in
Trinity. They had not seen each other since June when Jack had been Gunther Motz’s farewell guest at
dinner in Oriel. Jack was more established now.
“He has done wonders for himself, being now university demonstrator in spectrology, and tutoring in a minor way. He still
remembers his homely ways though. In the summer he made a splendid cycle tour:
Oxford – Southampton – Brittany – Nantes – Tours – Rheims
– Basel – Black Forest – Switzerland again, round and round, just near us at Grundelwald and then right down the Rhine and into Holland.
Only £16 in all and 8 weeks on the way. I believe he’s
looking better in health too”. Charles James Laubscher
(1915-1996) a South African Rhodes scholar studying
law from St Andrews College, Grahamstown,
was with Jack at Trinity and Winston walked home with him. Two days later
Jack helped Winston host a visit to Oxford by their mutual friend
from Canterbury College days, the New Zealand poet Lillian Jeffreys. Winston took her to Elliston’s for coffee and
around Blackwells and Rhodes House in the morning, then handed her over to Jack at Trinity for lunch and the
afternoon while he attended graduation at the hands of Vice Chancellor Lindsay
in the Sheldonian. Lillian was charmed by Jack
as a host, and she, Jack, Winston, and Johnny Hays (Dyson-Perrin Lab chemistry
and engineering Rhodes scholar from Montana) had tea together. Winston
hurried her back to London and that evening he first
met Lillian’s Irish-Burmese room-mate Kay Bruen, the girl he later married.
Happier times at Trinity
Meeting with E A Greswell
Repton School and physics
Arthur Barton
War work at Woolwich and Fort Halstead in the
Armament Research Department
Developing Arditron
discharge tubes to photograph metal deformation at high speed
Bristol University Physics Department
H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory at Bristol opened by Ernest
Rutherford in the 1920s has hosted the work of Cecil Frank Powell (Nobel Prize
1950); Hans Albrecht Bethe (Nobel Prize 1967); and
Sir Nevill Francis Mott (Nobel Prize 1977) as well as
Jack Mitchell and Nicolas Cabrera.
By the time his wartime labours at Fort Halstead ended in 1945, Dr Jack Mitchell
was an international expert in photographic chemistry and its underlying
structural principles. He was selected by Nevill
Mott to join his resurgent Physics Department at Bristol University and coming out of the
shadows he began to travel more widely. On September
3 1947
he was briefly back at Christchurch New Zealand to give an address to the
Canterbury Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand on “Ultra High Speed
Photography”.
Ballantynes, the landmark Christchurch store,
was wrecked by fire before the year was out
With the ability to travel
and make contact with fellow scientists in several languages, Jack Mitchell was
able to pull together people and ideas across the board. He recruited
Nicolas Cabrera, son of the exiled Spanish physicist Blas
Cabrera, in Paris to join Nevill Mott and himself in Bristol in post-doctorate work. In
Bristol Cabrera produced not only the fundamental theory of crystal growth, but
also, with Mott, an important paper on the theory of the oxidation of
metals. Cabrera was offered a post in Physics at the University of Virginia in 1952 and Jack Mitchell
was to follow him there seven years later.
Nevill Mott
(1905-1996)
Nicolás Cabrera (1913-1989)
.
as he appeared in later life
Work in progress, section being developed
Professor Thompson’s History of Bristol
University Physics Department notes that “J.W.(Jack)
Mitchell was one of the people that Mott recruited in 1945 as a result of his
war service at Fort Halstead. He was a New Zealander
who had previously spent three years at Oxford and two years
school-teaching. Originally a physical chemist, he became heavily involved in
problems of the photographic process and related matters concerning ionic
crystals. He ran a research group of half a dozen students. It was said of him
that "he works with an unusually high concentration of energy" and he
expected his research students to do the same. This was to put it mildly: one
of the students put it more bluntly by describing him as a slave-driver. He was
awarded the C.V. Boys prize of the Institute of Physics in 1955; this is given for
"distinguished work in experimental physics which is still in
progress". In the following year he was elected to the Royal Society. He
eventually left in 1959 to take up a professorship in the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, where he stayed for the
rest of his working life. Among his more eminent students we may
mention Douglas Keith who held junior staff appointments here for five years,
and left in 1957 to take a job in Bell Labs, where he did notable
work on polymeric materials. Perhaps the most distinguished, however, was E.W.J.(Bill) Mitchell - no relation. He was seconded to Bristol by the
Metropolitan-Vickers Research Labs in Manchester to take a PhD. On leaving Bristol he was appointed to the physics
staff of the University of Reading. His distinguished
subsequent career involved professorships at Reading and Oxford, and the chairmanship of
SERC. He became very influential in the politics of physics research, and
received a Knighthood in 1991.”
