THE MAGAZINE OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE ISSUE 27 | 2015 pelican

Professor Sir Colin Blakemore INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER SEE PAGE 4 Dr Sarah Bohndiek MEDICAL PHYSICIST IN CANCER RESEARCH SEE PAGE 12 Dr Elena Kazamia RESEARCH FELLOW IN PLANT SCIENCES SEE PAGE 24 Sir Colin Blakemore INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER FOREWORD SEE PAGE 4 Dr David AN INTRODUCTION FROM THE MASTER Greaves FELLOW IN ELECTRONIC We are delighted to present this edition of the Pelican, ENGINEERING SEE PAGE 38 another fine and beautifully illustrated production from Liz Winter and the Development team. Sometimes I wonder whether we should not persuade them to turn the camera on themselves, since we owe a lot to them for their effective work both in PAGE GUIDE Corpus communicating news and events to alumni, and in fundraising to help meet the needs of the College and 3 THE MASTER’S INTRODUCTION Blues particularly the students. 4 SIR COLIN BLAKEMORE A highlight of this edition is an interview, kindly conducted and written by Simon 12 DR SARAH BOHNDIEK BY KATE POSKITT UNDERGRADUATE Heffer, with Colin Blakemore, the neurobiologist, who for some years has been an 18 DR JOHANNES KAMINSKI IN PPS Honorary Fellow of the College, and was honoured with a knighthood in the 2014 24 DR ELENA KAZAMIA Birthday Honours – long overdue, in the opinion of many. We are privileged to have SEE PAGE 44 this fascinating interview between Pelican covers. 32 DR BEN PILGRIM

38 DR DAVID GREAVES The issue also features pictures and interviews with several of our Fellows, with particular focus on some of our early-career Research Fellows. You will be intrigued to 44 SPORTING BLUES – KATE POSKITT find out more about their areas of expertise. 48 ISABELLE KETTLE

52 RYAN AMMAR AND BEN POPE Have a look too at Kate Poskitt’s piece on Corpus Blues. As well as our College teams, who compete in a wide range of inter-college competitions (sometimes joined up with 56 CORPUS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR DR PETER MARTLAND other colleges, but often as Corpus alone competing against much larger colleges), Dr Johannes Dr Elena we have a significant number of individuals who win places in University teams, Editor: Elizabeth Winter Kate herself being one of them. This article celebrates their achievements. Managing editor: Jane Martin Kaminski Kazamia Assistant editor: Sarah Gordon To complete this bumper issue, the Development Office have prepared the annual Editorial assistant: Elizabeth Abusleme ENTER THE RESEARCH FELLOW Donor Report, which is also enclosed. This contains short profiles of some of our donors Photography: Phil Mynott WORLD OF IN PLANT SCIENCES and feature articles by some of the students who received travel grants as a result of Graphics: Elizabeth Abusleme donors’ generosity. Publication of the Donor Report also gives me an opportunity once LITERATURE SEE PAGE 24 Produced by Cameron Design more to thank our benefactors, the vast majority of whom are alumni and parents, who SEE PAGE 18 01284 725292 are doing so much to help the College keep its position as a place of world-class learning and research. www.corpus.cam.ac.uk @corpuscambridge

Dr Sarah Dr Ben Stuart Laing Bohndiek Pilgrim CANCER FELLOW IN RESEARCH CHEMISTRY SEE PAGE 12 SEE PAGE 32 Dr Peter Martland CORPUS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR SEE PAGE 56 PROFESSOR SIR COLIN BLAKEMORE INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER (m1979)

THERE IS NO POINT EVADING THE ISSUE: PROFESSOR SIR COLIN BLAKEMORE IS SIMPLY ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCIENTISTS IN THE WORLD TODAY AND HE IS A CORPUS ALUMNUS – HE CAME UP TO READ MEDICINE IN 1962, AND HAS BEEN AN HONORARY FELLOW FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS.

His CV reads like a history of scientific He has specialised in the study of vision activity in the last half-century – he has and the development of the brain in early lectured all around the globe, broadcast life. Universally respected by his peers, on radio and television, written books Sir Colin has also won a wider audience and for national newspapers, chaired, through his media appearances, where he won prizes from and been honoured by performs the public service of explaining too many scientific institutions to science in straightforward terms to those mention, been chief executive of the who might normally struggle to Medical Research Council and taught at comprehend it. He is a prominent Cambridge and Oxford – where he was humanist and rationalist. He is also a keen appointed Waynflete Professor of runner and has completed 18 marathons. Physiology at the age of 35, three years after being the youngest person ever to He was knighted in the 2014 Birthday give the Reith lectures. Honours, scandalously late in the view of most in his world. The knighthood that Now a youthful 70, he works in an office normally attends heading the MRC – overlooking a leafy Bloomsbury square which Sir Colin did from 2003 – was, in the Senate House of London according to media reports, considered University, where he is Professor of difficult for someone who had attracted Neuroscience and Philosophy – a controversy in the 1990s by his reasoned remarkable and intriguing combination and principled commitment to animal – in the Institute of Philosophy. testing in the interests of medical science, which resulted in threats on his life, letter bombs and physical attacks by animal rights extremists.

HE WAS APPOINTED Sir Colin’s parents lived in Coventry but, WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF that city having been devastated in the Blitz, he was born at a Forces Hospital in PHYSIOLOGY AT THE AGE OF Stratford-upon-Avon, because his mother 35, THREE YEARS AFTER had served in the Land Army and his father was in the Air Force. ‘I was only there BEING THE YOUNGEST for 24 hours, but it was a nice distinction to PERSON EVER TO GIVE THE be born in the same town as the Bard,’ he says. He attended Coventry’s King Henry REITH LECTURES. VIII School and from there won a scholarship to Corpus.

The Pelican 2015 04 05 PROFESSOR COLIN BLAKEMORE INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER

‘I was certainly interested as a small boy presence. I applied and got an invitation in the more traditional aspects of to an interview with Michael McCrum science, such as observing animals and [then senior tutor]. But I also had an collecting plants – the stamp collecting invitation from Queens’, which was in the approach to science,’ he continues. ‘I same group, and they said there was didn’t come from the sort of background nothing to stop me seeing them too. So I that understands the range of had the interview there and they offered professions open to anyone who was me a place before I’d even had an interested in science, but I realised at interview at Corpus, which presented school that I was pretty good at science something of a moral dilemma. But I because I did well at it. Medicine was the played it straight, told Corpus, and they one profession I was aware of, because asked to see me before making up my I’d had some illnesses when I was young mind. Michael McCrum offered me a and I knew and respected doctors. I place and I leapt at the opportunity.’ didn’t know about lawyers and bankers, not to mention politicians. So when I did He went to America in the months well enough at school, medicine became between securing his place and going up. sort of inevitable – not just because I was ‘I had this romantic idea of working my interested in it, but because it seemed passage on a banana boat. I remember like a good job, with some prestige and a going to Liverpool and wandering round reasonable salary. My family were the docks and even finding a boat that I pleased, and so was my school.’ could have worked my passage on, but it would have taken seven weeks to get there. So I told my father what I wanted to do and he lent me £100 – which was HE WAS IN JFK’S AMERICA incredibly generous of him. I blew £60 of FOR THE LEAD-UP TO THE that on a one-way fare on Aer Lingus to New York, which was the first cheap CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND transatlantic air fare. It did concentrate THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE the mind rather, that I had spent 60 per GROWTH OF THE CIVIL cent of my resources just getting there.’ RIGHTS MOVEMENT. He was there for four months, and travelled all over the country working in hotels, cleaning up people’s gardens and It was just after his O levels that he realized delivering cars. ‘Those were the days, medicine was for him, when his science when you could just walk into a car results were marginally better than those delivery company and get work. I was in arts subjects. ‘But I’ve always been under age to do the job – I was still only interested in the arts, and in fact did A 17 – but they were happy to bend the level art as an extra subject with my rules. I remember driving an ice-cream sciences.’ He prospered in the VIth form, truck all the way from Washington DC to and ‘approaching A levels, teachers at Chicago, which was deadly – it was a tall school started to say they thought I might vehicle that, around 50mph, developed be good enough for Cambridge. I was this terrible terminal wobble. But once Michaelmas 1962. ‘For a working-class He remembers some of his based on science. Nowadays there’s He knew by the end of his second year willing to take the year off that was you got through that it was fine.’ kid from a Midlands grammar school, contemporaries becoming disillusioned more emphasis on clinical medicine, but that he wanted to pursue the scientific necessary then to do entrance exams, and Cambridge in the early 1960s was a by that atmosphere, but says that ‘most undergraduate teaching is still rooted in route, and was already fascinated by my long-suffering parents, who were not He was in JFK’s America for the lead-up to much more socially intimidating place of us just dealt with it, put all the crap to basic science, unlike most medical neuroscience and particularly the study of in any way academic – neither had gone the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam than it is now. There would be questions one side, and got on with making the schools elsewhere.’ This research-based vision. So for his third year he chose to to school after the age of 14 – were war, and the growth of the civil rights at breakfast such as ‘are you going out most of all the opportunities that approach ‘was what shifted my interest pursue his interest in the brain by studying incredibly supportive. So I did the exams, movement, and the experience had an shooting today, Blakemore?’ And I did go Cambridge offered to all of us.’ from medicine to science’. He physiology and experimental psychology, and went to Cambridge. important bearing on his subsequent shooting one day. I shot a pigeon, and remembers his director of studies, Peter rather than more conventional choices career. ‘I visited Berkeley and was was so appalled by what I had done that He found the teaching superb and it Lewis, as being ‘wonderful, very such as pharmacology or pathology. He ‘My father drove me to Cambridge to incredibly impressed ; it was an I vowed never to hunt anything again.’ ‘really inspired me’ because of the supportive, and totally devoted to the talks of the ‘atmosphere of excitement’ choose a college to apply to. I liked the extraordinarily liberating place even for He recalls that his cohort of medics in personal contact with leading lives and interests of his students.’ engendered by research on vision at name and the look of Corpus and the someone just passing through – and I Corpus was most definitely not stuffy, researchers. His teachers were ‘standing and, significantly, he was ‘very supportive Cambridge in those days, which steered diminutive scale. I loved the Old Court. vowed that if I ever had the opportunity to but ‘there was a very obvious presence up in front of us and telling us of the of those of his students who were him into his subsequent career, though it Perhaps it didn’t have the glamour of work there I would.’ He did his PhD there. of upper-class toffs’ in Cambridge latest developments in research. Even for thinking about a career in science was not until after his PhD that he finally King’s or Trinity, but it had gravitas and He remembers going up to Corpus in more generally. medics, the curriculum was entirely rather than medicine.’ ruled out medicine.

The Pelican 2015 06 07 PROFESSOR SIR COLIN BLAKEMORE INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER

is like to have a visual experience, as the obvious. I wonder whether he ever opposed to an auditory experience or a sleeps, and he says he fears he probably touch experience. And this turns out to sleeps too much. be a serious scientific question. In my current research I’m now asking ‘how And he says, with innate modesty, ‘if I get HE CONCEDES THAT THE could the brain ‘know’ whether physical things done it’s only by doing them less CAPACITY OF MODERN activity inside it represents a visual-type well than I should,’ not a complaint that experience, as opposed to, say, an is widely made about him. ‘One of the SCIENCE TO ALTER PEOPLE’S auditory-type experience’.’ things that I’m trying to do, connected LIVES CAN BE FRIGHTENING with the research grant, is to work with He illustrates his point. ‘Let’s say you’re the world of creative arts. There are now AND INTIMIDATING. driving down the road at night, it’s raining, many artists who want to incorporate and you see something in the road – it scientific ideas and results in their work. could be a cow, a person, a fallen tree. You One of the main themes in our research might not know what it is, but you never is the way the senses interact with each have any doubt that you are seeing it other, and many visual artists, composers, rather than hearing it. It’s a very robust musicians, chefs and other performers aspect of our perceptual experience, but are also interested in the interaction of not one for which there is an obvious sensory experiences. So, I think we can physical explanation. Nerve impulses learn from each other. We’re also working come into the brain from the eyes and with the Tate, trying to evaluate what from the ears, but the chemistry of those people get out of visiting galleries and impulses is identical. So what is it that museums. And we hope to make a makes the brain ‘know’ it’s seeing documentary film about the project.’ something rather than hearing it? Especially when we know that different He has never relented in his passion for aspects of a visual experience – the colour, art. He knew Francis Bacon, and he the form, the distance, the movement – knows and works with Patrick Hughes, are all being processed by different parts David Hockney and many other living of our brain. How does the brain attach a artists. ‘I’m trying to persuade the visual label to all the different National Gallery to do an exhibition on components of things that we see?’ the representation of halos in Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite I ask him how we know we aren’t painting’. He says he is becoming ‘very hallucinating, and that what we see is interested’ in what the brain does when actually there – and he tells me that four a person has an aesthetic experience, per cent of the population do indeed whether looking at a work of art or have ‘extra’ sensory experiences that the listening to a piece of music. rest of us do not – they have synaesthesia. ‘Many synaesthetes see We come on to the question of his role in coloured shapes floating in front of them communicating science to the masses. He He won, but postponed, a scholarship to Fast forwarding to the present day, he calls ‘a very physicalist approach to the He explains his method as ‘trying to put when certain words are spoken, such as disclaims having a ‘mission’ to do this, but St Thomas’s Hospital to study clinical his current role ‘a post-retirement real job ’. philosophy of mind. People around together the type of reasoning and the days of the week. They can reliably says ‘I have always liked performing, from medicine, and then won a Harkness He was given a one-year extension here like science, admire science, and questioning that philosophers delight in, match their imagined colours to real an early age.’ He was in the Footlights – fellowship, which he used to do research beyond normal retirement age at Oxford, are hungry to know about it and to with the scientists’ ability to answer colours and with brain scanning we can ‘my great contemporaries were Eric Idle, at Berkeley on vision with the leading because of the time that he had spent at incorporate it into their thinking. questions. So we hope the debate will detect activity in the visual areas of the Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor’. neurophysiologist Horace Barlow, who the MRC. ‘But I’m now emeritus in Oxford, I was very fortunate too to arrive here throw up questions that can be brain, corresponding to the colours and Jonathan Miller is ‘a very good friend. But had gone from Cambridge a year before. although I still have a lab, a grant and a just as the Arts and Humanities answered empirically, but which spatial location of their ‘hallucinations’. he both benefited and suffered from He arrived there in 1965, just in time for post-doc there and I go there at the Research Council announced a major scientists have never thought of.’ He In that sense these experiences are real.’ success in the Footlights. He has had Flower Power, and found the place even weekends to work and write papers. But it funding theme called ‘Science in gives an example. ‘I couldn’t believe, He calls this ‘the inappropriate crossing phenomenal success as a director, but more exciting than he had remembered. was wonderful to have an opportunity at Culture’, and I got one of three large when I arrived, that really serious of modality boundaries’. So if perceptual was interested in neuroscience too, and this stage in my life to make a major shift grants – a £2m grant. Some grants in philosophers were still hung up on the philosophy is a discussion of how we see still feels torn by doubt about whether However, Americans of his generation in my work. I’m getting to understand the humanities are about three and question of how many senses we have. the world, what Sir Colin’s work is trying he made the right choice.’ Having always were now being drafted to fight in more how the humanities work and even sixpence for a rubber and a pencil This might have been an interesting to discover is the physiological reasons enjoyed performing he says it ‘was natural Vietnam. ‘A lot of graduate students were trying to break down some of the barriers sharpener. But this is real money, to question for Aristotle, but now? We know for why we see the world in that way. to keep on doing so, through getting very twitchy about that possibility,’ between the arts and the sciences.’ do a mixture of science and philosophy how many different forms of specialised communicating about science. I suppose he recalls. He was active in anti-war and to try to integrate the two, around receptors we have in our bodies –more Asked what else he is doing at the there was an element of mission, yes. demonstrations and was even nervous He says he has been fortunate to come the question of how we perceive than 100. But then I realized what the moment he answers ‘too much’, Given the background I came from, and about the possibility of deportation. to a philosophic institution that has the world.’ philosophical issue is – it’s about what it which from his CV is a statement of realizing how lucky I was to learn about

