Manchester Memoirs vol. 155

Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society Volume 155  2016-2017

Manchester Memoirs VOLUME 155  2016 - 2017 BEING THE

Memoirs and Proceedings OF THE

Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society Editor: Graham Booth

2018 CHURCH HOUSE, 90 DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER M3 2GP

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Published in 2018 by The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society Church House, 90 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 2GH ISSN: 0076 3722 © 2018 The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society While copyright in this volume as a whole is vested in the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, copyright of individual articles belongs to their respective authors, and all the named authors in this volume assert their moral rights in their work. None may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author and the Society.

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Contents The President Dr Diana Leitch President’s Report Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s Coffin with Genetic Engineering Professor Jonathan Gressel Medicine for Tomorrow: Biomarkers, Biomarker Discovery and Precision Medicine Professor Anthony Freemont Why and how we are living longer? Professor Tom Kirkwood *Engineering with Graphene Professor Robert Young *Victorian Cemeteries Mike Higginbottom *Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications Professor Manjit Dosanjh *Aviation and the Environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact Professors John Fielding and Howard Smith *The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse Alan Segrott *Lit-and-Phil Museums of the North-West Anthony Burton * Railway Engineering - Yesterday and Today Michael Bailey *The Life and Work of James Clerk Maxwell Professor Kenneth Letherman *From Diamonds to DNA Georgina Ferry *Earthrise: the first views of Earth from space Dr Robert Poole *The End of Humanitarianism? Professor Anthony Redmond *Why do we get fat? Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly * Lectures presented during the 2017-18 academic year Annals of Manchester, 2016 Terry Wyke Book Review: The Seven Ages of One Man by Richard L. Hills, MBE David Higginson

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Obituaries: Bill and Jean Aikman Named Lectures 2016-17

PROCEEDINGS Annual Report of Council 2016-17 Treasurer’s Report Officers and Council and Section Officers Presidents of the Society Honorary Members Elected Corresponding Members The Dalton Medal Ordinary and Corresponding Members

Dr Diana Leitch, BSc, PhD, FRSC, MBE President 2016-2017

I

President’s Report

n his Annual Report last year the then President, Professor Sir Netar Mallick, said that the ‘past season has been an eventful one’ but the Society had survived various upheavals and its annual programme had been completed successfully thanks to the hard work of members of Council and of the sections. He particularly praised the outgoing Honorary Secretary, John Buckley, for his many achievements, while holding that post for 4 years, and his unstinting effort, commitment and loyal support to him as President through challenging times for the Society. Similarly David Brown, the outgoing Honorary Treasurer, was thanked for his commitment to sorting out the financial arrangements of the Society, while operating from his new home in London.

In writing this Report, having taken over from Netar as President in late September 2016, it is not incorrect for me to use his words ‘the past season has been an eventful one’. The Honorary Officers - myself, the Honorary Secretary, Peter Hilton, the Honorary Treasurers, Trevor Rees and Greg Mauchline, and one of the Vice-Presidents, Chris Baker- were all new to our roles as was one of the Section Chairmen, Dr Angus McDougall, taking over the Young Persons Committee. However, as John Buckley had agreed to take on the role as my second Vice-President we were reassured that we had a person of experience and long knowledge to call upon to advise us when necessary. John and I were going to work together on Council events and lectures and provide support to Angus and the numerically small Young Persons Team. Sadly it was not to be as in late January 2017 we heard that John had died suddenly and tragically in Manchester at the weekend. A huge amount of knowledge and expertise died with him which has been difficult and timeconsuming to replace. However, at very short notice, Emeritus Professor Tony Jackson agreed to become my second Vice-President and to pick up some of the work I had hoped John would be assisting me with.

Over the last nine months the new Honorary Officers team has worked very hard to tackle specific projects such as an improvement in certain technical issues relating to the web-based booking system where Chris Baker’s previous longterm computing knowledge has been invaluable, embedding ourselves in our new offices at Church House, 90 Deansgate, Manchester, where Peter Hilton has acted on our behalf in liaison with our landlords, overseeing the building work to create a new multi-purpose meeting room which can be used for onsite events, and working with the Building Manager, Mr Sweeney, to make our occupation a pleasant one. Sadly John Sweeney died very suddenly just a few weeks ago. Peter has, of course, managed the administrative staff and all the necessary legal paperwork which running a society like ours entails. Our finances have been overhauled

by Trevor Rees and Greg Mauchline and the changes needed regarding banking arrangements are now complete. They have also managed to keep the budget under control and on target, if not better, by implementing cost control measures.

Extensive work on the Governance documents of the Society has occupied many months of dedicated time but has brought to completion a task initiated back in

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October 2014 and the results of this work will be presented at the forthcoming AGM in September 2017.