K.F.Tindall’s memories of the Bristol
Physics Department have more background to add: “A man who was very
particular about the quality and standard of his photographic work was Dr. J.W.
Mitchell. Since his research was into the structure and mechanism of the
photographic emulsion this was not surprising. He had a reputation for being a
hard man, certainly he was very strict with his
postgraduate students and demanded 100% effort from them. I learned to reach
his exacting standards with regard to slide making and to accept his occasional
criticism, "No, no. That hasn't sufficient
contrast" without resentment. I respected him, slightly from afar,
and on one occasion, when he was preparing material for a conference in
America, I found myself making slides for him up until 10.30 one night. I was
quite happy doing this as I knew that he would be in the laboratory until about
3 a.m. preparing material for me
to finish the next day. His manner in his dealings with me earned my full
co-operation.”
“A colleague of [Bristol
Physics researcher] Mr. Gibbs, a Dr. Van der Plank of
the Zoology Department, was interested in the problem of the tsetse fly in
Africa and Mr. Gibbs had agreed to produce a powerful electronic flash to
enable him to take high-speed photographs of their flight. The scheme was to
arrange a large box with two beams of light at right-angles crossing about the
centre of the box. Each beam was received by a photo-electric cell and a fly
interrupting the beams where they crossed would react on both cells and trigger
the flash. A camera would be focussed on the intersection. Electronic
flash tubes were relatively new developments and Dr. Jack Mitchell had brought
from America an Arditron
flash tube giving a flash of around one microsecond, but requiring an operating
voltage of 6kV. This was achieved using an induction coil from a Ford car
engine, probably a pre-war one since, as I recall, the coil was cased in wood.
A 2-microfarad, high voltage capacitor about the size of a small suitcase was
used to store the charge. The whole assembly was contained in a war-surplus box
with folding legs obtained from Thomas Best's surplus stores in Bath. The finished article was
a two-man lift. The first test firing was made with a camera set up in the
laboratory focussed on a dribble of water from the tap. The flash, though
brief, gave me green spots before my eyes for several minutes but the picture
of the water drops was most satisfactory. At the end of the afternoon, having
put away the precious Arditron, we realised that the
great capacitor was still charged to around 6KV and held an unhealthy number of
joules. We hadn't got around, in our excitement at the success, to fitting a
safety bleed resistance so the system was lethal. Neither of us felt like
shorting the capacitor with a screwdriver, a common enough trick with much
lower energies involved but not one to try on our only giant capacitor. There
was only one thing to do so we left the room, locking the door behind us, in
the hope and expectation that natural leakage would make it safe by the
morning. Even so, when I, very cautiously, shorted the terminals the next day
there was still a respectable spark albeit a small one. Safety measures were
installed and Dr. Van der Plank took it away to Africa. That Christmas he sent
Mr. Gibbs a card, the insert to which contained a magnificent picture of a
tsetse fly photographed with the apparatus. I say 'magnificent' but a giant
enlargement of the head of a tsetse fly is not a pretty sight except, perhaps,
to its mother.”
Tindall continues: “The first dry
copier system was the Xerox process. This used carbon powder, a strong
electrostatic field and heat fixing for the positive image. Because of its
application of electrostatic principles it served as a practical topic in
lectures on electrostatics. I was present at one of Dr. Jack Mitchell's
lectures to the Third Year Honours students when he, having recently visited America and witnessed the process,
quoted this instance. I remember, at the conclusion of his explanation, his
informing the class that the scheme had a very promising future and he advised
them that the Xerox Company represented a very sound financial investment. I
wish now that (a) I'd had some capital and, (b) that
I had taken his advice.” The Haloid Company
made the first public announcement of xerography on October
22, 1948,
and sold their first Haloid XeroX
Copier in 1950. Haloid received research grants
from the US Department of Defense to develop the
process in the 1950s. In 1956 Haloid formed
Rank Xerox jointly with the Rank Organisation. Rank’s optical subsidiary
was already a supplier of lenses to Haloid.
Joseph C Wilson, head of The Haloid
Company in Rochester NY
Jack Mitchell’s connection with Haloid was presumably because of their eminence in
producing papers for photo-reconnaissance. The Haloid
Company was a few years older than Jack and had been founded in 1906 in Kodak’s
home town of Rochester, New York. Specialising in
high-grade photo-sensitive papers, their new Record quality paper had led them
to great profitability in the mid thirties and with a share issue they were
able to take over the larger Rectigraph photocopy
machine company which used Haloid sensitised papers.