The Pelican 2015 08 09 PROFESSOR COLIN BLAKEMORE INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER the beauties of science, I do like having He is concerned with one ethical question the chance to convey that story to that does not often arise in debate among others, particularly young people, and scientists: that most research is paid for, in to make them realise that anyone can one way or another, with public money. contribute to science, irrespective of ‘We have a duty to report back to the their social background.’ people who fund us, and the whole of HE IS CONCERNED WITH ONE society has a right to know what is going ETHICAL QUESTION THAT As to the ethics of science – he has written on and, if necessary, to intervene. So many in his newspaper columns about drug areas of science are generating DOES NOT OFTEN ARISE IN policy, embryo research and euthanasia – possibilities about which the public ought DEBATE AMONG SCIENTISTS: he concedes that the capacity of modern to be better informed – GM crops, climate science to alter people’s lives can be change, artificial viruses, stem cells, nuclear THAT MOST RESEARCH IS ‘frightening and intimidating’. He fears power, the use of animals in research are PAID FOR, IN ONE WAY OR that recognising how the power of science just some of them – and ultimately the may be outside most people’s control may public need to be involved in decisions ANOTHER, WITH PUBLIC turn people against it, and he wishes the about how science will be used in their MONEY. whole subject were more democratic. lives. But decisions can’t be made sensibly ‘It’s important to demonstrate to people without evidence.’ that science can be as beautiful as a Rembrandt, and that it belongs to them and not to an elite.’ Finally, this brings us on to God, in whom the humanist Sir Colin does not believe. ‘I feel very privileged to have had the Did he ever? ‘I think until about the age of opportunities I’ve had. At every stage in 14, I would have said that I did, but it’s like my life I’ve had a lot of luck, a lot of breaks, drinking, sex or voting – you can’t be and I want to tell young people that those trusted to make such a judgment before a kinds of breaks and luck could be there for certain age. At the age of 14 or so I lost any anyone who wants to take them.’ He refers sense of religious belief – my own growing back to a ‘pivotal’ report from the Royal commitment to science reinforced the Society in 1985 arguing that it was the doubts, concerns and questions that I had duty of scientists to communicate to the about religion. What I saw was that science public. ‘It was the age when so-called ‘telly proceeds from huge ignorance to a dons’ were looked down on by the rest of gradual understanding of how things the scientific community’. He says that probably happen. What religion seemed to there is still an element of prejudice, which me to deliver was ready-made, but he first encountered when he was doing inadequate solutions to ignorance. The the Reith Lectures. methods were very different from science. If you can learn about combustion and ‘I’ve been acutely aware of that, and have you can make an engine; it works. Religion tried to steer away from what we might didn’t seem to work in that way. It rests on call the ‘quiz show’ aspect of public assertions rather than empirical evidence.’ engagement.’ He worries about some of his colleagues who enjoy the fact that He exhibits a cool rationalism in his every media work is not subject to the strict pronouncement. In his new and manifestly constraints on communication between very fulfilling role, Sir Colin is far from done researchers, and who go into the media with empiricism. and give their opinions ‘liberated from peer review – it can be intoxicating to www.corpus.cam.ac.uk some scientists.’ @corpuscambridge

The Pelican 2015 10 11 CANCER RESEARCH

THERE WAS A MOMENT IN A RECENT GOVERNING BODY MEETING WHEN THE MASTER CONGRATULATED SARAH BOHNDIEK ON RECEIVING YET ANOTHER AWARD FOR HER RESEARCH IN MEDICAL PHYSICS AND JOKED THAT HE HOPED SHE WOULD GET ONE DR SARAH NEXT MONTH OR THE GB MIGHT FEEL LET DOWN.

ALTHOUGH THIS REFERENCE TO HER ASTONISHING STRING OF ACCOLADES WAS INTENDED AS BOHNDIEK GENTLE IRONY THERE CAN BE FEW SCIENTISTS AS YOUNG AS SARAH WHO HAVE ACHIEVED SO MUCH AND WHO WEAR THEIR SUCCESS SO LIGHTLY. SHE HAS IN THE PAST FEW MONTHS WON INTERVIEWED BY LIZ WINTER THREE MAJOR AWARDS; THE WISE RESEARCH AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH BY A FEMALE-LED TEAM; THE INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS’S PATERSON MEDAL FOR DISTINGUISHED RESEARCH IN APPLIED PHYSICS; AND THE MARIE SKODOWSKA-CURIE PRIZE FOR NURTURING RESEARCH TALENT. YET HER ENTHUSIASM FOR HER SUBJECT REMAINS AS INFECTIOUS AS IT WAS WHEN SHE FIRST APPEARED IN CORPUS AS AN EVEN YOUNGER RESEARCH FELLOW BACK IN 2009.

Today, at the age of 30, with her own research When you first meet her, Sarah’s manner is friendly group and a string of peer-reviewed publications, and easy-going and for a moment this disguises Dr Sarah Bohndiek is one of a new breed of her razor-sharp mind, intelligence and scientists whose work crosses boundaries between determination. She was one of the youngest disciplines; in this case, physics and biology, and lecturers in Cambridge, when at the age of 29, improves the prospect of new discoveries she started her own lab; her focus on her work is specifically in cures for cancer. Sarah has described compelling and exciting. The Institute of Physics her group as ‘physics, engineering, chemistry meet citation for the Paterson Medal commented on her biology and medicine. We are’, she says, ‘a small, ‘great tenacity in getting experiments to work,’ highly interactive and international research team and this tenacity is apparent as we talk. whose passion is using new technological innovations to improve our understanding of She grew up in Greenwich, south east London, metabolic processes in disease.’ where proximity to the Royal Observatory sparked an interest in astronomy and physics, and she came The Paterson medal recognises her remarkable up to Cambridge, to Pembroke, to read natural work in developing advanced molecular imaging sciences. When she graduated, she went to UCL to techniques and applying them to address do a PhD in radiation physics and entered what in questions at the interface of physics, biology and 2005 was emerging as one of the most exciting medicine and it is impressive at any level, fields of physics at the interface of medicine. particularly so in someone so young. Sarah’s rapid Sarah’s goal was to improve the accuracy with career trajectory has involved working at three of which X-rays can detect breast cancer. the world’s leading research universities – Cambridge, UCL and Stanford.

Sarah is also a University Lecturer in Biomedical SHE WAS ONE OF THE YOUNGEST Physics at Cambridge, splitting her time between PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS IN the Department of Physics and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at Addenbrookes. CAMBRIDGE, WHEN AT THE AGE She holds a Fellowship at Corpus, a college she OF 29, SHE STARTED HER OWN LAB. feels particularly close to as it was here that she spent three years as a Research Fellow.

The Pelican 2015 12 13 DR SARAH BOHNDIEK CANCER RESEARCH

Traditional mammography uses X-rays that pass straight through the tissue. Any X-rays that scatter from the tissue are eliminated using special hardware, as they usually just add noise to the image. But actually, it is those X-rays that interact in the tissue at a molecular level and could therefore provide the clinician with a more relevant diagnosis than normal X- rays. In order to exploit these scattered X-rays, the team at UCL had to design an approach that was as cost effective and easy to apply as traditional mammography or it wouldn’t be taken up by hospitals. Sarah’s PhD work involved first developing mobile phone camera technology, which is cheap and widely available, to enable digital imaging with conventional X-ray sources. Most mammography is now digital, which has improved its accuracy considerably. There remains, however, up to15% error rate from sampling during histopathology of breast cancers. To reduce this Sarah then developed a system to directly detect the X-rays scattered from breast biopsy samples using the technique she had pioneered using mobile phone camera technology. This low cost system enabled a diagnosis to be made using the entire biopsy MOST MAMMOGRAPHY IS sample, directly informing on the chemical composition and providing a NOW DIGITAL , WHICH HAS much more accurate picture of the IMPROVED ITS ACCURACY tissue sample.

CONSIDERABLY. After her PhD spent studying biopsy samples, Sarah decided she wanted to understand the biology and biochemistry behind the cancer, so she applied to and joined Professor Kevin I ask Sarah how long she thinks it will be Presumably one day highly targeted tumour shrinkage by weeks or months. Brindle’s lab in the Department of before cancer treatments are tailored to drug treatment guided by sophisticated In particular, Sarah’s work while in the lab Biochemistry in Cambridge. ‘I was lucky’ each individual patient. Precision imaging techniques will successfully looked at how drugs targeted towards THAT’S THE CURRENT she says ‘that Kevin was prepared to take healthcare, as it’s now called. ‘Well, it’s treat both primary tumours and the tumour blood vessels could be used PROBLEM; WE’RE STILL on someone who had never held a already happening to a limited degree,’ metastases and cancer will no longer be to deprive tumours of oxygen and pipette and knew nothing about she says. ‘But a major problem is the a killer in the majority of cases. But nutrients, effectively starving them to NOT PROFILING ALL biology.’ She did however know cost; targeted drugs are expensive. we’re not there yet. There is now a death. Not surprisingly, she admits it is CANCER PATIENTS AT something about imaging, so her There has to be a good argument that clinical trial of the new imaging incredibly rewarding to have contributed contribution to the lab was immediately there will be a significant benefit to the technique developed in Professor to this research which is now starting to THE MOLECULAR LEVEL. valued. The aim of the laboratory is to patient to make it an efficient use of Brindle’s laboratory underway at be used in the clinic. develop imaging methods that can be funds as far as NICE (the National Addenbrookes. It uses hyperpolarised used in the clinic to detect early tumour Institute of Clinical Excellence which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of The lab at Addenbrookes was highly responses to treatment. The primary decides how NHS funds are spent) is pyruvate, an energy substrate for cells, stimulating and scientifically demanding focus of the work in the lab is developing concerned. A targeted therapy may work as a marker to visualise energy and rewarding, but there were not many imaging methods that could be used to incredibly well in 10% of patients, but consumption by tumours and how this opportunities to meet people working get a rapid and non-invasive indication you have to determine which 10% will changes in response to therapy. in other fields, so Sarah applied for a of how well drugs are working, and respond. That’s the current problem; Changes in cellular metabolism happen Junior Research Fellowship at Corpus subsequently in the clinic guide we’re still not profiling all cancer patients within the first 24 hours of response, and in 2009 joined the College as a non- treatment in individual patients. at the molecular level.’ preceding the usual measurement of stipendary JRF.