Netar also paid tribute in his report to the administrative staff, Julie and Kathryn, for their forbearance with all the upheaval of the previous year and it was good to see real progress being made in many ways in their office. Sadly, another blow occurred in April when Julie’s partner also died very suddenly and it is to Kathryn’s great credit that she carried on alone during Julie’s period of compassionate leave. Despite all these setbacks this year I am pleased to report that the annual Programme of events for 2017/2018 is about to go to the printers and will be ready for distribution to members in late August/early September. This excellent programme could not have been achieved without the enormous work put in by the Sections ably led by Patricia McWilliam Fowler (Arts), Peter Barnes (Social Philosophy), Professor Michael Sinnott (Science and Technology) and Angus McDougall (Young Persons). Angus himself was seriously ill during this session and I know is grateful for all the support received to ensure our YP lectures in 2016/2017 ran smoothly and that we have a good programme of YP lectures for next year. Michael Sinnott stands down as Chair of S and T this year and we will miss his incisive scientific mind and his amazing ability to report in fine detail on all the lectures given through his group’s organisation.

Despite the loss of John’s support with the organisation of Council lectures and events we managed to deliver all our lectures (Dalton, Ageing, Manchester Airport) very successfully but one or two proposed Council events in the second half of the year did not come to fruition as other urgent matters intervened. It is hoped in 2017/2018 that we will have a more stable environment and that we can pursue and provide some innovative new Council events for our members.

Finally, I need to come to our members and those who attend our lectures in Manchester in the evening. The last two years have seen unprecedented and hugely disruptive road and building works in central Manchester and beyond which have made getting to lectures very difficult, sometimes impossible, at times.

It is to everyone’s credit that they continued to attend and make these successful and we sincerely hope that in the coming session this situation will be one that we can look back on, not fondly, but as a matter of the past.

Not all our events in 2017/2018 are in the Annual Brochure so watch the website for additional information.

Dr Diana M. Leitch MBE President

Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s coffin with genetic engineering JONATHAN GRESSEL

T

8 September 2016

he developing world has many unique constraints to crop production. Due to lacking inputs, these constraints are best overcome if solutions are seedborne, as the use of “in seedo” technologies that do not require added input are the most efficient way to assist resource-poor subsistence farmers’ transition to production agriculture. Classical breeding cannot overcome many of these constraints because the crops have reached a “genetic glass ceiling” - the genes are not available within the species. Genetic engineering can supply the genes, but typically not as ‘hand-me-down genes’ from the developed world because of the unique problems: mainly parasitic weeds, and weedy rice, stem borers, army worms, as well as post harvest insects, viral diseases, tropical mycotoxins, anti-feedants in crop seeds, toxic heavy metals and mineral deficiencies. Public sector involvement in engineering genetically against these constraints is necessary, as the private biotechnology sector does not view the developing world as a viable market in most instances.

Introduction

In 1798 Malthus predicted that there would soon be massive starvation because the human population was growing geometrically while agricultural productivity was increasing linearly1. Malthus was quite right for considerable periods of time, yet just before catastrophe, there were scientific and technological discoveries that provided a quantum jump in food production. Malthus would be right again for a period, and then another leap would occur. These sudden jumps were provided by the advent of synthetic fertilizers, tractors replacing draught animals, hybrid breeding and the green revolution, etc. Genetic engineering is beginning to provide the next major jump in productivity, especially in the developing world where yields are a third of the world average for major crops, and the needs are the greatest. There is now a demand that agriculture provide not only food, but also biofuels, despite little available additional arable land and fresh water. Genetic engineering can provide two new nails for Malthus’s coffin, one for increasing agricultural productivity for food production, and another for biofuels.

The least developed areas of the world are dependent on a small number of crops for caloric input; S.E. Asia depends predominantly on rice; Africa on maize, sorghum, or cassava; with strong regional predominance of single crops. The world as a whole is not much less diverse with 80% of human and livestock calories coming from only four crops. This lack of crop biodiversity is frightening

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considering what a single new disease or other constraint might do to these four: wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans.

The globalization of these four crops is due to the greater genetic diversity within them, allowing these crops to be cultivated in many areas. Indigenous or other crops do not have the same genetic potential to spread and overcome constraints; if the necessary genes are lacking, no amount of traditional or sophisticated breeding can cause them to come forth; each crop has its own “genetic glass ceiling”2, which can only be breached by bringing the needed genes from wherever they might occur by genetic engineering. Even the four major crops have their own genetic glass ceilings as evidenced by the phenomenal success of engineering herbicide and/or insect resistances into their genomes, allowing cost/ environmentally friendly control of weeds and insects. The Irish potato famine could have been obviated and present extensive fungicide use can be replaced by transgenes conferring blight resistance that have been generated3, but not yet commercialized, even in Ireland, due to politicized regulatory constraints.

A number of constraints to developing world agriculture are described below as examples of problems that have not been solved by breeding due to lack of endogenous genes, with possible biotechnological solutions. Many of these solutions will have to be developed by the public sector, as there is not enough interest shown by the large, major crop, developed-world focused multi-nationals. They will then have to be commercialized by public-local/private sector cooperation.

