Once a Caian Issue 13 FINAL_Once a Caian... 9-12 Issue 12 13/09/2013 10:19 Page 10
10 Once a Caian... A gathering of seventeen Caius Fellows on the day Professor Stephen Hawking (1965) initiated work on the new building named for him at 5 West Road.
pyridine. Anne was preparing these compounds to study the mechanism by which ‘transfer RNA’ carries amino acids to the ribosomes in the cell for protein synthesis. Roche Pharmaceuticals supported her research with a scholarship, as the new compounds she was producing were of potential use in the treatment of skin infections. The Journal of the Chemical Society for 1974 and 1978 covered her work in two papers written by Anne and her PhD supervisor, Colin Reese. Her research was considered significant enough for her to be appointed a Research Fellow and College Lecturer in Chemistry at Girton at the tender age of 23. With an energy that anyone in the Caius Development Office would recognise, Anne threw herself into both teaching and admissions at the same time as producing a young family. She sat on the College’s Governing Body and Education Board, set and marked the organic section of the University Entrance Exams in Chemistry for the Group IV Colleges, chaired that Committee and gave supervisions most evenings. The crunch came when her eldest child, Alex, started school and she decided she wasn’t spending enough time with him. So she became a full-time mother to Alex, Amelia, Vicky and Charlie and took an active part in her husband’s business, her children’s schools and charity work. She is particularly pleased that Alex, a cardiologist who is now the lead investigator for the first gene therapy trials in the UK for heart failure, “has already achieved far more than I ever did, along the line of research originally generated by Crick and Watson’s discovery.” Anne sees her life to date as being divided into three phases, first research and teaching, secondly full-time motherhood and then, not Chemistry, as she expected, but a completely
Yao Liang
(Left to right) Professor Sir Sam Edwards (1945), Dr Iain Macpherson (1958), Dr James Fitzsimons (1946), Professor Robin Holloway (1967), Dr Jimmy Altham (1965), Dr Anne Lyon (2001), Professor Peter Mandler (2001), Ian Herd (1996), Barry Hedley (1964), Derek Ingram (1974), Dr Michael Wood (1959), Professor John Mollon (1996), Professor Peter Robinson (1971), Dr Graham Titmus (1995), Neil McKendrick (1958), Professor Yao Liang (1963) with Professor Hawking at the front.
new role as an educational fundraiser. The link was the Perse School, where she was a parent and a Governor for ten years. When she told the Head of the School, Nigel Richardson, that she was planning to go back to Chemistry, he swiftly offered her a new position as the school’s Appeal Director, tasked with raising £1million, which she did in just under a year. (Failure was never an option!) She was soon receiving calls from Cambridge colleges keen to secure her services. The most persistent was Sir Terence English, Master of St Catharine’s College, and she took up an appointment as Fellow for Development there in January 1999. The result was a sharp rise in the number and value of gifts and bequests pledged to St Catharine’s. In retrospect, however, Anne’s tenure there of nearly three years has to be seen as a rehearsal for a more lasting boost to the finances of Caius, since Neil McKendrick (1958) and Barry Hedley (1964) proved still more persuasive, once Sir Terence had retired! Nowadays, everyone knows that tertiary education in the UK is increasingly dependent on each institution’s ability to raise its own funds. But at the start of this century, many people thought the UK could never develop a culture of philanthropy like that of American universities. Anne never doubted the importance of philanthropic benefaction to maintain academic excellence, nor did she doubt her own ability to generate strong support from Cambridge alumni for their own colleges. She feared that, without successful, professional fundraising, the most precious (and expensive) hallmark of an Oxbridge education, the supervision system itself, would be at risk. From her own experience, she knows the bonds formed at college last a lifetime: she is
still in touch with many of her closest friends from Newnham. In February, ten of them met for lunch in London, followed by the Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy. Above all, Anne always believed loyalty and a sense of belonging could be translated to active support, if only the colleges would take the trouble to communicate effectively with their members. She brought to the task both her knowledge and experience of how Cambridge colleges work and the logical, formulaic approach of a scientist. The first vital tool was an effective, up-to-date database. A college that did not know its members’ addresses, phone numbers, emails, professional standing, interests and families had no chance of communicating effectively with them. And no college could expect its members to make regular donations to its work and wellbeing without expressing its gratitude and recognising the support received at various levels. At Caius, Donor Recognition now includes asking as many donors as Gonville Court will hold to the May Week Party, inviting all Members of the Court of Benefactors (who have made lifetime gifts of at least £20,000) every year to the Benefactors’ Feast in November and inscribing the names of those who have given over £1million on the Benefactors’ Wall inside the Great Gate. Anne has asked me to point out that this rate will increase to £1.5million from 1 July 2014. It took over 600 years to assemble the first 26 names, from Edmund Gonville (1348) to Roger Barclay-Smith (1955), but within a year of unveiling the Wall, the names of Christopher and Shirley Bailey and John and Ann Haines have already joined that Roll of Honour. Anne’s advice to anyone thinking about following suit is to do so now and avoid the rush!