The Pelican 2015 14 15 DR SARAH BOHNDIEK CANCER RESEARCH

She loved it here, living on the top floor patient managed healthcare is not far of the Beldam Building with a view over off.’ I comment that I can see this the city centre roof tops and a quick hop opening all sorts of cans of worms and across the road to dine at high table. She that we don’t have a health service that made a lot of friends and also enjoyed can cope with a thousand anxious-well interviewing and supervising the first patients flooding GPs’ surgeries because year Natural Scientists. their loo told them they’d overdone the alcohol the night before. But I take her In 2011 she moved to Stanford point. We, the patients, both expect and University in California, to Dr Sam are expected to take charge of our Gambhir’s lab in the Department of health more than ever. And diagnostics Radiology. There, having explored the and treatment are becoming finely very high and low energy ends of the tuned by genetic analysis to treat our electromagnetic spectrum in the past, specific disease in our individual body. she settled right in the middle, using It’s an exciting time to be working in visible and near-infrared light for medical science. imaging. This is a particularly exciting regime for Sarah’s inner instrument Sarah returned to Corpus last year as a maker, as the technologies driven by class A Fellow. ‘I really liked Corpus and it telecommunications and aerospace is fantastic to come back.’ She and Andy industries are opening it up for medical got married in in a civil ceremony in the imaging. ‘Using red light for imaging dining Hall in College this summer. He is allows us to create tools that report finishing his work in California and directly on oxygen metabolism in coming back to the UK. ‘Not Cambridge, tumours without having to inject a but at least we’ll be in the same time contrast agent, using the same zone.’ I ask her what she would like to interactions as a pulse oximeter that have achieved by the end of her career? clips on the end of your finger’. ‘I’d like to think that something I developed in the lab made it into clinics in Stanford and its beguiling environment all hospitals up and down the country; in and ambient weather gave Sarah two other words, was universally available, not very happy years, made all the more so just in the big centres of excellence, and because her British fiancé, Andy Clark, made a real difference in diagnosing (now husband) was working in Silicon cancer accurately and helping to target Valley. But she knew she didn’t want to treatment successfully.’ My question may remain a post doc for much longer, so have been banal but her answer is not. It when a lectureship opened up in may be hard to believe right now, but the Cambridge in biomedical physics, she idea that one day a diagnosis of cancer applied for it. won’t strike fear into whoever receives it is a dream worth holding on to. She was successful, and was appointed as one of the youngest PIs in the University. www.corpus.cam.ac.uk She was also successful in obtaining a @corpuscambridge prestigious Cancer Research UK Career Establishment Award and Marie Curie Fellowship to start up her laboratory. Her current work focusses on trying to Professor Bruce Ponder (Director of the she think the important shift will be? However, despite the stimulation of the image oxygen in tumours, particularly in Cambridge Cancer Centre). I ask if she ‘There’s an exciting trend for diagnostics research she missed the close interaction cancers, that are accessible to infra-red enjoys being in translational science? to move from doctors to patients,’ she with biologists and clinicians that she light. A better understanding of the ‘Yes, very much so’, she says emphatically. says. The new Apple Watch, for example, had fostered for the past 5 years, and so I DON’T EVER SEE THE delivery, uptake and utilization of oxygen ‘I don’t ever see the patients, but I always interacts with the wearer to monitor and in August she took up a joint PATIENTS, BUT I ALWAYS in cancer will help physicians to identify have a clear sense of the impact of the relay information about health that alerts appointment which allowed her to suitable treatments for a given tumour research I’m doing.’ In 5 years’ time, she the wearer as soon as something spend more time at Addenbrookes. HAVE A CLEAR SENSE and hopefully also increase early hopes she will see the imaging changes. ‘I remember Professor Gambhir OF THE IMPACT OF THE diagnosis. In this research she techniques she currently uses in the lab once saying that what we need is an collaborates with a number of clinicians, being applied in the first patient trials. intelligent toilet,’ she elaborates with RESEARCH I AM DOING. including Professor Fiona Gilbert, (Head some enthusiasm. ‘One that measures of Radiology at Addenbrookes), And of all the predictions about the various parameters as you perform your Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald (Medical impact of genetics, stem cells, normal daily functions and can alert you Research Council Cancer Unit) and personalised treatments, what does quickly if you need to take action. This

The Pelican 2015 16 17 DR JOHANNES KAMINSKI BORN IN VIENNA, JOHANNES STUDIED ENTER THE MAZE OF WORLD LITERATURE GERMAN LITERATURE AND CHINESE STUDIES JOHANNES IS A RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE COLLEGE. IN HIS BRITISH ACADEMY- IN HIS HOME CITY, FUNDED PROJECT, HE LOOKS INTO THE CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN CHINA AND GERMANY. QUITE OFTEN, THE MASTER OF CORPUS BEFORE READING FOR LOOKS AT HIM WITH AN BEMUSED EXPRESSION AND WONDERS WHAT CHINESE A DPHIL AT OXFORD. AND GERMAN LITERATURE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE IN COMMON. NOT VERY MUCH, ADMITTEDLY. BUT THERE ARE STRIKING SIMILARITIES IN THE WAYS CONTEMPORARY READERS APPROACH LITERATURE DESPITE DIVERSE CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS. THE FOLLOWING DIARY GIVES EVIDENCE OF HIS ONGOING STRUGGLE WITH CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION OVER LITERATURE.

It is 8.05 AM, and I am taking a cab from in front of the rude driver, so I wave about Beijing airport to my conference hotel. and highlight: there is always a need to The driver’s eyes fixate on me through the look at old and familiar texts from new AS HE DRIVES AWAY, I CAN rear-view mirror, he asks me in English: and different perspectives. But no matter HEAR HIM SIGHING ‘On business trip?’ I explain that I will be what I say, my driver just shakes his head. attending a conference on world THROUGH THE OPEN literature. ‘Sha-shi-bi-ya, Di-gen-si, Zhen At 8.50 AM, we finally arrive at the WINDOW: Ao-si-ting, I know!’ Since I am neither an conference hotel. As he drives away, I can expert on Shakespeare, nor Dickens, nor hear him sighing through the open THE FOREIGNER THINKS Jane Austen, I decline and answer in window: ‘The foreigner thinks he can HE CAN UNDERSTAND Chinese: ‘No, I will actually be speaking understand Dream of the Red Chamber! ’’ about Chinese literature.’ He frowns and Biting my lip, I enter the lobby. DREAM OF THE looks incredulous. So I specify: ‘As it The receptionist sits behind her desk, RED CHAMBER. happens, I will be speaking about Dream absorbed by the book she is reading. of the Red Chamber .’ He gasps and breaks So I tap the bell, she comes to her senses out in impolite laughter. Eventually, he and closes her book. While she proceeds shakes his head and asks a question that to enter my passport details into the I dread and fear: ‘But how can you, as a system, I catch sight of her book cover. foreigner, ever understand Dream of the Turns out she is reading Nineteen Eighty- Red Chamber ? Generations of Chinese Four in English. She hands me over the scholars have tried to figure out this novel keys, points in the direction of the - and failed. Don’t get your fingers burnt, elevator, but I hesitate. ‘I just saw you young man.’ reading George Orwell. Do you feel you can understand it?’ She shrugs: ‘How He is right in a way. Sometimes, it happens wouldn’t I? Just take a look at all the that I open a Chinese novel - and I see cameras here.’ Spot on. And yet when nothing but clusters of random strokes somebody picks up a book and applies its devoid of any meaning. Even when my content and images to the surrounding inner dictionary is working and I world - isn’t this a rather forceful reading? understand every single character and But then, isn’t it the only kind of reading every sentence, I wonder: will I ever that allows literature to come alive? become knowledgeable enough to grasp Is there a difference between all those obscure cultural references? understanding a book and allowing But right now, I cannot admit this struggle it to resonate?

The Pelican 2015 18 19 DR JOHANNES KAMINSKI ENTER THE MAZE OF WORLD LITERATURE

many times, the text itself becomes sterile. performs the neuralgic pitch, I detect the It becomes like a joke: once you’ve heard punchline, break out in laughter - alone. it, you cannot enjoy hearing it repeated again and again. According to my job Admittedly, my technique has its description (as a critic), I should develop limitations. Yet I am surprised that my new and refreshing perspectives on old inappropriate laugh occasions a series of texts - but the more familiar I got with harsh remarks: ‘Your presentation was full those texts, the more I failed at this task. of mistakes. As a foreigner you cannot But then, one day, I had this refreshing understand Dream of the Red Chamber . experience in the University Library. I was And what Mao Zedong thought of it (that strolling through the corridors and picked was the topic of my talk) even less.’ Pitiful up a Chinese eighteenth century novel. It looks around the table. I inquire which drew me in - simply because it left me points lead to their dismissive judgement, completely helpless. The familiar but then we are interrupted by the categories appeared (‘A mythological sudden advent of white ceramic bottles. frame narrative, interrupted by ... very, very The contortion in the face of the American realist prose’), but I had to discard them professor on the other table mirrors my immediately (‘That does not go together!’). own reaction: it’s baijiu, a remarkably Intrigued, I wanted to read it in the strong and nasty spirit. As I try to decline original. After this monologue, I am politely, the emeritus professor next to me finished shaving. Time for some breakfast shakes his head violently: ‘Young man, if EVERY PAGE I READ with dumplings and hot soy milk! you ever want to understand Chinese literature, you must drink baijiu!’ Nodding APPEARED TO BE TYPICAL OF Now it’s 5 PM, and I am about to give my everywhere. ‘Li Bai, the great poet, was a SOMETHING THAT I HAD presentation. My hands are incredibly drunkard, every second chapter of Dream sweaty. But it’s not because of the current of the Red Chamber has to do with ALREADY READ ELSEWHERE. heatwave-cum-pollution, but because of drinking - so drink!’ my stage fright: this is the first time I am presenting a Chinese topic to a Chinese audience - in Chinese. As I read off my It is still early in the morning; the text and take a glimpse at the audience conference will not start until 1 PM, so I after each paragraph, I see bemused THIS IS THE FIRST TIME fetch my toiletry kit and proceed to shave faces. Some are already shaking their I AM PRESENTING A CHINESE my stubble. As I apply the foam to my face, heads. As I finish, there is polite applause. the jetleg plays a trick on my mind and my But since Chinese conferences do not TOPIC TO A CHINESE mirror image looks at me with concern: allow for immediate discussions AUDIENCE –IN CHINESE. ‘Wasn’t it tomfoolery to get involved with afterwards, I have to wait until dinner Chinese texts? Why didn’t you stick to your to see what listeners thought. guns and remain on safe ground with German literature?’ By 6.30 PM, we sit around round tables, waiters come and place large plates and My reply comes in waves, with every razor bowls on the lazy Susan. Chopsticks and stroke: ‘I started to feel too much at home spoons dig into a colourful selection of within the German, the European literary double-cooked pork, hot and sour soup, tradition. There was this point at which I mapo tofu etc. Eventually, my table would randomly flip through a book. neighbours become more talkative and Automatically those categories would start telling one joke after the other. Hm. It appear: ‘I see, realist prose, maybe mid- has been noted on many occasions that nineteenth century - most apparent Chinese jokes can be remarkably unfunny bourgeois values, yet pretty satirical - it’s a to foreigners: either these jokes Thackeray, no doubt.’ Every page that I overindulge in mother-in-law read appeared to be typical of something stereotyping or they are based on obscure that I had already read elsewhere. Actually, homophones that defy our linguistic I was wrong in the above example, and it sensibilities. Out of politeness, I try to was a novel by Jonathan Swift and not detect the punchlines, then laugh. As this Thackeray. But in many cases it worked. technique seems to work, I become more Connoisseurship often comes hand in confident. A middle-aged man with a hand with a blind reiteration of concepts. remarkably wrinkled collar is now telling And if we repeat a text’s interpretation too his favourite joke. After a while, his voice

The Pelican 2015 20 21 DR JOHANNES KAMINSKI ENTER THE MAZE OF WORLD LITERATURE

Thinking of my unsuccessful presentation, I give in and empty the first glass. In this melancholic mood, I accept every single baijiu-shot and chuck it back. After a dozen shots, I feel a hand on my shoulder: ‘Your presentation was brilliant. You belong to the few foreign SINCE CHINESE CLEARLY IS THE researchers who deeply understand SUPERIOR LANGUAGE, I WOULD NOT Chinese culture: just look at how you can BE SURPRISED IF GOETHE WERE drink!’ Phew! But then, the other people MORE ENJOYABLE IN TRANSLATION around the table look at me smilingly and THAN IN THE ORIGINAL confirm: ‘Yes, it was brilliant. I never thought of Mao’s drinking, er, reading habits in this way.’ As two editors approach me and want me to publish the article in their journal, my nostrils start to shiver. Something is escaping me. The drinking continues for another hour, then, at about 11 PM, I fall into bed with a ‘THE AGE OF WORLD spinning head. LITERATURE IS BEGINNING,

The next morning, around 8 AM, I return AND EVERYBODY SHOULD to the same round table for breakfast. CONTRIBUTE TO HASTENING Understandably, the mood is quite different today, people talk with muffled ITS ADVENT’. voices. I order coffee but am served a GOETHE sickeningly sweet, light brown liquid. As I slurp my congee, the emeritus next to me twitches my sleeve. He picks out a volume of Goethe’s poetry in Chinese translation. He says: ‘I was browsing At 8.55 AM, the conference organisers me on travels. I resolve to read one of English book market. ‘Especially when through this book and thought Goethe a bustle about and urge us to proceed to those lengthy odes, flip the book open - Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in 2012 - bit wordy. But in terms of the imagery, he the lecture theatre. I help the emeritus and squint my eyes. I find the page wasn’t it incredible publicity for us? But surely matches up to our poets.’ My eyes fetch his walking stick, then I ask: covered with swivels, columns and bars. the average reader still prefers to read are still itchy, but I try to focus: ‘Do you ‘Assuming what you said were true, then it Slowly, as I go from line to line, I want to about his or her own society and class, mean all the references to quiet wells, would not matter if we read Li Bai or fetch my Chinese dictionary - wait - I and that works in favour of Hilary Mantel withering buttercups and water striders?’ Goethe. After all, they articulate the same realise I am reading German, my mother and Zadie Smith, I guess.’ thing - just in different languages.’ tongue! As two halves of my brain connect He tips his chin with his finger: ‘I am that hardly ever communicate, I start I hold against his reasoning that the thinking of the moonshine in particular. Noddingly, he replies: ‘Indeed! And since reading line after line. After several stanzas middle classes are equally squeezed Listen, have you ever read a poem that Chinese clearly is the superior language, I pause and start to smile: ‘How can I, as a around the world at the moment - isn’t delivers a factual description of the I would not be surprised if Goethe were sinologist, ever understand German this a good precondition for worldwide moon? When you only read poetry and more enjoyable in translation than in the literature?’ Indeed, the inner conflicts of a literary exchange? Who knows. But now I never look at the night sky with your own original.’ Ouch! I am still irritated whenever comparativist never stop, an endless battle know that I can give the book agent a pill eyes, you assume the moon is square and I encounter the cultural chauvinism of against the accusation of senselessness. from my personal medical cabinet. This does not move. All those poets look up - Chinese scholars. Well, that’s what life in a pill is a quote from Goethe. In 1827, he but are blind! No matter whether it’s postcolonial world is like, I remind myself. Ten days later, I sit on the BA38 back to made the following proclamation: ‘The Li Bai or Goethe. But no wonder they (Note to self: identifying similarities London. Next to me sits a book agent who age of world literature is beginning, and were always occupied with drinking wine between two different literary traditions stores bundles of hand-written everybody should contribute to and keeping the company of beautiful seems to come hand in hand with manuscripts under his front seat. Upon hastening its advent.’ The book agent ladies! They never got the opportunity to establishing a hierarchy between them. hearing that I work on Chinese literature, smiles and seems to recall that it’s 2014 seriously observe anything.’ Sceptically, Paradoxical, yet true! ) he is pleasantly surprised and orders red already. After a while, he raises his glass LISTEN, HAVE YOU EVER READ I finish my congee. His observation is wine for us. As he opens the small bottle, and says: ‘Cheers! To the hastened advent A POEM THAT DELIVERS A certainly accurate. But then, I wonder, By 3 PM, I retreat into my room with a he jokes: ‘Have you ever tried Great Wall of world literature!’ what is the point of researching Chinese blasting headache. You can only take so wine? Well, I started using it as vinegar!’ FACTUAL DESCRIPTION OF literature – if I end up sitting at a table many Chinese presentations at a time. After a sip or two, however, his mood with a Chinese scholar who wants me to Still slightly angered by the chauvinism of changes and he starts to pour out his THE MOON? www.corpus.cam.ac.uk admit that all great poetry does the same the emeritus professor, I fetch a volume of heart. He complains that he had high thing? That poets are all equally blind? Hölderlin’s poems that I always carry with hopes for Chinese translations on the @corpuscambridge

The Pelican 2015 22 23 DR ELENA KAZAMIA RESEARCH FELLOW IN PLANT SCIENCES INTERVIEWED BY SIMON HEFFER

MANY CORPUS MEN AND WOMEN TAKE AN UNUSUAL ROUTE TO CAMBRIDGE, BUT FEW HAVE EXCELLED ELENA KAZAMIA, WHO IS IN HER SECOND YEAR AS A RESEARCH FELLOW STUDYING THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIOFUELS AND, MORE SPECIFICALLY, THE PRODUCTION OF ETHANOL FROM ALGAE.