Only agronomic constraints are discussed below, not the infrastructural problems that must be solved by politicians, and which cannot be solved by biologists and genetic engineering. All transgenic crops released so far are clearly devoid of environmental risks, and do bear environmental benefits4.

Major weed problems requiring genetic engineering solutions

While there are many weeds that require control, most can be controlled by herbicides whose use is becoming universal, except in Africa and S.E.Asia where manual (usually ‘femanual’) control predominates. Two such major weed problems not amenable to present herbicides or manual control, nor breeding are described below.

Weedy rice in rice

Rice culture is rapidly being transformed from back-breaking, labor-intensive hand transplanting to direct seeding into the paddy. Hand-transplanting gives rice a month head start over weeds. Most weeds in direct seeded rice can be controlled by herbicides, except one, a weedy form of rice that has evolved in farmers’ fields to a form that is taller than rice and spills (“shatters”) most its seeds before crop harvest. The few seeds that remain and contaminate the crops seeds typically have an undesirable tell-tale red colour. The weedy rice problem is a major constraint where direct seeding started first in the Americas, then Europe and now Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and beginning in China and elsewherec.f. 5.

All herbicides that control weedy rice also kill rice. They are botanically the same interbreeding species, and thus have the same metabolism. Developing

Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s coffin with genetic engineering

herbicide resistant rice has been a proven solution. A mutant rice was found that was resistant to the acetolactate synthase (ALS-AHAS) inhibiting herbicides and has been widely commercialized as a solution6. Additionally, genetic engineers have developed rice resistant to the herbicides glyphosate and glufosinate7, and both kill the weedy rice.

Even though rice is “cleistogamous” i.e. pollinating itself before the flowers open, there is some pollen transfer, and the ALS-mutation resistance gene rapidly spreads into weedy rice, wherever usedc.f. 5. In some places the herbicide resistant rice was withdrawn, and the transgenic herbicide resistant rice was not released, as it was demonstrated in the laboratory that there would be gene flow8. Technologies have been developed that can transgenically mitigate gene flow from crops9, but these have yet to be commercially used.

Parasitic weeds

Root parasitic weeds (Orobanche spp; Striga spp). are widespread. Orobanche spp. (broomrapes) attack grain legumes, vegetable crops, and sunflower especially around the Mediterranean basin and into Eastern Europe. The only solution to broomrapes was to fumigate the infested soil with the now banned methyl bromide, and which was affordable only for expensive “truck” crops. Striga (withchweed) species attack maize, sorghum, millet, and grain legumes throughout much of sub-Sahara Africa, and are major reason for the low productivity in these areas, where they have a 20-100% yield reduction in any given season10.

These root parasites, ‘wait’ for a host root to pass nearby stimulating germination and then attach only to host crop roots. They do most of their damage while still underground. When the flower stalk emerges late in the season, it is a sign to the farmer that the crop has been devastated. Pulling up stalks by hand does not help this year’s crop, and actually can damage the crop root system, but does prevent each stalk from dropping tens of thousands of tiny seeds back into the soil. Some herbicides can control the emerged stalks but few farmers can afford to spray when they know that this season’s crop is partially or fully lost by that time.

Solutions to parasitic weeds

Some crop rotations, sanitation, hand weeding to prevent spread can reduce the problem. One intercrop, the perennial legume Desmodium can prevent Striga development in limited geographical areas in Africa, and its foliage is excellent cattle/goat fodder11.

There has been considerable success with breeding sorghum for Striga resistance, but it requires a complicated combination of separate recessive genes each on different chromosomes controlling partial prevention of secretion of germination stimulation, partial inhibition of attachment structures and then attachment, and partial inhibition of penetration of the crop vascular systemc.f. 10. This has been successful enough to result in the super-breeder Gebisa Ejeta to be awarded the 2009 World Food Prize for this work. Sorghum co-evolved with Striga in Africa and thus possesses these modicums of resistance that could be combined. Maize

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was introduced to Africa and breeding for resistance was less successful, although periodically there are publications claiming some resistance, claims that later seem to vanish.

Biotechnology has been and can be helpful. Transgenic herbicide resistance is a simple workable solution, well demonstrated in the laboratory for Orobanche c.f.5,10. A tissue culture derived herbicide-resistant maize mutation has been crossed into African open-pollinated maize varieties as well as hybrids, and has been releasedc.f. 10. It has a novel cost-saving technology advance; instead of spraying the herbicide over the whole field, the herbicide is applied to the seeds prior to planting requiring >90% less herbicide than would be the case if sprayed12.

A similar mutation was found in sorghum and is being readied for commercialization13. What risks might herbicide-resistant-crop/susceptible parasitic have? It was questioned whether farmers could still intercrop another crop species if herbicide is used. If the crop seed alone is treated with herbicide, a crop interplanted more than 15cm from the herbicide treated maize would be unaffected by the herbicide10, 12.