Wartime demand for Haloid’s specialised high-quality photographic papers for
reconnaissance increased the company’s financial position and encouraged
company head Joseph C. Wilson to look for leading-edge technical investment
opportunities in its niche market. From Rectigraph,
Haloid had inherited photochemical engineer John H. Dessauer who had earlier worked for the Farben-controlled
Ansco company. At the
end of the war it was Dessauer who first prompted Wilson to invest long and hard in
the dry-process electron-photography techniques developed by Chester Carlson,
though photographic papers would continue to provide the bulk of Haloid-Xerox profits until 1960. Fuji Film (another
photographic company with which Jack Mitchell had excellent contacts) were to
join Haloid and Rank in exploiting the Xerox
technology after 1962.
In 1955 Jack Mitchell made a passing
contribution to work at the Engineering Research Institute of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor funded by US Air Force Air
Research and Development Command (ARDC). In that year he made a lecture
tour through the United States which ARDC
sponsored. The research at Ann Arbor was concerned with the
theory of certain energy surfaces and Brillouin
zones. Part of this work was an experimental study of features of photographic
latent-image formation to contribute to improved understanding. The influence
of grain size on the low-intensity reciprocity failure was examined. The work
on photographic latent image was reported in two papers at the March meeting of
the American Physical Society at Baltimore, Maryland, by R. L. Martin, J. H. Enns, and E. Katz. They had the opportunity at the meeting
to discuss their work with Dr. J. Webb of the Kodak Research Laboratory who
gave helpful advice. “Dr. J. W. Mitchell, from Bristol, England, visited Ann Arbor on March 19-21 and again
on March 31, 1955, on his lecture tour
through the United States sponsored by ARDC. He
delivered two very interesting lectures at The University of Michigan and discussed at great
length with us the results of his work and its relation to ours. This
discussion proved very stimulating. Dr. Mitchell's attitude tended more than
previously to be phenomenological, which was particularly valuable. Also,
grateful mention should be made of the continued kind cooperation received from
the Kodak Research Laboratory. Dr. J. A. Leermakers
furnished us with emulsions especially prepared for our work on grain-size
effects.”
Work in progress, section being developed
Kodak and Virginia
In Virginia, Jack Mitchell was a
member of the University faculty for twenty years from 1959 to 1979. With
Jack Mitchell, Doris Wilsdorf and Heinz Wilsdorf (in Materials Science), Virginia became a leading
centre of research on dislocations and mechanical properties of crystals, and
Jack Mitchell’s links with the Kodak Research Laboratories where Dr Leermakers became Director in 1964 were stoutly
maintained. Jack always believed in sharing a close contact with
industry, and this was a particular feature of Bristol and Virginia during his active time
there.
National Chemical Laboratory
An interesting foray into a different sort of
work developed in 1963, when Mitchell returned to England as Director of the
National Chemical Laboratory at Teddington,
Middlesex. Headhunted by Lord Todd, Jack felt honoured by the appointment
and was eager to systematically apply his own ideas. He passionately believed in the importance of
research to long term industrial development and industrial prosperity. But he soon found himself enmeshed like so
many others in the administrative complexities and short-term thinking of civil
service and political masters. He resigned his post in frustration after
less than a year, feeling he’d been led up the garden path. The National
Chemical Laboratory did not long survive him.
Its closure had already been on the cards, and some of its elements were
amalgamated with its better known Teddington
neighbour, the National Physical Laboratory. Across the world, India’s sister
National Chemical Laboratory has since carried the torch forward to great
effect. With a heavy heart in the immediate aftermath of the NCL debacle,
Jack Mitchell was able to put across some of his cherished ideas in his Jubilee
Memorial Lectures for the Society of Chemical Industry in February 1965.
Work in progress, section being developed
Return to Virginia, marriage and retirement
Work in progress, section being developed
Jack Mitchell died in July 2007 after a long illness
at the age of 93. In the words of the University of Virginia Physics News “his research interests were in the theory of
photographic sensitivity and plastic deformation of solids. He was held in the
highest esteem by Kodak and other film companies because of his significant
work. Jack Mitchell was a fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Great Britain. Professor Keith Williams presented a memorial
colloquium in October about Mitchell’s photography research.”
Jack Mitchell gave a legacy
of nearly $1,000,000 to Trinity College Oxford to provide funds for outstanding
third and fourth year undergraduate students. His Trinity College obituary can be found here.
These biographical notes are being extended little
by little. The first impulse to record
Jack’s life came from the diaries covering the early Oxford years left by his
New Zealand friend Winston Monk, my father-in-law. To this has been added commentary published
by Jack Mitchell’s later Bristol colleagues, with some
original research. At the backbone of
the memoir are the eighty pages of Jack Mitchell’s autobiographical notes,
thanks to the generosity and encouragement of his step-daughter Jodie Fidler.
Chronologically, from the Oxford years and onwards, much
remains to be done. Responsibility for assembling the information and
commentary presented here, and for any inaccuracies, lies with me the author:
Roger Kelly roger@kosmoid.net
Sir George Thomas Beilby FRS flow of metals
Sir
James Arnot Hamilton Concorde design
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