Dr Kazamia was born in Leningrad, as it That was the beginning of her glittering was then known, to a Russian mother academic progress. After John’s she did and Greek father, and went to a French an MSc at University College, London, school there. Her paternal grandmother and then came back to Cambridge – this was from Constantinople, which shortly time to Corpus – to do her PhD. In 2013, after our meeting she was planning to having completed it, she was awarded visit for the first time, as part of the her research fellowship, but took time College Chapel trip. At the age of seven one morning in late summer to leave her the family moved to Athens, where her laboratory for an hour or two and talk to father had a travel business. Elena the Pelican . attended the English school there, a legacy of which is that she speaks the ‘I was born in Russia a few days before language flawlessly but with a slight the Chernobyl explosion,’ she says. ‘I South African accent – that having been hope to make a more positive impact!’ the homeland of many of her teachers. She lived as a small child through the end of the Soviet Union, and witnessed Recalling now that she had wished to be some of the changes there. ‘I remember a biologist ‘for as long as I can things suddenly becoming available,’ she remember’, and with the committed recalls. ‘I remember my first Snickers bar, support of her parents, she decided to which was delicious – I still can’t get try for Cambridge – and although her enough. I remember Hollywood films school warned her the odds were arriving; my favourite was ‘The Mask’ . stacked against her secured a place to read Natural Sciences at St John’s. ‘My mum was a civil engineer but she hated it, so then she pioneered tourism into Russia. That’s how she met my father. He brought Greeks into Russia, and she started sending Russians to Greece – in those days people who were allowed to leave the country, such as pilgrims or archaeologists, and then, eventually, mass tourism. She enjoyed that – she’s very much a people person.’

The Pelican 2015 24 25 DR ELENA KAZAMIA RESEARCH FELLOW IN PLANT SCIENCES

I didn’t care. So after a lot of arguing he said ‘OK. Apply. You won’t get in.’ He’d rather I’d applied to Oxford.’

However, her biology teacher, Mr Macklin, was a Trinity man, who encouraged her ambition and told her to pick a college rather than make an open application. ‘He didn’t push Trinity on me, but told me to pick one in the centre because I didn’t know how to cycle, and to pick an old one because it would be more authentic – and I picked John’s because it had a river flowing through it on the map. I thought to myselt that must be nice’

She says that when she got to John’s ‘I was just overwhelmed by how big and beautiful it was, so austere and masculine ’. But apart from the aesthetics, she was also impressed by the quality of the teaching and pastoral care. ‘It was more than I could have hoped for. They gave me a lot of support, including academic scholarships. It was definitely a home away from home.’ She was surprised that when she met people their first question should have been ‘what school did you go to?’ ‘I said to myself ‘what an odd thing to ask!’’ She realised that was how people were placed in Britain, but still MY PARENTS HAVE found it ‘strange’. ALWAYS PRIORITISED ME AND MY EDUCATION . THEY ‘I WAS OVERWHELMED BY MADE ALL OF MY CHOICES HOW BIG AND BEAUTIFUL SEEM RELATIVELY EASY. ST JOHN’S WAS’.

Then came the move to Greece, which very difficult, because everything was in reassured them that there weren’t many and everyone wants to come here. was not easy. ‘My father lost his business. English – but it really helped me to come in the Mediterranean. It was my absolute dream, this magical My mother found it very difficult to to Cambridge. ‘My school was really place that I couldn’t picture.’ She was adjust. But they pulled through. And interesting – a very small school, full of ‘I then got an encyclopedia of general ‘completely stunned’ by the town whatever I have done, I definitely owe to misfits, people who for some reason biology, and became more and more when she came for her interview at them. They have always prioritised me found themselves in Athens and needed interested in the subject at school. John’s, particularly by the sight of and my education. They made all of my to teach. Some were fantastic, and I loved the study of life. I think it’s both King’s Chapel in the moonlight. choices seem relatively easy.’ some… well not so much.They brought intriguing and exciting, and rather ‘Even now, having lived here for years, stories and a life lesson’. romantic as well.’ I still go and look it sometimes at night Once in Athens she spent two years in a and catch my breath.’ Greek school and then from the age of 10 She formed her ambitions at a very early She was, perhaps, an unusual student. went to St Lawrence College. ‘That was age. ‘I couldn’t stop reading about ‘Nothing excited me more than revising She chose John’s on the basis of the the only school that offered the full British biology. I loved reading encyclopedias. for exams. I was a geek through and University Prospectus, which her educational system, including A levels, My parents would buy them for me. through. I obsessed about everything school ‘after months of arguing’ and that was what my parents wanted for The first one I read was the encyclopedia in my textbooks.’ obtained for her. ‘My headmaster didn’t me.’ Greeks are not allowed to go to of sharks, which I read on the beach, to like Cambridge. He had a prejudice. international schools, but she got in everyone’s dismay – I told people about She had never been to Britain, but says A lot of people do. He was one of them. thanks to her Russian mother. ‘It was the different sorts of sharks, and that ‘everyone had heard of Cambridge I was 1 7.

The Pelican 2015 26 27 DR ELENA KAZAMIA RESEARCH FELLOW IN PLANT SCIENCES

She was offered the job with BP, but turned it down when she saw it would be based in Aberdeen with an early re-location to Sudan – ‘I thought, no, probably not.’

So, instead, her focus remained on biology. ‘I had come to Cambridge wanting to cure cancer, which a lot of budding biologists do. But I loved doing Natural Sciences here because of the flexibility and the options. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but then I discovered nature. I did an ecology course in my second year with biochemistry and the history and philosophy of science – those three courses have never been taken together, as far as I’m aware, and any director of studies would advise you against it.

As was predicted, my grades suffered because there’s no overlap. But I did biochemistry because I thought I I CAME TO CAMBRIDGE wanted to do molecular biology. I loved ELENA REGARDED the history and philosophy of science, PROFESSOR ALISON SMITH, WANTING TO CURE which I still think is the most interesting CANCER , WHICH A LOT course I did as an undergraduate, and ANOTHER CORPUS FELLOW , I did ecology because I’d been on a AS ABSOLUTELY UNBEATABLE. OF BIOLOGISTS DO. field trip to a forest in Surrey where I discovered I was really, really good at the subject. I fell in love with ecology. In Asked when she decided to become an my third year I did zoology taking all In an area that has become heavily experts and analyse their answers before for funding for my time in her lab. academic biologist, she answers: ‘I don’t the ecological modules and as much politicised, Dr Kazamia says she hasn’t making projections about the subjects The applications were successful, and think I’ve committed to that decision.’ plant science as I could. The one thing I ‘become politicised, but I have become they had discussed. ‘If you are talking to I was offered the Gates Scholarship As an undergraduate she considered found missing from the course was the more and more aware of the importance experts they are usually very balanced and a UK Energy Research Centre going to work in the private sector marine environment – I really love the of politics and policy. I’ve never with their area of expertise. They won’t studentship. I picked UKERC because because ‘I was incredibly driven, I ocean – and I wanted to do a proper campaigned for anything and I’ve never give you black and white, they’ll usually it was more specialised.’ wanted to be the best I could possibly degree in conservation, so I applied to belonged to a political party. I don’t see give you grey. But people seem to be be. It’s an incredibly competitive UCL to do a master’s degree in it.’ the world as binary. But I’ve noticed a incredibly quick to jump to conclusions Dr Kazamia says that the subject of her environment, and I became very real absence of science from policy. when it comes to areas outside their PhD studies – Synthetic Ecology - a way stressed – when I’m teaching She says that when she first came Of course the science-policy relationship expertise – it’s terrifying.’ forward for sustainable biofuel undergraduates who are going through across committed conservationists she is a sour divorce for both sides. production? ‘really excited’ her. ‘I sat in periods of stress I try to help as a result found their attitudes a little ‘extreme’, Few scientists know how to properly After her MSc at UCL she came back to the original meetings when algal-based of my own experience and I take their but ‘the longer I spent in conservation engage in decision making. Cambridge to do her PhD with some biofuels were discussed – I was actually welfare very seriously. and with science and policy interfaces reluctance, not because she had the first person in Alison’s lab working you realise how valuable it is to have ‘I’m still learning. I did a placement in anything against the institution but on this. I was the first PhD student to ‘I applied to various consultancies people like that. You need extremes in parliament – and just when I had got a because she wanted to diversify her come in and then it exploded – a year because that was what everybody else order to find the golden middle.’ For handle on how the civil service side of experience. However, she regarded later we had three post-docs and the was doing. I applied to management her part, ‘I felt strongly about marine things works, and on policy and Professor Alison Smith, another Corpus field grew very quickly. When it came to consultancies, IT consultancies, BP, life, and the collapse of fisheries. There legislation, I realised the importance of Fellow, as ‘absolutely unbeatable – I the title of her thesis, she and Professor because it felt like that had to be the are not many laws regulating the use of media. I’d never quite appreciated how really enjoyed working with her as an Smith ‘argued over the question mark. right decision. But very quickly I got the sea because for the most part of it much sway and influence the media undergraduate and I jumped at the Alison is an incredibly rational and very rejected from almost everything, usually nobody owns the sea whereas somebody have.’ On her placement, for the non- opportunity to work with her again. I balanced scientist and she will never at second interview, usually when they always owns the land. I felt there was a party Parliamentary Office of Science and remember distinctly our phone make a statement that she doesn’t asked me a question such as What do strange lack of understanding and a big Technology, which advises both Houses of conversation. I rang her up to ask if she actually fully believe in – so she said I’d you know about IT consultancies? gap in policy in that respect. And I Parliament on long-term scientific issues was interested in supervising me for a have to keep the question mark. We’re Obviously I didn’t know anything, discovered David Attenborough along likely to become important over the next PhD in algae biofuels research, and when not quite there yet, so we weren’t ready because at heart I wasn’t interested.’ the way!’ 10 years, Dr Kazamia had to interview she said she was, we applied together for the full stop.’

The Pelican 2015 28 29 DR ELENA KAZAMIA RESEARCH FELLOW IN PLANT SCIENCES

but instead of growing a crop in a field, she is ‘looking at how to grow algae – you pick a species that produces your desired chemical and try to grow a large crop of it. But it’s difficult, because natural ‘BECAUSE OF THE LOVE THE systems veer towards complexity.’ In a field of crops, if you don’t spray GREEKS HAVE FOR ONE them with pesticides, weeds will grow. ANOTHER, AND FOR THEIR Dr Kazamia and her colleagues have decided that a better approach is to COUNTRY, I AM SURE THEY ‘have a designed community with lots WILL RECOVER’. of species, but where we pick the players and engineer a desirable state, which is complex ab initio’.

We end by talking about Greece, which she still regards as home, and which is, she says, ‘going through a very difficult period’. She believes the media are guilty of a ‘gross misrepresentation’ of what is going on in her country. ‘There is no such thing as an absolute truth. But I think Greece is recovering. I think Greece is on the rise again. But there are changes that need to happen, especially restructuring the government. But because of the love the Greeks have for each other, and for their country, I am sure they will recover. I have absolute faith in that.’