Once the sorghums breeders’ genes are isolated and cloned, they could be transformed in a single, dominantly inherited construct containing a group of clustered genes and would be a very effective strategy. Such resistance could easily be backcrossed into local varieties and land races preserving crop biodiversity because it is inherited as a single dominant gene, and not four separate recessive genes.

Perhaps the resistance genes from sorghum, once isolated, could be stacked with those responsible for Desmodium allelochemical production, along with resistance genes being found in cowpea14 and rice14, all into minichromosomes16, or into the genome at one locus. It would be very hard for the parasitic weeds to overcome such resistance and many crop species could be engineered with the same gene cluster.

Other approaches are also beginning to work17 after initial reports of failure.

RNAi constructs encoding genes that suppress parasite-only metabolic pathways have been engineered into the crop. The present constructs only lower the number of emerging Orobanche attachments on the transgenic tomatoes where this was tested24, but presumably with different gene configurations and promoters, it will soon be possible to use this technology effectively.

Insect constraints to crop production requiring biotech interventions

Stem borers and army worms

Stem borer moths have long been a major problem on grain crops in the developed and developing world18. Besides the damage to yield by the insects feeding, winds easily knock over the larvae-hollowed stems, causing breakage before harvest.

These insects are also vectors of disease-causing fungi, including those that secrete fumonisins that cause esophageal cancer in humans and other syndromes in livestock. More recently the fall army worm, a western hemisphere pest made its way to Nigeria and in a very short time marched through Africa, devastating maize and other crops as it went along19.

Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s coffin with genetic engineering

These and other insects have been controlled by spraying organophosphate or other insecticides in the developed world, or in Africa as small pinches of granular herbicide by bare hands or as drops of liquid formulations with a medicine dropper into the leaf whorl of maize. Organic agriculture utilizes sprays of dried Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacteria to control these insects. Genetic engineers isolated the genes encoding the active toxins in Bt strains and inserted them directly into crops20, obviating the need for the middleman. Bt maize and cotton are widely grown in the developed world (the Americas, Spain, China, India and South Africa)4, and maize varieties are being developed by the public sector for other areas of sub-Sahara Africa. The problem here though is one typical of how the developing world is given “hand-me-down genes” that do not always fit. The strains of Bt genes that have been given to Africa are appropriate for the European corn borer, and not the African corn borer. The strains thus far developed have not been compared with the more limited approach to stem-borers (and Striga) of co-cultivation with legume Desmodiumc.f. 10. Synthetic Bt strains that are far more effective in Africa are not being used20 (except in South-Africa, where they developed their own strains), probably because they would require undergoing new regulatory procedures. The fall army worm is easily controlled using Bt transgenic maize, and is not a problem in South Africa, where Bt maize is cultivated. Unfortunately, the regulators in most African countries have yet to approve Bt maize, despite widespread use elsewhere. Various Bt genes are needed in other crops as well.

Grain weevils and moths

Post-harvest insects are especially bad pests, especially in humid tropical countries where grain cannot be properly dried and where closed storage facilities are lacking; especially on the farm. Not only do the insects wreck havoc on the grain, leaving it part-eaten and full of larvae, they are vectors for the Aspergillus fungal species that produce aflatoxinsc.f. 2. These mycotoxins prevent liver adsorption of food at low doses, and at higher chronic doses increase the risk of hepatitis, liver cancer, and acute doses can cause rapid death.

There is little published effort on finding transgenes that can prevent attack by these pests in cereal grains but there has been a modicum of success with legumes21. There should be Bt’s genes that deal with these pests, but such efforts to screen for them are unknown. At least in the past, when companies possessing huge libraries of Bt strains were canvassed, they said they had no interest in making their libraries available for post-harvest insect control in the developing world18.

Diseases where the breeders have not found crop resistance

There has been much recent effort to find transgenes that confer resistance to fungal diseases using the technology of host-induced gene silencing, a system where the crop is genetically engineered with DNA that is only expressed in the fungus that attacks the crop and silences vital crop genes. An excellent recent example is a double whammy construct for peanuts containing genes that inhibit fungal growth as well as suppress aflatoxin biosynthesis22.

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Fewer efforts have been made to deal with viral diseases where one can express innocuous viral genes in the crop, precluding viral growth, or transform antisensing or RNAi constructs against viral genes into the crop and prevent further viral replication. There has been some success with this approach with cassava23, and maize streak24 viruses.

Mobilization of minerals/prevention of mineral uptake

Many of the inputs that seem inexpensive in the developed world, are expensive in the developing world; fertilizer costs 4-6 times more in real terms and far more relative to farmers’ income. Many soils contain considerable amounts of soil-bound phosphate, which alas is unavailable to plant roots. Various transgenes are being tested that “mobilize� soil phosphorus rendering it available to plants25.

Similar genes are needed to mobilize iron, especially for crops cultivated in high pH soils.

Conversely, some minerals are at toxic levels in many soils and gene systems are needed that can exclude them from the edible portions of plants. Minerals that need to be excluded include aluminium, arsenate, and cadmium. This is an active research area26.

