National Life Stories an Oral History of British
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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Professor Bob Dickson Interviewed by Dr Paul Merchant C1379/56 © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk . © The British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk British Library Sound Archive National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1379/56 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s surname: Dickson Title: Professor Interviewee’s forename: Bob Sex: Male Occupation: oceanographer Date and place of birth: 4th December, 1941, Edinburgh, Scotland Mother’s occupation: Housewife , art Father’s occupation: Schoolmaster teacher (part time) [chemistry] Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks [from – to]: 9/8/11 [track 1-3], 16/12/11 [track 4- 7], 28/10/11 [track 8-12], 14/2/13 [track 13-15] Location of interview: CEFAS [Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science], Lowestoft, Suffolk Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 Recording format : 661: WAV 24 bit 48kHz Total no. of tracks: 15 Stereo Total Duration: 12:38:55 Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: The interviewee has highlighted his false starts in the recording. Please note that this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. 3 Bob Dickson Page 4 C1379/56 Track 1 Track 1 Could I start then today by asking when and where you were born? I was born in the Elsie Inglis Maternity Home, Edinburgh, on the 4 th of December 1941 and as you may expect of any war baby my earliest memories were entirely about food. I can – my first memory I think was sitting on what we used to call the bunker [kitchen worktop], watching my mum making sweets and then another less welcome memory was the taste of locust beans. Lord knows why we ate locust beans but I do remember their wiersh taste. Both of my parents were teachers. My mum was a part time art teacher at various Edinburgh schools, taught Sean Connery amongst others; that’s her highest boast. And my dad was the head of the chemistry department at a place that used to be called George Watson’s Boys College. My sister Marjorie was born two years earlier than me, my brother Wullie was thirteen months younger than me and both of these were – followed the artistic side of the family so that Bill eventually became a successful architect in London. [01.16] But it’s Dad’s achievement that I should talk about to start with because his own achievement had been considerable and so he certainly rates more than a passing mention as a major influence on me. He was the son of a long line of herring and lobster fishermen in the tiny Berwickshire village of St Abbs perched up above the cliffs on the Berwickshire coast, and he would no doubt have been a fisherman himself if it hadn’t been for the redoubtable schoolmaster of St Abbs school, who decided that dad was meant for something more academic. ‘Better things’ he would probably have called it in his less PC way than these days. But anyway this schoolmaster wouldn’t take no for an answer, and bought or lent dad a bike to cycle each day to Reston, to get the train to Duns High School and he didn’t let the schoolmaster down. So I’ve got dad’s silver prefects badge from Duns High School, and then he got a first class chemistry – in chemistry at Edinburgh University. Taught at Annan Academy and then at George Watson’s Boys College and so that was the connection made for me. Amongst other things he founded the school Combined 4 Bob Dickson Page 5 C1379/56 Track 1 Cadet Force and won the Ashburton trophy at Bisley with the shooting team he set up; he was very proud when he was awarded the MBE in military division as a result. He had lots of friends in and around Edinburgh that we marginally knew, most of the chemistry Profs and lecturers at Edinburgh University were friends of my father’s. And he was ultimately elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His heroes were Niels Bohr, Churchill and the local Nobel Prize winner called C.T.R. Wilson who had retired to live in Carlops just south of Edinburgh. He was the one who invented the cloud chamber for showing the tracks of subatomic particles and I do remember every time C.T.R. had a birthday or every Christmas the Science 6 th and 5th and 4 th had to write him a card, and I’ve still got his card – his responses to our cards. [03.42] So the point of starting talking about me by talking about – so extensively about my dad is that dad’s achievements were just as well for me, without his leap I would have probably been a fisherman too and not a very good one. And as a schoolteacher at Watsons we could afford the reduced fees for me to attend Watsons too. It was a good school, especially latterly under Sir Roger Young who came – who was ex- Winchester, but it wasn’t a public school, it was a Merchant Company of Edinburgh School and I was there all the way through from five years old till university at Edinburgh. And the teachers – the important thing was the teachers never changed; they evolved. The head of the physics department would retire or die and the deputy head of the physics department would move up to take his place and his deputy would move up to take his place. As a pupil you didn’t realise of course that all schools weren’t this way, that all schools didn’t have a rifle range or – or a full sized, Olympic sized swimming pool, or a Scottish international: Donald Scott of Langholm to teach you rugby. Or its own Russian teacher: the phenomenal Madame Semeonov who wrote the textbooks. Or its own school choir and orchestra, or its own Combined Cadet Force: the navy section with its boat, the air section with its glider and the army section with its rifles. And it’s own scout troop. So since I was embedded in Watsons from an early age as I say you never realise that all schools didn’t have these facilities, but I can see now that this was quite a special school. And to add a little 5 Bob Dickson Page 6 C1379/56 Track 1 flesh on these bare bones of what the school had, I could dwell on a few of the – of these subjects: on music, the highest group achievement that the school had was undoubtedly the singing of the Halleluiah Chorus by the entire fifteen hundred man school one year after endless bouts of Commando-style training under our rotund head of music, Pongo Hyde. I do remember that the sacred quiet pause between the fifth and final hallelujahs, which we’d been told to observe in silence on pain of death, was used as a kind of billboard for verbal graffiti by the louts who had resented [laughs] being kept in for training in this feat: the Halleluiah Chorus. But my own musical high spot was a much smaller scale: I was a member of what they used to call the Small Choir and we toured. One year we toured Newbury and Glastonbury and Yeovil and Wells. I was an alto in this choir led by Pongo. And the only other memory I have of Pongo Hyde was that he became something of a bête-noir to my dad each summer when dad had to endure the caterwauling that was coming up from the room immediately below his chemistry lab from Pongo’s room. And anyway that was – that was the musical part of fleshing out that I was talking about. On my career in the school swimming team I have only one deep and dark memory: that was the being beaten by one length in a two length race by the team from Robert Gordon’s College Aberdeen, but my opponent at the time was Ian Black and he was the world record holder at the fifty metre freestyle at the time [both laugh], but that gave me scant consolation. The man might have been hauled out having a cup of tea by the time we all puffed up, so I have no pleasant memory of the school swimming team. But nothing but pleasant memories of the Combined Cadet Force and they were in our holiday, unknown I have to say to our parents. The detail unknown anyway. We enjoyed a succession of wonderful courses run by the regular army at Otterburn, blowing up hills with plastic explosive, firing a forty-five pounder field gun entirely on our own. A bazooka, once. Blowing up bridges with gun cotton and, at the Black Rock Range at Aberdeen, setting fire to trees using tracer and heavy machine guns, and the potentially lethal backward curling flight over our heads of a 4.2 inch mortar with extra rocket propulsion strapped on wrongly and asymmetrically onto its fins.