Would she ever go back to Greece to work? ‘Yes, I think I would: probably not in the near future, as I have a lot of career development still to do. But at the worst of it, I, like a lot of educated Greek people thought it was my duty to bring back my talent and help my country. I wouldn’t rule it out one day, but not just yet.’

www.corpus.cam.ac.uk @corpuscambridge

She concedes that in a world where to do certain things a certain way, and only want to produce fuels from them we governments would be interested in energy sources are under increasing when you have a large enough portfolio mustn’t ignore basic aquaculture. biofuels for that reason, but it’s not why I pressure there are huge commercial of clients, or your production facilities are Observing how they interact with other do it.’ She does, though, hope her work possibilities for the work she is doing. big enough, can you move towards living things can have great benefits in might help wean countries – whether in ‘There are very few biotech companies something more sustainable in the learning more about sustainability.’ the developed world or elsewhere – off that I have met that I would like to work biological and environmental context. We talk about what Dr Kazamia calls ‘dirty fuels’ and, in developing countries, for, because usually the economic drivers For now I believe I can contribute and the ‘energy security aspect’ of the instead of having a debate about ‘food or of the business preclude it from doing the excel best in academia.’ development of biofuels – providing an fuel’ to change it to ‘food and fuel’. science that I find most interesting and alternative source of energy if, for important. I appreciate the constraints The conclusion of her PhD thesis was ‘not example, someone such as Vladimir Putin The work she is doing during her within which they are working – I know to ignore basic biology and fundamental turns off the gas taps to the west. ‘That is a Fellowship to an extent is trying to that to stay economically viable you have ecology – algae are living things and if we political question,’ she says. ‘I can see why replicate agriculture in aquaculture:

The Pelican 2015 30 31 DR BEN PILGRIM

I DIDN’T ALWAYS KNOW THAT I WAS GOING TO BE A CHEMIST, BUT IN HINDSIGHT DR BEN PILGRIM, WHO WAS THE SIGNS WERE THERE FROM AN EARLY AGE. AS A YOUNG BOY I WOULD MAKE APPOINTED AS A FELLOW IN MUD PIES IN THE GARDEN. THIS THEN PROGRESSED TO VARIOUS CONCOCTIONS CHEMISTRY AT CORPUS IN FROM THE CHEMICALS THAT I COULD FIND UNDER THE SINK, MUCH TO THE 2013 HAS BEEN TRYING TO ANNOYANCE OF MY PARENTS WHO WOULD OCCASIONALLY DISCOVER ONE OF PUT A SPARK BACK INTO THE THESE MORE FRAGRANT BREWS HIDDEN IN A CUPBOARD SOME WEEKS LATER. SUBJECT WITHIN THE MY FASCINATION WITH FIRE WAS ALSO APPARENT. I THINK THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF A PYROMANIAC IN MANY A CHEMIST; I MEAN, WHO DOESN’T COLLEGE, IN MORE WAYS LIKE BANGS AND EXPLOSIONS? THAN ONE. At school I studied the sciences and LCD displays, it is hard to find a product mathematics for A-level, but by then I that has not needed a chemist along knew that chemistry was my true calling. the way. Hence as a science that gives So why chemistry then, as opposed to fundamental insight into our world, but the other sciences? Chemistry to me is that is also highly relevant to everyday the central science, and by far the most life, no other science is even a close intriguing. In the broadest sense as the second to chemistry. study of matter, I feel that a knowledge of chemistry gives us a better With a strong passion for chemistry understanding of the world we live above the other sciences, I chose to in and how we interact with it than apply to the University of Oxford , where any other science. you could specialise in chemistry from day one, rather than one of the broader Why, are some things coloured, some natural science type courses that are things heavy, some toxic, some hard and offered in places such as Cambridge. some highly reactive? Why was silver I spent eight years at St John’s College, (rather than gold, copper or tin) the ideal Oxford; four to complete my MChem. choice for Corpus’ fine collection of and a further four to complete my DPhil. tableware that has lasted for hundreds of years; or why have some colours on the For the latter I specialised in organic portraits that adorn the hall faded, but chemistry, broadly speaking the others look much the same as the day chemistry of carbon-based compounds. they were painted? This might appear rather niche to some readers, but there are more carbon- Chemistry has done more than any other based molecules known than all other science I believe to improve our quality molecules put together. Carbon-based of life; from fertilisers to medicines to compounds form the backbone of life as polymers and plastics, to batteries and well as many modern synthetic materials.

The Pelican 2015 32 33 DR BEN PILGRIM WHO DOESN’T LIKE BANGS AND EXPLOSIONS?

More specifically, during my doctoral For instance white phosphorous, normally research I developed an interest in the highly pyrophoric, can be rendered air chemistry of a class of organic stable by encapsulation in such a cage compounds called aromatic heterocycles. which prevents it from reacting with The ‘cycles’ referring to the fact that oxygen in the air. It is also possible to use these are compounds containing a ring these systems for catalysis, whereby the of atoms and the ‘hetero’ that these rings precious metal catalyst is temporarily contain atoms other than carbon. The locked up inside the cage keeping it safe aromatic term (historical in origin due to until you choose to release it to perform the aroma of such compounds) describes your desired reaction in the bulk solution. the type of bonding that is present in It is also possible to carry out the catalysis these ring systems. Aromatic heterocycles inside the cage cavity itself. form the core of the majority of pharmaceutical drugs, herbicides, If you were trying to encourage a pesticides, dyes and pigments as well as fledgling romance between two of your being the backbone for many larger friends you might try to create a situation structures. Thus, the study of novel that would get the two of them together. methods for the construction of these In the same way, two molecules that you systems is a highly worthwhile are trying to react with each other won’t endeavour. do so until they are brought together. A cage system that encapsulates both I focussed particularly on methods that potential partners of a chemical reaction involved using small amounts of a metal can do more to couple them than any I STILL LIKE THE FLASHES AND catalyst to promote such reactions. A posh restaurant would in the real world BANGS OF COURSE – BUT IF catalyst is a substance that increases the and hence the cage can greatly increase rate of a chemical reaction without itself the rate of a reaction. MY EXPERIMENT EXPLODES being chemically altered. Palladium was NOWADAYS, THAT IS USUALLY my catalyst of choice – more commonly Biological enzymes are such efficient found in a car’s catalytic converter (where catalysts as they employ similar effects, A BAD SIGN! it performs a similar task of increasing but they also have many drawbacks such reaction rate). Employing modern as instability to temperature changes, catalytic reactions in the synthesis of sensitivity to acid, the need to often work these heterocycles often therefore has in water and so on. the benefit of shorter routes to the target compound, reduced cost, milder reaction conditions and fewer waste products than traditional synthetic methods.

In October 2013, I moved to Cambridge My research has now moved into the completely synthetic and have no exampl e, by mixing appropriately to take up a Herchel Smith Research field of supramolecular chemistry. Often biological components. They take the form designed edge pieces (a rod-shaped IT IS SOMEWHAT OF A Fellowship in Organic Chemistry in the termed ‘chemistry beyond the molecule’, of molecular cages (often tetrahedral or molecule often containing an aromatic TRADITION FOR CORPUS Department of Chemistry. Herchel Smith supramolecular chemistry studies how cubic in shape) that can self-assemble in heterocycle) and corner pieces (a metal himself was a distinguished organic discrete molecules can assemble into solution. This means that rather than ion) in a ratio of six edges to four corners, FELLOWS TO MAKE A chemist whose work on steroidal larger, more complex structures that are having to painstakingly construct each the formation of a tetrahedral cage is DONATION OF SILVER TO hormones led to the development of oral held together by multiple weaker cage atom by atom, you can essentially most favourable as this is the simplest contraceptives. His work had a profound intermolecular interactions. These just mix the pieces together and they will structure where each edge piece is THE COLLEGE. HOWEVER, effect on society and generated intermolecular interactions, although form the cage by themselves. This occurs bonded to its desired number of corners I AM PROBABLY THE FIRST enormous wealth for him personally, of weak, can be highly selective leading to because these numerous intermolecular and each corner piece to its desired which he donated a large amount to incredible specificity in which molecules interactions are highly dynamic in nature, number of edges. TO PRODUCE FRESH MOLTEN Cambridge University upon his death (at bind to each other. easily being formed and broken, hence ELEMENTAL SILVER IN THE the time the largest individual bequest to allowing the system to sample a multitude As well as developing new highly a British university). The University uses a The DNA double helix is perhaps the best of potential ways of assembling before complex architectures, the real MIDDLE OF OLD COURT. share of this estate to fund a few known example of a supramolecular it settles on the most stable (lowest excitement is in examining the potential positions like mine each year across the structure, where thousands of weak energy) configuration. function of these systems. The inner cavity sciences, designed to be a good starting hydrogen bonds keep each strand tightly of these cages can often bind a suitable position for an academic career. I took paired with its partner despite there By appropriate design of the components guest molecule – a molecular inmate in a up a Fellowship in Chemistry at Corpus being no permanent chemical bond for these cage systems we can direct this molecular prison if you like. This binding at the same time, where I am also a linking the two strands together. The assembly process towards the formation can have a profound influence on the Director of Studies. supramolecular systems I work with are of particular structures of interest. For properties of the guest molecule.

The Pelican 2015 34 35 DR BEN PILGRIM WHO DOESN’T LIKE BANGS AND EXPLOSIONS?

normally detached Prince Fumihito of training and the thrill of competition Japan, trying not to trip over during a provide a chance to disengage the brain 500-person Turkish line dance and from academic pursuits and I often return attempting to take a ‘selfie’ atop a hotel from training highly refreshed. The belief roof during a Taiwanese typhoon. Over the that involvement in rowing (or indeed course of my involvement, one thing that other extra-curricular pursuits) always has struck me in particular is the huge negatively affects academic performance value that is put on chemistry and indeed is untrue. I know more than one person science in general in some other countries, who topped the Honour School in Finals notably those in Asia and Eastern Europe. shortly before winning their oars in the Science has governmental support and a Bumps! Here at Corpus I have taken over level of respect from society in general – as the Hon Senior Treasurer of the Boat it’s ‘cool’ to be a chemist – far in excess of Club, where I hope the experience I have what we have in the UK. This attitude is gathered over the years is of value to the something that needs to fundamentally students running the club. I do also still change in this country if the UK wants to participate on a day-to-day level, and remain a leader in the research and hope this summer to compete in my teaching of science. 100th Bumps race.

Outside of chemistry, a big passion of I can neither see nor hear the Corpus mine is rowing. Before joining university Chronophage from my office, but it must I was not a sporty person and would run have just struck midnight. I can almost feel THE ATTITUDE TO SCIENCE a mile at the thought of team sport. it eating away the minutes of what little However, when I started as an sleep I will get tonight. Tomorrow, a IN UK SOCIETY NEEDS TO undergraduate I decided to give rowing 6.00am trip to the river beckons, then into FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE a try. The inclusiveness of the sport at the lab to see if anything has been collegiate level was welcoming to encapsulated in my newest molecular IF WE WISH TO REMAIN A someone who was usually last when cage. In the afternoon I’m off across LEADER IN THE RESEARCH teams were picked for school football. London to give my demonstration lecture to a group of Year 12 students and then AND TEACHING OF THE The fact that most people were novices to back to Cambridge to meet the first batch SUBJECT. the sport meant that we were all starting of students I helped select to study on fresh ground. I loved it, and have been Natural Sciences at Corpus as they come somewhat addicted ever since. up to college – quite an all encapsulating day you might say! Throughout my undergraduate and By designing synthetic shells that work underlying fascination of manipulating in doing so are failing to partake in the In seeing these experiments first hand I postgraduate studies I rowed, coxed and www.corpus.cam.ac.uk along the same principal to achieve this, the properties of a substance remains. primary purpose of the institution that hope many students are inspired in the coached numerous crews, winning oars on @corpuscambridge it allows us to move beyond the many I still like the flashes and bangs of course – they work for. You have to be incredibly on same way I was as a youngster. a number of occasions (with the odd set limitations of biology and access new but if my experiment explodes nowadays, the ball to teach bright Cambridge of spoons as well). Personal fitness also @cccbc_ 1828 regions of chemical space. that is usually a bad sign rather than what undergraduates and I personally find it I have also been heavily involved with the became a much bigger thing in my life, I was intending! amazingly stimulating academically. In fact International Chemistry Olympiad I now regularly go to the gym and have The long term potential of these cage there have been many occasions where an competition for a number of years. The even run a marathon, a real change systems is even more remarkable. Their Throughout my time in Oxford, I was idea discussed in a supervision has given Science Olympiads seek to select the top brought about by the decision to take up ability to store guest molecules could heavily involved in college life, and this is me inspiration for my own research. In four students from each country and pit rowing as a Fresher. make them practical transport capsules, something I have tried to keep up since addition to being a Director of Studies them against each other in an perhaps for drug encapsulation in the joining Corpus. What particularly attracts here at Corpus, I also do extensive work international competition to find the Of course there are many people around human body to ensure the me to the collegiate system is the close with admissions and outreach. In the past world’s brightest students. In the UK, as college who share my passion for rowing, pharmaceutical substance is protected contact you have with incredibly bright year I have given a demonstration lecture well as using the competition to find these but there are also many who don’t. until it arrives at the place where it is students. There is nothing more rewarding entitled ‘The Chemistry of Water’ on some students we use it as a medium to Rowing frequently gets a bad press. In fact required, or perhaps to form the than seeing a student’s understanding of 15 or so occasions to groups of school promote the relevance of chemistry to I often hear Directors of Studies beginnings of artificial cell membranes. a subject grow over the years of a degree, students either in Cambridge or on everyday society, with far more pertinent complaining about how rowing Some cages respond to external stimuli something you only get from small group residential visits to their schools. Sinking questions than those that might arise in nowadays disrupts students’ academic giving them the potential to act as supervision. Universities were of course ice cubes, saving people on the Titanic and an A-level examination. As a team mentor, pursuits. It’s somewhat ironic to note that molecular switches or stores of logic established as centres of high level the underlying chemistry of the recently I have travelled to countries all over the Corpus had a rowing team in the first May information. It is fair to say then, that the teaching; the research aspect came later. It popular ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ are just world and made many friends and Bumps of 1828, far before many subjects experiments have now become a lot is a sad fact that many modern university some of the facets of water chemistry connections through this competition. were taught here (certainly chemistry) bigger and more complicated than in my academics try to avoid teaching as much examined, naturally accompanied by the I have had some great experiences – and so it’s hardly a recent thing! childhood days in the garden, but that as possible to ‘focus’ on their research and classic flashes, bangs and smells. discussing university exploits with the Personally I find that the rigours of

The Pelican 2015 36 37 DR DAVID GREAVES ELECTRONICS ENGINEER AND FELLOW

DR DAVID GREAVES, MIET CENG, IS AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEER. HE JOINED CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE IN 1994 TO TAKE UP THE POST OF DIRECTOR OF STUDIES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE. HE HAS BEEN A FOUNDER OF TWO PROMINENT LOCAL ELECTRONICS COMPANIES, VIRATA AND TENISON, WHERE HE SERVED FOR A DECADE AT EACH AS CHIEF SCIENTIST. HE HAS ALSO BEEN A CONSULTANT DESIGNER AND TECHNICAL ADVISOR FOR ABOUT A DOZEN FURTHER UK AND USA CORPORATIONS. HE SPENT HIS FIRST 13 YEARS IN CAMBRIDGE AT ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, STARTING AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, THEN GRADUATE STUDENT AND THEN RESEARCH FELLOW. FOR ALL 33 YEARS HE HAS BEEN STAFF OR STUDENT AT THE COMPUTER LABORATORY - THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

My grandfather built his own TV set after the war in the days and the precious chip came away in my pliers. Many chips before the mass production of consumer electronics. At that were not marked, but by memorising the pin connections time it was cheaper to build your own than buy such things for 100 or so of the most popular logic circuits I could mostly and the family home in Kenton was in the north London spot the chip type from its pattern of inputs and outputs region served by the early BBC service from Alexandra Palace. determined by testing each pin in turn with a volt meter. My father was an electronics engineer as well. He worked on Each chip had to be tested before assembling into new black and white TV cameras and television sets for Rank and designs, such as my first computer. EMI near Shepherd's Bush where the first custom TV studios were built. Then he moved to IBM in nearby Chiswick and This computer was expanded and came with me to worked on modems. Although it is not surprising that I Cambridge when I matriculated in 1980 where it was used studied electronics from a young age (I still have a for space invaders, Pacman and word processing for my screwdriver I owned from the age of four), it is perhaps a degree work. I was the only student in my year to have a coincidence that, like my father, I worked on TV and modems computer; no other student used a word processor for their in my industrial career. work, let alone having built the computer and written the operating system and the word processor application. I read I built my first computer at the age of 15. Components were Engineering for one year and then changed to Computer hard to come by and most of my integrated circuits came from Science for my final two years. The Computer Science degree scrap circuit boards. I removed them with a blow lamp at the in Cambridge is only just becoming a three year degree and work bench in the garage at home and molten solder would now, as the current chair of Tripos, I, myself, am overseeing fly across the floor as the charred circuit board sprang back that transition!