Transgenes to deal with toxins/anti-feedants in developing world crops

Diets are often monotonous and bad in the developing world. Some foods are fine if mixed into a diet but are basically poisonous if the sole or major source of nutrition. As discussed earlier, poor control of insects lowers yield but also vectors pathogens that release mycotoxins. A few examples of such problems are described below to provide a feeling of how genetic engineering can overcome such problems. Most of these problems do not have a sufficient market value to justify involvement of private biotechnology companies (except to sell seed) whereas the public health aspect justifies public sector involvement.

Phosphorus fertilizer is expensive and resources are being rapidly depleted.

Much of the phosphate in the plant ends up as a polymer: phytic acid, which cannot be degraded by monogastric animals, necessitating adding phosphorus to feed. Phytic acid binds iron and zinc rendering them unavailable to monogastric animals (including humans), engendering dietary deficiencies despite the presence of these minerals. Genes preventing the biosynthesis of phytic acid in seeds and/or a gene encoding phytase, which degrades phytic acid can be transformed into crops27. Either way one gets adequate dietary phosphorus, iron, and zinc without added cost.

Pearl millet, when a major component of the diet causes goiter because it contains vitexin, which inhibits thyroxin productionc.f. 5. The genes encoding vitexin biosynthesis are knownc.f. 5, and using antisense technology can be suppressed preventing this problem2. Grasspeas contain a compound causing a syndrome known as lathyrism2. Suppressing this transgenically will be harder than dealing with vitexin, as the genes encoding the pathway have yet to be isolated.

Soybeans contain allergens that cause severe diarrhoea in infants ingesting soy-based milk. This can be critical for a mother unable to afford more expensive

Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s coffin with genetic engineering

cow’s milk in a poor country. The genes have been isolated can be used to suppress the production of the major allergenc.f. 5. Hopefully the day will arrive when infant formula will bear the label “contains only soybeans genetically engineered to contain no allergens – does not contain allergenic native soybean products”. This reduced allergy soybean will also allow the use of more soy meal in feed pellets for aquaculture, reducing the need for fish meal.

Using wasted residues from biofuel crops for feed

Much is being made of the ability to attain fuel sufficiency by cultivating oilseed crops such as castor bean and Jatropha (common name: vomit nut)28. These related species produce related toxins, ricin and curcin, respectively, among the most potent toxins known. The literature about them uses understatement in saying that the residual material after oil extraction is “inedible” (when it is poisonous).

The high protein meal is to be used as “manure” without any environmental impact studies, to see what the long lasting poisons do to soil biota. To throw away what could be excellent animal feed seems scandalous in areas of the world where there is little animal protein in the diet. The genes encoding both curcin and ricin are known, which would allow facile genetic engineering suppression of toxin production29. Should these undomesticated species be cultivated without dealing with the toxins as well as other issues such as seed shatter, non uniform ripening, need for hand picking and other traits, which render these hard to cultivate?

Many have reservations about using arable land for biofuel vs. food. In that context it is far more justified to make biofuels from hardly digestible plant residues after harvest such as straws than from grain28. Crops such as maize are being genetically engineered in the West to have modified lignin contents, as lignin prevents the cellulose from being converted into ethanol29. The same technologies would make the straws more edible by ruminant animals and thus would have dual uses if introduced into the developing world28.

Concluding remarks

There are often ample alternative inputs to transgenic crops, and a great biodiversity of affordable food in the developed world. Such luxuries are not as widespread in the developing world. Thus it is that transgenics have much more to offer the developing world than the developed. In some developing world crops it will be necessary to insert failsafe mechanisms to mitigate gene flow from crops to weeds9.

The public sector will have to perform the product development needed in most instances, as the multi-national private sector corporations do not understand the market or its needs. In the developed world, transgenics have not substantially increased yields, but have reduced inputs and thus lower production costs. In the developing world where the inputs have been too costly, transgenic crops can vastly increase yields by inexpensively providing the input in the seed. It is not hard to double yields, when they are a presently just third of the world average.

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Acknowlegements: Sections of this paper are condensed and updated from an earlier article by this author5. The copyrighted sections from that article are used with the kind permission of Elsevier. Due to imposed space limitations, many pre-2010 literature citations have been omitted and are referred to as c.f. 5.

References

1.

Malthus, T.R. An essay on the principle of population as it affects future improvement of society. ( J. Johnson, London, 1798) (Facsimile available from www.lawbookexchange.com) 2. Gressel, J. Genetic glass ceilings: Transgenics for crop biodiversity. ( Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008).

3. Roman, M.L., Izarra, M., Lindqvist-Kreuze, H., Rivera, C., Gamboa S., Tovar, J.C., Forbes, G.A., Kreuze, J.F. and Ghislain. M. R/Avr gene expression study of Rpi-vnt1.1 transgenic potato resistant to the Phytophthora infestans clonal lineage EC-1. Plant Cell Tiss. Organ Cult., 131 (2017) 259-68.

