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Professor Dan Mckenzie Interviewed by Paul Merchant

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Professor Dan Mckenzie Interviewed by Paul Merchant NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Professor Dan McKenzie Interviewed by Dr Paul Merchant C1379/24 © 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 The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1379/24 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s surname: McKenzie Title: Professor Interviewee’s forename: Dan Sex: M Occupation: Geophysicist Date and place of birth: 1942; Cheltenham, Gloucestershire Mother’s occupation: author/landscape Father’s occupation: architect Doctor Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 15/7/10 (track 1-4); 10/8/10 (track 5-7); 17/8/10 (track 8); 13/9/10 (track 9-11). Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Cambridge Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 Recording format : WAV 24 bit 48kHz Total no. of tracks: 11 Stereo Total Duration: 12:10:15 Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: © The British Library Board. Part of track 9 [01:33:35 – 1:45:40] is closed. The rest of the interview is open. Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Dan McKenzie Page 1 C1379/24 Track 1 [Track 1] Could I ask you first of all, when and where you were born please? I was born in Cheltenham, in 1942, where... I mean I’ve never actually since been to Cheltenham. My father was, was an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and he joined the RAF at the beginning of the war, and was, I think at that stage stationed in Cheltenham, right. And the, the two of them, my father and mother, decided that they wouldn’t have any children until they thought that, that there was some chance of them not being little Nazis. And so they, they... They got married because of the war, at the beginning of the war, because they thought otherwise they were going to get separated, but didn’t have any children until, well I was the first and then my brother was born fourteen months later, right, in 1943. And that, that was, you know, that was the start really. Do you know how your parents met? Yes, I think I do. I think they, they... I, I think they met at an art exhibition in London. Because, most of my mother’s boyfriends before that had been, you know, very active. I mean they, she was friends with the people in the Blue Boat here, and she went walking with them in the Lake District on, on many occasions. She also knew Fred Hoyle rather well, because, they both came from Yorkshire, and they both at that stage had very thick Yorkshire accents, which she entirely lost but Fred kept right up till he, the time he died. And, my father was, had an interest in the arts which she really hadn’t come across before, and, and, she found that very attractive, and that was why they got married. So she met him at the exhibition, at an art exhibition? I think so. I, I... Yes. I mean, more than that, I don’t know. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Dan McKenzie Page 2 C1379/24 Track 1 Yes. I, I never pressed either of them on that, you know. I would guess that he picked her up, but I, I don’t know. [laughs] [02:31] Would you know how she came to meet Fred Hoyle? Both being... No I don’t. She had... I mean... [pause] She, she came from a, a very very poor background in Leeds. Her father was, essentially a labourer who shovelled coal into the power station, and they lived in a small back-to-back house in Leeds. They must have been, I mean, I think particularly her mother, who I knew very well in old age, must have had some sort of, of scientific knowledge, because, my mother was, was given milk, and so she didn’t develop rickets. And, and she was quite tall, she was five foot ten or something, she was a large woman, not, not heavy but just tall and powerful. And all the children, she told me, who she played with, all had rickets, and she, her legs were absolutely straight as anything. So whether it was, was her mother or father who knew just a little bit of medicine enough to spend money on, on, you know, decent food, I don’t know. Mm. [03:51] And then she went to Leeds Grammar School, and did outstandingly well, I mean one... I mean there were, in those days, 200 state scholarships, and she won... for both men and women, and she won one of those. And, then she wanted to come up to Cambridge to read English at Newnham, and she came up for an interview, and, [laughs] she never forgave them for this, they made her read aloud, right, to show her that she had this dreadful accent and therefore was not fit to be admitted to this college of young women, right? Which, you know, thank goodness now wouldn’t... [laughs] You’d get the sack for doing that I’m glad to say. So she went to Royal Holloway, right, as, as an undergraduate, and, and loved it, and, read English there. And was going to go on to do research in English, and then her father died, and she © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Dan McKenzie Page 3 C1379/24 Track 1 then went back to, to, to... well, where they lived then, which was Bardsey, which was a small village outside Leeds, to, to run a shop with her mother really to, you know, to look after her mother. [05:12] And, then she got qualified, then she decided she would get qualified. She couldn’t... I mean, as a, a physiotherapist, and came back to London and got qualified, and did various things then. I mean, worked as a, a physiotherapy nurse or practitioner or whatever it’s called. The thing I remember her telling me about was, was something called a Wimshurst machine, right, which is, I know it from physics. It’s a gadget for generating very large electric voltages. And you had to... And it’s, it’s, it had a shellac disc which you had to rub with fur, and then this stored the electricity on capacitors, condensers. And you gave people shocks in their head from, from this. And it would only work when the weather was dry, right. And you rubbed it with ginger cat hair, right, and with gold dust, right, to get it to work. So... And the place where this was done was, was, was Paddington. And... So, you had the telephone numbers of your patients, and when the weather as right you would ring them up and get them to come along and give them shocks. I think, it must be about, against depression, but I, I don’t know much about it. [laughs] But she thought it was completely bizarre. [06:48] And, as a child she, she had been very interested in botany, right, and that was, I mean, was really exposure to her that got me interested in that science before I came across maths and physics and stuff. How had she pursued that interest as a child? Oh, just, just going into the country and, and, I mean, round Leeds the countryside is, I mean, north of Leeds where, you could get to... If you went on the tram, she told me, to the end of the tram line, you could then walk into the countryside, and she used to do that sometimes instead of going to school, right. And she used to collect the plants, and, I still actually have her original book. I’ll show you. Where are we? She... [looking for book] What’s happened to it? Johns, it’s called, but we removed it from, from the house when she died. [pause] No, she didn’t give it to me. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Dan McKenzie Page 4 C1379/24 Track 1 And that’s Flowers of the Field. Yes. [07:55] You mentioned that you, you came to know your maternal grandmother... Yes. ...well. Yes, she... What can you tell me of, of her? She was, very much... I mean, she was working class, and she really found it quite hard to adapt to, you know, our life and, and her daughter’s friends, and, and, she and my father never really got on. He was a very very difficult man, really, really difficult. But she and he never really hit it off I don’t think. My mother was, was, you know, she comes through in her writings as very sort of, sort of, tentative and, and aesthetic.
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