CAMBRIDGE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TOWNS GLOBALLY TO PUT KERBSIDE BOXES IN THE STREETS SO THAT TELEPHONE WIRES TO INDIVIDUAL HOUSES COULD BE KEPT SHORT. IN 1994, GREAVES DESIGNED THE FIRST MODEMS TO GO AT EACH END OF THESE NEW GENERATION PHONE LINES IN CAMBRIDGE. HERE HE IS PICTURED LEANING ON A KERBSIDE BOX OUTSIDE CORPUS AND HOLDING HIS 1998 PROTOTYPE RESIDENTIAL MODEM HE DESIGNED FOR TRIALS WITH BT

The Pelican 2015 38 39 DR DAVID GREAVES ELECTRONICS ENGINEER

ACADEMIC CAREER and similar timer techniques. But performance is sometimes inversely- My academic career started when I read co-related with energy efficiency and for the PhD degree under Professor Andy sometimes not. Without energy Hopper at the Computer Laboratory. metres in the hardware and operating Andy Hopper and I worked on local and system infrastructure they cannot metropolitan area networking. He had improve their decision making. The already designed the local network for same goes for automated optimisation the BBC Microcomputer and in my work decisions provided in compiler I instigated the first high performance toolchains that are applied to the connections between separate buildings software before it is ready to run. I in Cambridge. The days of carrying have just completed a small project magnetic tapes between buildings were funded by the government's about to end. I was involved in digging Technology Strategy Board which is up the Backs and Tennis Court Road to distributing a concrete instrumentation install optical fibre cables and I proposal to my various ex-students who constructed a 500 megabit network hold key posts in technology between the Engineering Department, companies locally in ‘Silicon Fen’ and various buildings of the Computer around the world (project spEEDO). Laboratory and the Olivetti Research laboratories on the old Addenbrookes Likewise, traditional chip development site. I also built the first equipment to techniques do not give the hardware conduct high-quality videoconferencing HOMEMADE GRAPHICS CARD CIRCA1978 designer sufficiently rapid insight into over the new SuperJANET connection the energy consequences of their design between Cambridge and London. decisions. Today's designers must first decide how many computer cores to There was considerable commercial put on their chip and what type of core. I WAS INVOLVED IN DIGGING interest in all this new networking The ARM processor core, developed here technology and in 1994, together with in Cambridge, is very often selected. It UP THE BACKS AND TENNIS Andy Hopper and Hermann Hauser, I was is a general purpose design that is a COURT ROAD TO INSTALL involved in starting two companies to direct descendant of the Von Neumann develop it. Virata was started to develop design which was first built by my PhD OPTICAL FIBRE CABLES. in-home networks and Online Media for supervisor's supervisor's supervisor residential broadband access networks (MV Wilkes) in the Cambridge Computer and digital set top boxes. I wrote the Laboratory in 1949 (the first working initial business plans for both companies. computer of the modern kind). Hermann Hauser was friendly with themselves had been made. I addressed CURRENT RESEARCH WORK cost less than the electricity it uses after Cambridge Cable, the local cable TV this problem by writing a tool to produce about a year. At the other extreme, with The decision today is how many of these company, and he organised for me to virtual prototypes of the chips that could My research in the last five years has the rise of battery-operated computers cores to put on the chip and what other install digital, packet-switched network host the embedded software. In this way, focussed on performance prediction for in our phones and tablets, energy use is forms of custom cores to also use, such components in the kerbside green boxes the software team could get going the computer hardware and software. again very important. The most as for efficient video compression in a that were being installed all over the moment the first version of the chip had Traditionally, the main performance important marketing feature in such camera phone. With the design practices town for analogue TV. I also designed the been fully designed. There was no longer metric has been speed of execution. devices is the average interval between currently in use, it is only after a lot of modem to go inside the set-top box. In the need to wait the many months that The quicker a program ran the better. battery charges. detailed design work (the best part of a this way, we connected more than 50 typically elapse before a working chip is But there has been a substantial shift in man year) has been invested that the homes to the world's first video-on- delivered to the programmers. I licensed the way computers are made and used Both hardware and software design designer can get a feel for how much demand and home shopping network. the tool to a company I started, Tenison in the last half decade and for many have an impact on energy use. energy the chip will use and hence what This was 20 years ago. It was the first EDA. The company is named after a road situations, the total energy cost of a My research applies to both fronts. the battery life or electricity bill will be. version of Netflix. In retrospect, it is most in Cambridge which in turn is named computation is at least as important as I am working to increase the availability In my work, designers can get a surprising it has taken so long for video- after a former master of Corpus. All execution time. Large data centres of energy information to hardware and reasonably accurate energy prediction on-demand to replace video rentals. complex chips in iPads and smartphones operated by companies like Amazon and software engineers. with one or two day's work on a design. Cambridge's last video hire shop only are designed this way now. Facebook are built near hydroelectric The prediction might be out by a factor closed last year. dams in Canada, Sweden and Finland Software programmers are not currently of 2-to-1, but its derivative polarity will The company Tenison suffered because electricity is cheaper and provided with energy instrumentation always be correct. This is the critical At Virata we developed increasingly considerable competition and was not cooling is simpler. The cost of the optical and hence they work in the dark in this thing. The designer can now always tell complex chips. All contained embedded a financial success whereas Virata was fibre to route the Internet to such respect. Computer science and their own whether a design change is for the computers in the form of ARM (and remains) the largest private IPO in locations is far less than the cost of experience has trained them to write better or the worse. processors. There was always the European history. Both are now owned electrical cables to route the power high performance software, and this is problem of developing the software by large American corporations and elsewhere. The hardware itself will have readily measured with a stopwatch for the ARM cores before the chips I am no longer involved.

The Pelican 2015 40 41 DR DAVID GREAVES ELECTRONICS ENGINEER

My most recent work moves away from The energy saving is through avoiding the the traditional Von Neumann computer fetch/execute cycle. The instructions are design into the field of spatial and permanently placed on the reconfigurable ‘IN MY VIEW, RAPID reconfigurable architectures. Currently circuit for the duration of the execution. PREDICTION OF SYSTEM I have a project exploring the feasibilty of The data moves between the instructions these systems in collaboration with the as needed. The overall movement of bits is PERFORMANCE IS, YET Department of Veterinary Medicine low and much more effective parallelism AGAIN, THE CRITICAL which, very handily, is next door to the can be realised. William Gates Building that now houses ASPECT TO EFFECTIVE the Computer Laboratory on the West My project with the Vet School is a DEPLOYMENT.’ Cambridge Campus. Von Neumann's highly-pragmatic usability study. design for the computer is based around Genome sequencing on gate array has the fetch/execute cycle. A register called now been done in student projects the program counter steps through the around the world. In my view, rapid program one instruction at a time, prediction of system performance is, fetching it from memory and then yet again, the critical aspect to effective ‘AT VIRATA WE DEVELOPED INCREASINGLY executing it. (Charles Babbage had the deployment. Programmers are used to COMPLEX CHIPS. ALL CONTAINED same idea a century earlier but had being able to run a program almost EMBEDDED COMPUTERS IN THE FORM OF problems building such a machine using immediately after making an edit to it. ARM PROCESSORS, DEVELOPED IN cog wheels instead of electricity). Spatial But with the gate array approach we have computing does away with the program the obstacle that compilation takes CAMBRIDGE BY MY FRIENDS.’ counter and lays out the program on a several hours! Although the final programmable gate array - a silicon chip program will run in an afternoon instead about one centimetre on a side that is of a week, we do need to get it right and totally programmable to take on the be sure this speedup will accrue. If it takes functionality of a chip that would be only an afternoon to find a design decision a couple of square millimetres if that has destroyed the envisioned hardwired. But rather than being performance gain and a programmer hardwired, the wiring is totally does this several times in succession, it reconfigurable. Hence the gate array can does not take long for the saved week of take on the behaviour of any digital execution time to get used up. Clearly electrical circuit that uses up to a million this is not a problem with programs that or so transistors. Actually, I started using are to be run time and time again, such as gate arrays for computation in about for weather forecasting, but it is a big 1990, but it is only recently I have seen disincentive to speculative 'what-if' style very great interest in this approach. This is investigations that researchers have to motivated partly by the the availability of explore to be creative. In my approach, wonderful silicon processing technology still being developed, the vets will get provided by the physicists, but it is also a rapid indication of the energy and speed matter of energy use. A large class of of their program as they edit it. Once they scientific computer programs can be are happy with their design decisions accelerated using gate arrays. These they can hit the main ‘compile’ button include weather forecasting, financial and do something else for the rest of the market prediction, code breaking and afternoon. They know that later on that genetic fingerprinting. The speedups evening they will get the results from a gained with respect to the most test that previously took a week to run. advanced conventional processors, such And the head of department will be very as those from Intel, vary depending on happy to see a much lower electricity bill. the application, but are typically in the range 10 to 250. The energy use, www.corpus.cam.ac.uk however, is reduced by a staggering amount, perhaps by a factor of 50. @corpuscambridge

The Pelican 2015 42 43 SPORT ING BLUES BY KATE POSKITT 3RD YEAR UNDERGRADUATE IN PPS AND VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE JCR

DESPITE OUR SMALL SIZE, CORPUS CONTINUES TO PUNCH WELL ABOVE ITS WEIGHT IN UNIVERSITY SPORTS TEAMS. THE YEAR 2013-14 SAW 6 FULL BLUES, 6 HALF BLUES AND 2 CLUB COLOURS AWARDED TO MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGE. MANY OF OUR ATHLETES ARE HEAVILY INVOLVED IN THEIR CLUBS, TAKING ON LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES, ON TOP OF THEIR SPORT GREG STREET CONTRIBUTED TO CAMBRIDGE’S IMPRESSIVE VICTORY AND WORK AND ADDITIONAL EXTRA-CURRICULAR COMMITMENTS - TRULY EMBODYING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN ‘ALL-ROUNDER’. IN LIGHTWEIGHT ROWING AT HENLEY BOAT RACE. ALL OF THE STUDENTS AWARDED FULL BLUES ATTRIBUTE THEIR INVOLVEMENT AND SUCCESS TO GREAT FRIENDS, EFFICIENT TIME-MANAGEMENT, AND A WHOLE LOT OF TRAINING!

Men’s Modern Pentathlon Captain Archie speaks for itself: as Women’s Captain, Myrtle is a third year Historian. He had a she lead CUAC at the 150th Anniversary FOR ARCHIE, A KEY PART OF very successful season, building on his of the first Varsity match, held in Oxford BEING A BLUE IS THE Half-Blue awarded in his first year, to gain at Iffley Road, to victories for both the a Full Blue whilst also leading his team to second and first team. Alice came 2nd in HONOUR OF BEING PART OF Varsity victory for the first time in 18 the 100 but won the 200, 400, 4 x 100 and THE HAWKS CLUB. years. He has been doing tetrathlon 4 x 400. She also set a new Varsity Match (pentathlon minus the fencing) through Record and is now top of the 400m all KATE POSKITT WAS AWARDED A FULL BLUE. the Pony Club since he was 10 years old, time list for CUAC. In the Indoor Varsity CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S and transitioned to pentathlon when he match the women's team broke five ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL CLUB WON THE came to Cambridge. The past year also Indoor Varsity records, and Alice was saw him placed 4th at the Army involved in breaking three: the 4 x 60m, LEAGUE AND THE MIDLANDS CONFERENCE International Pentathlon. He aims to be as 4 x 200m, and 4 x 400m. She says that it is CUP, BECOMING OSPREYS ‘TEAM OF efficient as possible with work, doing a her team mates’ support that gets her THE YEAR’ couple of hours ‘here and there in around the 400m reps in the winter! between training’ which he believes For Alice, going down to the track is a key hones focus when actually working. For stress-management tool; it helps her Archie, a key part of being a Blue is the refocus and maximise her time in the honour of being part of the Hawks Club, library. She believes that making the most due to its rich history, with members of all aspects of Cambridge is essential, including olympic greats and men who and has certainly shaped her experience have gone on to represent their country. here — something she will miss hugely This year he will continue in a leadership when she graduates this coming July. role as President of the club. EDWARD RAFE MARTYN WAS AWARDED MATTHEW VOKES WAS AWARDED A 2013-14 was also a big year for A HALF BLUE FOR WINNING HIS MATCH HALF BLUE IN ORIENTEERING, AFTER Alice Kaye, a third year PPS (psychology) Cambridge University Women’s Football BEING PLACED INDIVIDUALLY FIRST IN student, was again awarded a Full Blue Team, as they topped the league, cup and IN VARSITY CHESS. for her performance in athletics. She got Varsity, leading to their recognition as THE VARSITY MATCH IN SWEDEN. involved in athletics at a young age, Ospreys ‘Team of the Year’. This success starting at the sports day at her village was shared by three Corpus women: primary school where the boys and girls third year PhD student in Biological ran together. Every year she beat the boys Anthropology Marielle Brown, third year to the finish line, so the head teacher PPS (politics) student Kate Poskitt, and suggested to her parents that she join an Emilie Aguirre, a Research Associate in athletics club. The success of this decision Law and Public Health.