4. Brookes G. and Barfoot, P., Environmental impacts of genetically modified (GM) crop use 1996-2014: Impacts on pesticide use and carbon emissions. GM Crops & Food-Biotech. Agric. Food Chain, 7 (2016) 84-116 5. Gressel, J., Needs for and environmental risks from transgenic crops in the developing world. New Biotech., 27: (2010) 522-7.

6. Olguin, E.R.S., Arrieta-Espinoza, G., Lobo, J.A. and Espinoza-Esquivel A.M., Assessment of gene flow from a herbicide-resistant indica rice (Oryza sativa L.) to the Costa Rican weedy rice (Oryza sativa) in Tropical America: factors affecting hybridization rates and characterization of F-1 hybrids. Transgenic Res.,18 (2009) 633-47.

7. see: http://www.isb.vt.edu/cfdocs/fieldtests3.cfm 8. Serrat, X., Esteban, R., Penas, G., Catala, M.M., Mele and E. Messeguer, J. Direct and reverse pollen-mediated gene flow between GM rice and red rice weed. Aob Plants 5 (2013) plt050 (DOI: 10.1093/aobpla/plt050) 9. Gressel, J., Dealing with transgene flow of crop protection traits from crops to their relatives. Pest Manag. Sci., 71 (2015) 658–67 10. Joel, D.M., Gressel, J. and Musselman, L, .eds. Root Parasitic Orobanchaceae: Parasitic Mechanisms and Control Strategies, (Springer, Berlin, 2013) 513 pp.

11. Midega, C.A.O., Wasonga, C.J., Hooper, A.M., Pickett, J.A. and Khan. Z.R., Drought-tolerant Desmodium species effectively suppress parasitic striga weed and improve cereal grain yields in western Kenya. Crop Protect., 98 (2017) 94-101.

12. De Groote, H., Wangare, L., Kanampiu, F., Odendo, M., Diallo, A.H. and Karaya, D. The potential of a herbicide resistant maize technology for Striga control in Africa.

Agric. Syst., 97 (2008) 83-94.

13. Tuinstra, M.R., Soumana, S., Al-Khatib, K., Kapran, I, Toure, A., van Ast, A., Bastiaans, L., Ochanda, N.W., Salami, I., Kayentao, M. and Dembele S., Efficacy of herbicide seed treatments for controlling Striga infestation of sorghum. Crop Sci. 49 (2009) 923–29.

Hammering two new nails in Malthus’s coffin with genetic engineering

14. Timko, M.P. and Li, J., Gene-for-gene resistance in Striga-cowpea associations.

Science, 325 (2009) 1094.

15. Swarbrick, P.J., Scholes, J.D., Press, M. and Slate, J., A major QTL for resistance of rice to the parasitic plant Striga hermonthica is not dependent on genetic background.

Pest Manag. Sci., 65 (2009) 528–32.

16. Yu, W.C., Yau, Y.Y. and Birchler J.A., Plant artificial chromosome technology and its potential application in genetic engineering. Plant Biotech. J., 14 (2016) 1175-1182.

17. Kirigia, D., Runo, S. and Alakonya, A., 2014. A virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) system for functional genomics in the parasitic plant Striga hermonthica. Plant Methods 10 (2014) DOI 10.1186/1746-4811-10-16 18. Gressel, J., Hanafi, A., Head, G., Marasas, W., Obilana, A.B., Ochanda, J., Souissi, T. and Tzotzos, G., Major heretofore intractable biotic constraints to African food security that may be amenable to novel biotechnological solutions. Crop Protect., 23 (2004) 661-8.

19. Goergen, G., Kumar, P.L., Sankung, S.B., Togola, A. and Tamò, M. First report of outbreaks of the Fall Armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda ( J E Smith) (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae), a new alien invasive pest in West and Central Africa. PLoS ONE11(10) (2016) e0165632. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165632 20. Shah, J.V., Yadav, R. and Ingle, S.S. Engineered Cry1Ac-Cry9Aa hybrid Bacillus thuringiensis delta-endotoxin with improved insecticidal activity against Helicoverpa armigera. Arch. Microbiol., 199 (2017) 1069-75.

21. Bett, B., Gollasch, S., Moore, A., James, W., Armstrong J., Walsh, T., Harding, R. and Higgins T.J.V., Transgenic cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) expressing Bacillus thuringiensis Vip3Ba protein are protected against the Maruca pod borer (Maruca vitrata). Plant Cell Tiss. Organ Cult., 131 (2017) 335-45.

22. Sharma, K.K., Pothana, A., Prasad, K., Shah, D., Kaur, J., Bhatnagar, D., Chen Z.-Y., Raruang, Y., Cary, J.W., Rajasekaran, K., Sudini, H.K. and Bhatnagar-Mathur P., Peanuts that keep aflatoxin at bay: a threshold that matters, Plant Biotechnol. J., (2017) https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.12846 23. Vanderschuren, H., Moreno, I., Anjanappa, R.B., Zainuddin, I.M. and Gruissem W., Exploiting the combination of natural and genetically engineered resistance to Cassava Mosaic and Cassava Brown Streak Viruses impacting cassava production in Africa. Plos One 7 (2012) DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0045277.

