NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Professor Michael McIntyre Interviewed by Paul Merchant C1379/72 Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1379/72 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s surname: McIntyre Title: Professor Interviewee’s forename: Michael Sex: Male Occupation: Applied Date and place of birth: 28/7/1941, Sydney, mathematician Australia Mother’s occupation: / Father’s occupation: Neurophysiologist Dates of recording, tracks (from – to): 28/03/12 (track 1-3), 29/03/12 (track 4-6), 30/03/12 (track 7-8) Location of interview: Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 Recording format : WAV 24 bit 48kHz Total no. of tracks: 8 Mono/Stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 9:03:31 Additional material: The interview transcripts for McIntyre’s mother, Anne, father, Archibald Keverall and aunt, Anne Edgeworth are available for public access. Please contact the oral history section for more details. Copyright © The British Library 3 Michael McIntyre Page 4 C1379-72 Track 1 [Interviewee’s clarifications and corrections, finalized November 2013, are in small print as here.] Track 1 Can I start by asking when and where you were born? In Sydney, Australia, on 28th July 1941. And can you tell me anything you know about the life of your father? My father [Archibald Keverall McIntyre] was a respected scientist and his career, of course, was affected by the Second World War. So about the time I was born he, I believe, was working for the air force on aviation physiology. His main career was as a neurophysiologist, so he had medical training and some scientific training in the medical sciences. And through most of the war I believe he was stationed in England, working at one of the research establishments, and he had to do horrible things like – as a junior assistant, you know – get on to a centrifuge and experience high g levels, because they were developing the famous g-suit worn by the fighters that enabled them to turn more tightly and was obviously critical to the Battle of Britain. [Dead wrong on two counts: (1) g-suits were operational only late in the War – see the A.K.McIntyre interviews by his sister Anne Edgeworth – and (2) the centrifuge experiments he was involved in were mostly done in Australia, and he went to the UK only for the last year or so of the War, when I was “just three” according to my mother Anne’s interview by Barry Wise, transcript page 6.] And what had he done before his war service? 4 Michael McIntyre Page 5 C1379-72 Track 1 Well, he had a childhood... well, he was born in Edinburgh, if I recall correctly, because his father was also a medical person. He was a... he became a gynaecologist – my father’s father – and was in Edinburgh, I believe, studying for his degree. So my father was born in Edinburgh but shortly after that they moved to Tasmania. That’s the, sort of, family home on the father’s side: Launceston, Tasmania. And my father went to a boarding school called Barker’s [Barker] College, which if I recall correctly is in the Sydney area. [Yes: Sydney’s North Shore area.] I suppose that was the idea of how to get a good education, you know, playing rugby and all that stuff, and they helped build the empire and everything they did in those days. Except that was a bit tough for my father ’cause, like me, he was heavily myopic, and so playing rugby was a bit of a pain for the poor bloke [laughs]. And he stayed a lot with my great aunt Molly [Mary Edgeworth David] during that time. She lived in the suburbs of Sydney [Hornsby, near Barker College – more detail in her 1975 book Passages of Time: An Australian Woman 1890–1974], in a house that I know because... erm .. I knew her; she was the daughter of my [great] grandfather. You see, I’m going back another generation, aren’t I? On my father’s side – okay, my father’s mother [née Margaret Edgeworth David] was one of the redoubtable ladies of the time, a pillar of society, a feminist before her time – and her mother in turn was the same thing. And she – that was Cara David – she was the wife of my great grandfather, Sir Edgeworth David FRS, who was a famous geologist, and also went to the Antarctic. He had his name on the South Magnetic Pole for a while, until the wretched pole moved. So there’s the luck of the draw in getting your name on things [laughs]. [0:03:14] I wondered how you know these things about family history. In other words, when in your life you discovered these things. Well, of course, a lot of it’s family folklore, but some of that’s on record because Edgeworth David’s life... I mean, he had a... his biography was written by his daughter, the same Aunt 5 Michael McIntyre Page 6 C1379-72 Track 1 Molly who lived in Sydney, and Aunt... okay, there’s that, and there’s also a book written by Cara David, Sir Edgeworth David’s wife, Lady David, about their expedition to Funafuti, which is a Pacific atoll close to the equator. I think it’s about eight south or is it two south, I forget. [8˚31´S, 179˚13´E.] Funafuti – they went there to drill down into the coral to see if Darwin’s theory of atoll formation was correct, which is a jolly good piece of clean science to be doing. Darwin said, okay, why do we have atolls, these strange flat things on the sea surface? Because they started on something more substantial that used to poke out of the sea surface but has become a seamount and sunk beneath the surface. But of course the coral keeps building, so it keeps the surface very near sea level where the coral can live. And so all you have to do is drill down to see if you... how far down the coral goes for starters, ’cause if you see coral a lot deeper than coral can live, you know that it must have been closer to the surface once upon a time. And finally you hit the rock and you’ve got the complete picture. And I believe that Funafuti expedition was the – I think it was the first to do it, or perhaps that’s just family folklore. I’m not really a science historian [laughs]. [Chapter 5 of T.W.Edgeworth David: A Life by David Branagan (2005) gives a detailed account. It seems that they didn’t ‘hit the rock’ but nevertheless got deep enough to find coral samples strongly supporting Darwin’s theory.] [0:04:57] Thank you. And the life of your mother. My mother [Anne] came from a family in Sydney that... and I know less about them in detail. They included lawyers and business people. And her father, whose name was Keith Williams, I believe lost a substantial... well, I don’t know whether fortune’s the right word, but anyway he lost a lot of money in the 1929 crash. Family folklore has it that he, you know, was a bit of a stock-market... is the word ‘speculator’ fair? I don’t know. But anyway, he lost a lot in 1929. But they still, you know, lived comfortably [since luckily he’d had the good 6 Michael McIntyre Page 7 C1379-72 Track 1 sense to give my maternal grandmother a house as a wedding present, according to Anne’s interview by Barry Wise] and they provided a loving and caring grandparents’ home for us. [Further back in the family there was a famous settler, James Milson Senior, who was Keith Williams’ great- grandfather and who after arriving in 1806 built his home on Milson’s Point, now at the north end of Sydney Harbour Bridge. See The Life and Times of James Milson by Roy H. Goddard (1955).] I very much remember a visit, when I was little, to them in Sydney... well... and then before that... [Here I think I must have been conflating fragmentary memories from toddler age with clearer memories from a later visit at age 10 or 11 – still somewhat ‘little’.] Of course I stayed there when my father was away at the war. So I think my memories of that place, which was in Cremorne, which is one of the suburbs of Sydney that borders the harbour – it’s just at the north of the harbour, just to the east of the Harbour Bridge – Cremorne, a very pleasant place – as kids we could go down and play in the rock pools in the harbour, and fish off the wharf, and ride on the beautiful ferries. And another memory I have from that time – and I think I must have been, well, heavens, three, four, or five, or something like that [again, I suspect I may have been conflating or merging childhood memories from a wider span of ages] – one of my memories is of the Sydney Harbour ferries and their beautiful steam engines.