The Pelican 2015 44 45 KATE POSKITT SPORTING BLUES

FRANCINE COUNSELL GAINED HER THIRD FULL BLUE IN SAILING (TEAM RACING). AT THE BRITISH UNIVERSITIES SAILING ASSOCIATION HER TEAM WON THE MIXED COMPETITION, AND SHE WAS MANAGING WORK AND SPORT GIVES HER DAYS A CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM THAT WAS PLACED THIRD STRUCTURE, ARRANGED AROUND TRAININGS AND IN THE WOMEN’S COMPETITION. MATCHES, SOMETHING WHICH IS INHERENTLY LACKING IN A P hD PROGRAM.

Marielle, captain of the team, has been wearing socks as long as her entire leg, only socially in the women’s inter-club playing soccer since she was 5 in her and running all over the field the whole level in NZ, and it was discovering that she town’s PeeWee league— imagine ten game, attempting to be in the action and was good enough to play for the Blues TOP RIGHT: MARIELLE BROWN . 5-year-olds crowding around one ball play every position at all times. She came that really rekindled her enthusiasm for while wearing massive t-shirts that go back to football at Cambridge after a long the sport. She was awarded her second RIGHT: 400M RELAY TEAM. down to their knees. For both Marielle hiatus. The ‘football season’ for Emilie at Full Blue for her performance in the and Emilie, as girls in the US, soccer was a school had been year round, and Varsity match, which was played as per huge part of their childhood and school combined with academic commitment, tradition at the RAC in London against a years. Marielle played throughout her this had led to burn out. As a result, during very strong Oxford team, including a new time at school, and also during her her time at college in the US - at Princeton, no. 1 who came from Harvard and was a undergraduate degree at Dartmouth then Harvard - Emilie actively decided not Junior International. Oxford won with a College. She believes that continuing to get recruited. Nearly ten years later, at match score of 4-1. Kristen played at 3rd football at Cambridge has proved Cambridge, she rediscovered the joy of the seed and lost her individual match 3-0. invaluable to her smooth transition to life game and her love for football. For her, However, the team was successful in the in a new country. Managing work and taking a break to exercise, get some fresh Cambridgeshire squash league, where sport gives her days a structure, arranged air, and spend time with a team she loves they were placed 2nd. For Kristen also, the around trainings and matches, something both on and off the pitch enables her to exercise and mental concentration that which is inherently lacking in a PhD return to work with a clear head and squash requires is a great break from work; program! For her, the pure act of playing increased concentration and productivity. it actually helps her to work better and LEFT: CAITLIN OWENS . football provides scheduled mental more efficiently. downtime that fully rejuvenates her for Francine Counsell, a fourth year Chemical BELOW: 100M START. the next bout of PhD work. Three years on Engineer, gained her third Full Blue sailing Playing sport at Cambridge is not easy, as the football team has left Marielle with (Team Racing) this year on the 9th of July. athletes face conflicting demands with many fond memories and lifelong friends. She has been sailing and competing in academic work and ongoing pressures to national and international fleet racing minimise their sporting commitment. All On the shorter side of her primary school since school, and claims that her of these individuals also foot large club cohort, Kate was never going to be a involvement in sailing was due to not fees, equipment costs, and the additional netball star for the NZ Silver Ferns. It was being so good at the other summer sport financial pressure of travel to fixtures and in football that she excelled, captaining option — tennis. Her favourite memory accommodation at Varsity matches, with her mixed boys and girls school team. from this year was winning BUSA and tiny amounts of funding available for only Balancing work and sport hasn’t always getting thrown into the water with her a select few. It is the relationships formed been easy: she had to make a decision team after an extremely tense final, as well in teams, the battle-like annual Varsity not to attend training camp for the as captaining the Ladies Varsity team to a match, and the pure exhilaration that national team when she was 14, as it win after 5 years of losses. Sailing takes out accompanies physical excellence that would have meant ongoing academic an entire weekend, so Francine has learnt keeps these students competing. Through ARCHIE MYRTLE , CAPTAIN OF MEN’S sacrifice. However, at Cambridge, football to plan ahead in scheduling her work sport, they gain not only accolades and MODERN PENTATHLON, GAINED A FULL BLUE, has become a welcome break at the end week when she knows she is going to be life-long friendships, but also develop a LEADING HIS TEAM TO VARSITY VICTORY FOR of the day, promoting more efficient away. For her, this scheduling has meant huge range of transferable skills that assist work, better sleep quality, and effective she simply doesn’t procrastinate, so time them in their work, and will continue to THE FIRST TIME IN 18 YEARS. time-management of everything else in spent working is as efficient as possible. serve them beyond Cambridge. the schedule. Kristen MacAskill, a 2nd Year PhD in Emilie also started football at a young age, Engineering, was introduced to squash by www.corpus.cam.ac.uk as she was 3 when her elder brother first her father and brother, and has played on started playing in a league. She recalls and off since she was 12. However, this was @corpuscambridge

The Pelican 2015 46 47 CORPUS HAS NURTURED THEATRICAL TALENT FOR CENTURIES. OVER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, THEATRICAL TALENT MARLOWE’S DARK TRAGICOMEDIES CONTINUE TO THRILL AND CHALLENGE AUDIENCES, WHILE IN RECENT YEARS CORPUS ALUMNUS HUGH BONNEVILLE HAS BECOME A FAMILIAR FACE ACROSS THE WORLD FOR HIS PORTRAYAL OF LORD GRANTHAM IN DOWNTON ABBEY , AS WELL AS ROLES IN FILMS SUCH AS MONUMENTS MEN AND NOTTING HILL . ISABELLE THREE OF CORPUS’ RECENT GRADUATES, RYAN AMMAR AND BEN POPE (WHO ARE INTERVIEWED LATER IN THIS ISSUE OF THE PELICAN) AND ISABELLE KETTLE REFLECT THIS THEATRICAL LEGACY, SHOWING CONSIDERABLE TALENT IN WRITING, DIRECTING AND PERFORMING, FROM CUTTING-EDGE COMEDY TO SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY. KETTLE INTERVIEWED BY SARAH GORDON DESPITE HER WARM, OPEN PERSONALITY AND EVER-PRESENT SMILE, ISABELLE KETTLE IS MORE DRAWN TO TRAGEDY THAN TO COMEDY. ‘THERE ISN’T THE PRESSURE TO REACH THE END POINT OF MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH; IT’S MORE CONCERNED WITH THE PROCESS OF THE EVENTS TAKING PLACE ON STAGE’.

It is the process of dramatic performance from recent all-female productions such that makes the theatre so exciting for as Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar and Isabelle; theatre is immediate and Henry IV , but differs from these by ‘ONE MAN ON THE ROYAL unpredictable, while ‘in film you end up focussing on female characters, rather MILE TOLD US TO DROP THE with a finished product, and once it is than simply having women playing male made it cannot be changed’. This roles. Isabelle is interested in exploring TRAGEDY AND DROP THE unpredictability can make the role of a female characters, who are often on the FEMINISM’. theatre director challenging for someone edge of the action and have ‘meaningful who is clearly a perfectionist. ‘I find it silences’ which can be fleshed out in new difficult to let go of a play and just let it adaptations. happen. I directed The Duchess of Malfi in my third year and when friends said Giving female characters a greater voice they had enjoyed it I refused to believe is a fundamental part of Lear’s Daughters , them’. However, she thinks ‘letting go’ is which Isabelle directed at last year’s important for directors, who ideally Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This did should be able to watch a play they have provoke strong reactions: ‘one man on directed as if they were an audience the Royal Mile told us to ‘drop the member seeing it for the first time. tragedy and drop the feminism’’. Isabelle’s motivation behind the project When she first arrived at Corpus Isabelle was not to make a political statement, entered the world of Cambridge theatre although if ‘political’ means giving through acting. ‘I auditioned for some women a stronger presence on stage, plays when I first arrived but didn’t get then she is comfortable with being in, then I acted in two plays in the second perceived in such a way. Focussing on term of my first year and really enjoyed female characters also allows her to put it’. However, when she put on a stage on a Shakespeare play in a new, creative version of The Bloody Chamber by way, as a small company like Footfall Angela Carter she realised that her real Theatre cannot put on high-budget, interest was directing. This has grown large scale productions. Lear’s Daughters into a passion for directing Shakespeare, does this by having only four characters: which she has found offers more Lear’s three daughters, Regan, Goneril freedom than directing modern and Cordelia, and the Fool, who in this playwrights as ‘it is less prescriptive; production is Lear’s carer. The company there is more opportunity to play with developed the script from the original the text’. Isabelle has set up the all- text in a week, realising it was possible female theatre company Footfall Theatre to tell the story using these four with friends from other colleges, which characters. Lear is represented by a adapts Shakespeare plays using a small wheelchair and is envisaged as an elderly cast. The company draws inspiration parent with dementia.

The Pelican 2015 48 49 ISABELLE KETTLE THEATRICAL TALENT

The production is set in 2014, but despite the modern setting the company decided to keep most archaic terms such as ‘knight’ and ‘retinue’. They discussed at length whether this IT IS IMPORTANT TO MAKE discrepancy would be confusing, but ‘we needed to give the audience credit that SHAKESPEARE SEEM MODERN, they would understand it’. Isabelle adds AS ‘THE ACTING TECHNIQUES that ‘it can be jarring to replace a Shakespearean word with a modern one, SHAKESPEARE WAS USING and it can make the audience focus on WOULD HAVE SEEMED MODERN that decision rather than what is being said’. She believes that it is important to TO HIS AUDIENCES.’ make Shakespeare seem modern, as ‘the acting techniques Shakespeare was using would have seemed modern to his ‘NOW IS THE TIME TO audiences’, so productions attempting to recreate the Renaissance theatre EXPERIMENT - I HAVE result in a less authentic experience than NOTHING TO LOSE.’ those that reimagine the play in a modern context.

Isabelle wanted to avoid including At the time of our interview, Footfall scenes from King Lear in Lear’s Theatre was preparing to put on a Daughters just because they are famous, London run of Lear’s Daughters at The but ‘you can’t perform Lear without an Hope Theatre in Islington from 9 to 20 eye gouging’. In the original play this December. The company is also scene shows Regan’s husband, the Duke contemplating a new name. of Cornwall, plucking out the Duke of Appropriately for a company including a Gloucester’s eyes. In Lear’s Daughters female Corpuscle, one possible name is Regan, jealous of Goneril due to their Pelican Daughters. This is a quotation rivalry for off-stage love interest Edmund, from King Lear , and is a likely choice ‘as mistakes the Fool for her sister, ties her to the company was set up by a group of a chair and plucks out her eyes. The play women’ and they first worked together is set in a kitchen, so she does this with a on Lear’s Daughters . Whatever the fork, releasing fake blood made with company is called, Isabelle would like to blackcurrant jam, cornflour, water and work next on a production of As You Like instant coffee. Isabelle seems rather It , exploring three different versions of proud of the audience’s physical the play in two hours as ‘now is the time reaction, exclaiming that ‘one woman to experiment – I have nothing to lose’. nearly fainted!’ She also had to cope As for the more distant future, we with some unexpected consequences of discuss the dangers of setting a close-up live performance. ‘One night, prescriptive career goals or having the fake blood fell onto an audience rigid criteria for ‘success’ and Isabelle member’s white linen trousers. We responds that: ‘If I’m busy, doing what reassured her that it would wash out – I love and meeting interesting people – we had washed the Fool’s costume every that might be what ‘success’ is for me’. night – but she wanted us to buy her a new pair. In the end I collected the trousers from her the next day, washed www.corpus.cam.ac.uk them and gave them back to her to prove that they weren’t ruined’. @corpuscambridge

The Pelican 2015 50 51 THEATRICAL TALENT RYAN AMMAR AND BEN POPE INTERVIEWED BY SARAH GORDON

‘BEFORE MY FIRST GIG I FOUND MYSELLF HAVING A BIT OF AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS. I WAS STRUCK BY THE ARROGANCE OF THINKING I COULD MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH.’

BEN POPE ( left ) and RYAN AMMAR ( right ).

THE CAMBRIDGE FOOTLIGHTS HAS PRODUCED SOME OF BRITAIN’S BEST Although Ben and Ryan are very much quickly adding that his passion for his comedy provided a good opportunity to aware of the Footlights’ formidable subject, Classics, featured highly in the write for the stage. LOVED COMEDY PAIRINGS; DUOS FRY AND LAURIE AND MITCHELL AND reputation, they are keen that their work remaining two-thirds of his motivation. WEBB BEGAN THEIR CAREERS AT THE STUDENT COMEDY CLUB. IT is not always viewed in the light of their Ryan came to Cambridge from New Both admit that comedy can be an famous predecessors. Ben observes that Zealand, where he was only ‘vaguely intimidating environment. ‘Before my SEEMS APPROPRIATE THAT THIS YEAR’S FOOTLIGHTS INTERNATIONAL ‘some audiences seem to arrive aware’ of the Footlights. ‘I really learnt first gig I found myself having a bit of an TOUR INCLUDED A PAIR OF NEWLY-GRADUATED CORPUSCLES expecting half the cast of Monty Python about how famous they were on the existential crisis. I was struck by the AMONGST ITS PERFORMERS; RYAN AMMAR AND BEN POPE, to be there’, when much has changed in plane to England, when I was listening to arrogance of thinking I could make the last fifty years. Ryan and Ben had Stephen Fry’s autobiography The Fry people laugh’, remembers Ben. However, ALONGSIDE THREE OTHER CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS. very different expectations about Chronicles ’. He did not immediately join ‘once you get your first laugh, it just clicks comedy in Cambridge when they arrived the comedy group, trying his hand at into place’. He also believes that to an at Corpus. ‘It was a third of the reason acting but later realising that he was extent comedy is a skill that can be learnt, I applied to Cambridge!’ exclaims Ben, really motivated to write, and that like writing or playing a sport,

The Pelican 2015 52 53 RYAN AMMAR AND BEN POPE THEATRICAL TALENT

‘WHEN YOU’RE PERFORMING COMEDY THERE’S A LOT MORE AT STAKE THAN WHEN YOU’RE PERFORMING A PLAY. IT’S AN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT, SO YOU GET CONSTANT FEEDBACK ON YOUR PERFORMANCE.’