24. Shepherd, D.N., Martin, D.P. and Thomson, J.A., Transgenic strategies for developing crops resistant to geminiviruses. Plant Science 176 (2009) 1-11.

25. Zhang, F., Wu, X.N., Zhou, H.M., Wang, D.F., Jiang, T.T., Sun, Y.F., Cao Y., Pei, W.X., Sun, S.B. and Xu, G.H., Overexpression of rice phosphate transporter gene OsPT6 enhances phosphate uptake and accumulation in transgenic rice plants. Plant Soil, 384 (2014) 259-70.

26. Mench, M., Schwitzguebel, J.P., Schroeder, P., Bert V., Gawronski, S. and Gupta S., Assessment of successful experiments and limitations of phytotechnologies: contaminant uptake, detoxification and sequestration, and consequences for food safety.

Environ. Sci. Pollu. Res., 16 (2009) 876-900.

27. Abid, N., Khatoon, A., Maqbool, A., Irfan, M., Bashir, A., Asif, I., Shahid, M., Saeed, A., Brinch-Pedersen, H. and Malik K.A., Transgenic expression of phytase in wheat endosperm increases bioavailability of iron and zinc in grains. Transgen. Res. 26 (2017) 109-22.

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28. Gressel J., Transgenics are imperative for biofuel crops. Plant Sci. 174 (2008) 246-63.

29. Takeda, Y., Koshiba, T., Tobimatsu, Y., Suzuki, S., Muarakami, S., Yamamura, M. Rahman, M.M., Takano, T., Hattori, T., Sakamoto andM., Umezawa, T. Regulation of coniferaldehyde 5-hydroxylase expression to modulate cell wall lignin structure in rice. Planta 246 (2017) 337-49.

Jonathan Gressel is Professor Emeritus of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. He has made major contributions to research establishing concrete solutions for global food insecurity. In 2010 he was awarded the Israel Prize, the state’s highest honour, for his work in agriculture . He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Weed Society of America. As well as being an author of over 330 scientific papers and 8 books, the most recent being Genetic Glass Ceilings - Transgenics for Crop Biodiversity (2008), he is also editor and associate editor of three scientific journals.

Correspondence to: jonathan.gressel@weizmann.ac.il

Medicine for Tomorrow: Biomarkers, Biomarker Discovery and Precision Medicine TONY FREEMONT

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7 November 2016

he Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society has been blessed with numerous famous scientists and doctors as members since its inception in 1781. If you look at medical care during the early days of the Society, and even well into the 20th century, through the eyes of these learned people you gain a better appreciation of how the things that we now consider matter of fact impacted on their understanding of disease, illness and therapeutics.

Thomas Percival FRS, FRSE, FSA (1740-1804) was a physician and campaigner for public health and factory reform. In 1803 he put forward an ethical framework for the basis of the professional conduct of surgeons and physicians which underpins current best practice. However, it was only in the early middle part of his life that the concept of the “seats of disease” (the relationship between abnormalities of organs and patients’ symptoms) became accepted, following publication in 1761 of Morgagni’s De Sedibus et Causis Morborum (The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy). Even the classification of diseases as we might understand it today (infections, cancer, trauma, endocrine etc) was only coming into acceptance when John Dalton FRS (1766-1844), the famous chemist and researcher into colour blindness, was in his 20s.

Joseph Whitworth lived between 1803 and 1887. He was an engineer and entrepreneur, bequeathing to the people of Manchester, amongst other things, the Christie Hospital. His contemporary, James Prescott Joule FRS (1818-1889) was a physicist and brewer, and discoverer of the relationship between mechanical work and heat. That both were made Fellows of the Royal Society meant they were leaders and innovators in their fields, and undoubtedly well-read in others. Imagine how they would have followed the development of anaesthetics (nitrous oxide, ether, chloroform) in the 1840s, 50s and 60s lest they might one day require surgery. Or the contemporaneous development of an understanding through the work of Louis Pasteur of how bacteria cause infection, and Joseph Lister PRS (1827-1912) built on this knowledge to combat infections by the use of antiseptics.

In fact, the mid-nineteenth century saw a mini boom in medical care driven by advances in biology and chemistry, which included, in addition to anaesthesia and antisepsis, the concept of how the newly discovered “cell” was the fundamental component of the body, displacing in this context the organ; and the whole idea of the aetiology of disease (diseases having understandable causes) which went way beyond bacteria causing infection.