but it is a skill where success and failure Freshers’ Play, and now often send to make sure that the jokes worked who self-deprecatingly term themselves Esio Trot for the stage while he was a are especially stark. ‘I read Jimmy Carr’s writing back and forth for feedback, as outside the Cambridge context. ‘We ‘New Zealand's fourth most popular folk- student. He is also writing a children’s The Naked Jape , where he compares well as occasionally writing with the didn’t want it to look like the comedy comedy duo’. Ryan is similarly willing to book about a boy who is afraid of flying, comedy to a bear pit. It can be quite whole Footlights committee. Ryan was just for us, and we were just make himself the butt of a joke, drawing which seems appropriate for someone binary; a joke is funny, in which case suggests that the current committee’s laughing at ourselves’. Ryan says that in attention to the comic potential of his who was first inspired, while sitting on an you’ve won, or it’s not, and you’ve lost’. style has generally moved away from the United States ‘we performed in a lot New Zealand accent, with which Ben aeroplane, to do something that would Ryan adds that ‘when you’re performing self-consciously clever comedy. ‘I don’t of comedy clubs and universities, so they quickly agrees: ‘The other night the rest intimidate most people. comedy there is a lot more at stake than want to draw too many comparisons were used to seeing a lot of comedy. We of the committee spent forty-five when you’re performing a play. It’s an with the past, but our style’s sillier, a bit wondered if the quirky British sense of minutes recording ourselves imitating Ryan and Ben came to Corpus from interactive environment, so you get more like Monty Python’. humour would translate, but it really did’. his accent’. opposite sides of the globe, and plan to constant feedback on your performance’. go in very different directions within the They have recently taken their comedy I ask Ryan if he’s noticed a difference The committee is clearly a close-knit world of comedy. Nevertheless, it is Given the ruthlessness of writing and outside Cambridge, on tour to Edinburgh between the British and New Zealand group, as the four members who are exciting to think that Corpus was the performing comedy, I ask how far they and the United States. Have they noticed senses of humour. ‘I tend to think of leaving Cambridge are planning to live backdrop for bringing this engaging, analyse whether something is funny, and a difference between audiences in British and New Zealand humour as together in London. Although both Ryan sharp and creative pair of young how much they rely on instinct. ‘I think it Cambridge and elsewhere? ‘Cambridge being similar, and Australia as being and Ben will continue to write comedy, comedians together. is dangerous to analyse it too much,’ says audiences like subtle detail and more like the US. In fact, British comedy they plan to go in quite different Ben, but he admits to enjoying character comedy. In Edinburgh there has taken a bit of a Kiwi turn in the last directions. Ben is interested in stand-up, www.corpus.cam.ac.uk rephrasing his comedy and pin-pointing were a lot more families, so we had to few years, after Flight of the Concords ’. while Ryan wants to write children’s what is funny. Ben and Ryan started make sure the comedy was clear and We discuss the popularity of this now comedy, having adapted Roald Dahl’s @corpuscambridge working together for the Corpus well-explained’, says Ben. They also had world-famous musical comedy pairing,

The Pelican 2015 54 55 THE LOST YEARS CORPUS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR BY DR PETER MARTLAND ( m1982)

THE FIRST WORLD WAR LEFT BRITAIN TRANSFORMED AND TRAUMATISED. IN ITS WAKE AS THE RECKONING IN HUMAN LIFE WAS MADE AND THE SHOCKING LOSSES REVEALED, PEOPLE ATTEMPTED TO UNDERSTAND, CONTEXTUALISE AND MOVE ON AND TO MEMORIALISE THOSE WHO HAD BEEN LOST.

The University and individual colleges were part of national average of eleven per cent and the Cambridge that process and it resulted in, among other things, University average of eighteen per cent. substantial alterations to the architecture of Corpus and to many other colleges. In Corpus, for example, the The coming of war impacted on the College and its fourteen sets of attic rooms in the New Court were Fellowship almost from the start. In addition the built in 1920 and premises were acquired outside the Fellows had to deal with another pressing and College deemed necessary to accommodate the personal crisis. For three weeks into the war the Master, increased numbers of students wishing to study here. Colonel Robert Caldwell, was killed in a motoring But the most tangible witness to this war and the accident whilst visiting his estates in Scotland. During Second World War twenty one years later are the the seven years he held office he had been a towering memorial tablets in the Chapel. These stand in mute presence, for during that time he had not only testimony to the terrible losses our College suffered in reformed the College, sweeping away the Victorian the first half of the 20th century; it was truly a time cobwebs left by his predecessor Edward Perowne, but when the men of Corpus swapped the elysian fields of he also brought into the Fellowship a number of new Cambridge for killing fields in foreign lands. high flying academics, increasing the number to 13. As with every other British institution the First World Caldwell also modernised the College estate and War brought fundamental and permanent change to under his leadership student numbers and Corpus. It is not farfetched to suggest that the war examination results improved dramatically. imposed on the College a crisis on a par with other His successor Edmund Pearce was a safe pair of hands. great national traumas such as the Black Death, the An academic and a cleric he steered the College Reformation and the Civil War. Indeed, such is the long through the uncertain wartime period and the shadow cast by this war that its impact continues to immediate post war years. bear down on us to the present. To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the war we have been subjected to The war came to Corpus early as a College meeting acres of newsprint and many hours of television and in dated 17th August noted ‘that the buildings of the Corpus we too held events on Remembrance Sunday College be placed at the disposal of the Government to honour those members of our College who saw during the war in case of necessity’. The meeting also service in that and other wars and especially those noted ‘that the action of the Steward in giving facilities who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our for cooking rations for the Royal Army Medical Corps in freedoms and way of life. the College Kitchens during the months of August and September be approved’. As the College emptied of its The purpose of this article is to examine what regular inhabitants military units temporarily occupied happened to the College during the war and the the place before it was finally taken over first by the experience of some of its students, Fellows and alumni staff of the 2/2 Mounted Division and finally the men who engaged in that titanic struggle. The first and most of the No 2 Officer Cadet Battalion. Writing in the AS THE COLLEGE EMPTIED obvious place to start any such research is Patrick Bury’s Newsletter after the war it was said of them: ‘The excellent history of the College. However, although cadets came from every class in the community and OF ITS REGULAR Bury surveys the period he does not deal with the from every part of the empire, and were of every INHABITANTS, MILITARY trauma and its human consequences. It’s as though he complexion. They entered whole-heartedly into the was unable to confront the enormity of it all; he was spirit of the place, made use of the College, Chapel, UNITS TEMPORARILY after all born in 1903 and grew up during these years played games on the College grounds, rowed in the OCCUPIED THE PLACE. and like all of his generation found it impossible to deal College boats, even wore the College colours, and with the sheer scale of the losses. For, in all, 253 became de facto, if not de jure, Corpus men.’ Clearly members of College, Fellows, alumni, current students the use of the College by the armed forces helped and those who had been admitted but had yet to come stave off financial ruin and helped keep a sense of into residence saw war service and of these 63, or community for the young men who were soon to almost 25% overall, were killed. This compares to the leave for the front.

The Pelican 2015 56 57 DR PETER MARTLAND CORPUS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Many of the Fellowship left to undertake Although most Corpus students and some kind of national service. Four alumni who saw service in the armed There was a special category of war dead Fellows or prospective Fellows saw war forces during this war served as officers noted in the University List and by Bury service with the armed forces; for this was not always the case. One clearly and they are recorded on our war example historian Kenneth Pickthorn ALTHOUGH MOST CORPUS extraordinary example was that of Private memorial. These were the young men took a commission and was posted to Noel James Stanway Patch of the (and they would have been no more than the War Office. Others were engaged in STUDENTS AND ALUMNI Australian Imperial Force. Patch had 17 or 18) who had been admitted to the other kinds of service with scientist Will WHO SAW SERVICE DURING matriculated in 1892, the son of a Suffolk College for the 1914-1915 academic year Spens in the government scientific clergyman. He left for Australia at the start but never came into residence or service and historian Geoffrey Butler in THIS WAR SERVED AS of the 20th century and served as Shire matriculated. I give just two examples. the United States as part of a British OFFICERS, THIS WAS NOT Clerk for a district in Queensland. Australia John Edward Templeman Barnes was government mission; he worked in did not have conscription and in 1916, at educated at Sherborne School where he Philadelphia and during his stint there ALWAYS THE CASE. the age of 42, he volunteered for service was a member of the OTC and had taken married. Another Fellow engaged in war as a private soldier. He left Australia on part in the pre-war British army shooting service was Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan 27th Oct 1916 and saw active service for trials at Bisley. Barnes won a history Burgess RAMC, FRCP. He had TROOPS IN TRAINING EXERCISE less than one month before being killed scholarship to Corpus but war intervened matriculated in 1871 and between 1905 in action at Passchendaele on 13th and he obtained an early commission. and 1917, after a career teaching October 1917; his name too appears on He saw action in Gallipoli and Egypt and medicine at Corpus, became Professor of the War Memorial. subsequently in the attempted relief of Medicine at Sheffield University. He Kut al amara, Iraq. He was killed in action served in a British military hospital and, Several other Corpus alumni served with on 3rd February 1917 and is according to Bury, died from overwork British imperial forces. One of these was commemorated at the British military on 17th January 1917 aged 67. Although George Reginald Smith, who was born in cemetery in Basra. He was 21 years old. his name appears in the University Gloucestershire and matriculated in 1902. Another was Louis Mander Stokes, only Listing this one Fellow who died on war Within College he was a well-known son of Rev Henry Paine Stokes, Honorary service is curiously not recorded on the rower and stroked the Corpus Lent boat, Fellow of the College, Vicar of St Paul’s College war memorial. which achieved the phenomenal feat of Church, Cambridge, Antiquary and gaining nine places in four nights’ racing. Hebrew scholar. He would have come up The war transformed student life, which He left for Canada on graduation in 1905 in the Michaelmas term 1916. Instead he frankly ceased to exist for most of these FRENCH TROOPS IN THE TRENCHES where he became a schoolmaster. He was commissioned into the Royal Marine years of conflict. Of the handful of gained a commission in the Canadian Light Infantry and was killed in operations students who came up for the 1914 forces on the outbreak of war, was on the Ancre 13th November 1916. He Michaelmas term many were simply Of these many served later in the war as He landed in France in September 1915 In the late 19th century Corpus was wounded in 1916 but subsequently was 19 years old. marking time awaiting their medical standards were reduced. By early but soon after suffered severe concussion, known for the numbers of students who returned to the front. He was killed in commissions and left as soon as the 1915 scarcely 20 men remained in though he recovered in time to take part went into the church. These men were action on 6th May 1917 at the age of 33 These examples give just a tiny flavour of paperwork came through. By contrast, residence, and thereafter these numbers in the July 1916 Somme offensive. Two not exempt from war service, several and is recorded on the War Memorial. the lives of so many men of this College some were finishing off relevant courses dwindled to zero, as did the number weeks into this campaign he was severely serving as chaplains to the armed forces who we know today simply as names on a in medicine, natural sciences and making the journey to the Senate House gassed to the point that it ended his active and some were killed in action. In 1911 the Scot Henry Maitland tablet in Chapel and whose lives were cut engineering before joining the armed to collect their degrees. In these service career; which paradoxically Exemplifying this group are two such Macintosh matriculated (in the same year short by the wars of the early 20th century. forces, whilst others had been rejected circumstance all College and University probably saved his life. This experience of clergymen both of whom matriculated in cohort as future Fellow Archibald Edmund Their lives and what they did and achieved by the military on health grounds. student activity ceased for the duration; combat transformed his life and he spent 1889 and whose names are recorded on Clark-Kennedy). Like Clark-Kennedy, deserves to be remembered by us all in indeed for many long-standing student the rest of his career writing about the College war memorial. One was Macintosh epitomised the new College this centenary year. They had so much societies it was the end and they never strategy and military history. Henry Dixon-Wright, MVORN who served created by Caldwell, for in addition to his unfilled promise and gave it all away for us restarted after the war. To explore at least as chaplain on the Dreadnaught class academic achievements he was also an – the future generations they did not live THE WAR TRANSFORMED something of the wartime experiences of Another survivor of these years was battleship HMS Barham . He died on 31st athletics Blue. He became captain of to see. So if you get the chance next time students and alumni we must look for Justice Sir Cecil Robert Havers, who May 1916 at the Battle of Jutland from University athletics team and is the only you are in the Chapel take another look at STUDENT LIFE , WHICH examples (and they by their nature are matriculated in 1908. He graduated with a wounds received in action; Barham was Olympic gold medallist the College has our memorial to the courage and sacrifice FRANKLY CEASED TO EXIST invidious but inevitable given the first-class degree in classics in 1912 and hit by six large calibre projectiles which ever produced; he won gold in the 1912 of so many Corpuscules. number involved) outside the confines took his LLB the following year. A good killed 4 officers and 22 men, and Stockholm Olympics men’s relay race. FOR MOST OF THESE YEARS of the College. sportsman, he played tennis for the wounded 1 officer and 36 men. He was 46 When war came Macintosh had just PETER MARTLAND OF CONFLICT. University and later in life played at years old and married. His colleague and graduated. A member of the Cambridge Perhaps the most famous Corpus First Wimbledon. For much of the war he saw contemporary Charles Edmund Douney OTC he was quickly commissioned into www.corpus.cam.ac.uk World War warrior was Captain Sir Basil service in infantry regiments on the was an army chaplain. He died on 16th the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Liddell Hart who later became a military Western Front and in 1918 transferred to October 1915 of wounds received in reaching the rank of captain. Incredibly, he @corpuscambridge strategist and Honorary Fellow of the the Tank Corps where he was mentioned action in Flanders. Before the war he had survived almost to the end. He took part in College. Described as more of a games in dispatches. After the war he became a been vicar of South Lyncombe, Bath, the Second Battle of the Somme and died player than a scholar, Liddell Hart came up distinguished jurist and was made an having served his church in both England on 26th July 1918 of wounds received in in 1913 and passed the 1914 Prelims to Honorary Fellow of the College shortly and South Australia. He was 44 years old action at the age of 26; his name too can the Historical Tripos with third-class marks. before his death in 1977. and married. be seen on the War Memorial.

The Pelican 2015 58 59 Development and Communications Office, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CB2 1RH Tel: 01223 339718 Email: [email protected] www.corpus.cam.ac.uk