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Over the next century there was a steady acquisition of medical advances, such as the development of medical X-rays for diagnosis and treatment, until the next boom in medical knowledge around the middle of the 20th century, which still influences our own views of disease and our expectation of medical care. It included the discovery of the structure of DNA, immunology and antibiotics, the invention of joint replacements, organ transplantation, echocardiography and IVF, and the design and clinical translation of CT and MR scanners. Some of the landmarks mentioned above have been seminal in the development of modern medicine, but if history is to repeat itself as we move towards the middle of the 21st century, we might expect to see the earliest stirrings of the next “medical boom”. I would like to suggest that we are about to see just such a technologically driven change in medical practice that is so fundamental, exciting and disruptive, it will cause a complete revision of our views of disease and the ways in which medicine thinks of patients and prevents and manages disease.

There is a famous scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where the USS Enterprise has come backwards in time from the mid 23rd century to the late 20th century. Dr McCoy, ship’s doctor, is walking through a hospital in the USA and sees a woman lying on a trolley moaning. When he asks her what is the problem she says “kidney dialysis” to which he retorts: “Dialysis, what is this, the Dark Ages?”.

“Here,” he says giving her a pill: “you swallow that and if you have any problems, just call me”. The next you see is her being pushed in a wheel chair around the hospital followed by a group of curious nurses and doctors saying “my kidneys have grown back, my kidneys have grown back!”.

It is no exaggeration to say that we are witnessing such a remarkable breakthrough in medicine that we genuinely stand at the embarkation point of the journey that will lead to the same technology that Dr McCoy used, but it will come to fruition way before the 23rd century.

Like the baby steps at the start of all scientific advance, the “new medicine” has evolved slowly and steadily. It is based on an increasing realisation over the last 50 years that disease can be understood and classified at the molecular level (rather than that of the organ or cell). However, it is only through recent advances in engineering, such as rapid DNA sequencing (think of the human genome project), and mass spectrometry that it has become possible to identify and quantify large numbers of complex molecules, and it is this that has opened the door to the practical exploration and utilisation of molecular information for informing diagnosis and patient management.

It is now possible to have a snapshot of the molecular make up of blood, other body fluids and tissues in such a way that as to define individuals by their genome (DNA), proteome (protein), lipidome (fats) and metabolome (small molecules) and the same applies to diseases, bacteria, cancers etc.

The problem we now face is that there are many orders of magnitude more molecules than cells, and so to understand the make-up of individual patients and how that interacts with the molecular biology of disease, requires that we handle huge numbers of data points. There are even too many for that mightiest

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of biological computers, the human brain, to take in and analyse.The need to handle such large numbers of bits of information (genes, proteins, fats etc.) has led to the development of electromechanical computers that can focus on such problems, and a new science, informatics, designed to handle “big data”.

Understanding disease at the molecular level has also spawned a new type of therapeutics based on the concept that most of us spontaneously launch molecular defences against diseases, which are more or less successful. If we could harness the naturally occurring molecules that fight disease or induce their production outside the body, we would have treatments made up of naturally occurring molecules that had been tried and tested by nature for tens of thousands of years. This is now possible and has initiated a new area of therapeutic science based on the use of “biologics”.

So the world of medicine has suddenly changed. By understanding individuals and diseases at the molecular level there is now the possibility in the future to tailor treatments to the needs of specific patients. So whilst currently a group of patients with disease X will receive the same initial treatment and of every 10 patients 7 will respond positively to different degrees, 2 will not benefit and 1 will be made worse by the treatment, there now lies the prospect, albeit currently the distant prospect, of all 10 receiving a slightly different treatment so that all benefit optimally. This is known as personalised or precision medicine. It would be wrong to raise hopes prematurely, but the concepts and technologies are now around that will one day bring this goal to fruition.

For the first time in over 2000 years it has become possible to realise Hippocrates (of Cos - c.460 BC– c.370 BC) dictum that “It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has”.

But the technology extends further. There has been the fuelling of a drive for acquisition of molecular data on patients (and healthy people) whilst they are going about their daily activities, or recovering from surgery, illness etc, certainly not restricting it to when they are in hospital or the doctor’s surgery. This is no futuristic dream, but simply an extension of the FitBit, the finger prick test used by diabetics for monitoring their blood sugar, 24 hour heart rate or blood pressure monitors, or sending our spit to companies that will tell us our ethnic background. Supposing we could harness molecular data from the sweat beneath the Fitbit, or from tiny indwelling probes, how easy would it be to monitor patients’ responses to treatment, or “at risk” patients’ changing molecular profile to detect when diseases start to recur. The challenge is designing and powering sensors to do just this. It will come as no surprise in Manchester to discover that Manchester engineers are amongst the leaders in this area, or indeed are using the singular properties of graphene to make such an outcome possible.

The distance monitoring of patients has fostered another area of data science called mobile or e-medicine, an area where once again Manchester is internationally leading. Soon “Big Brother” will be watching us, but it will be a benign big brother with our own best interests at heart.

However, there is a problem. If all individuals are different with unique molecular makeup, and all diseases are different, not only in their complex molecular

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profiles, but also in the way their molecules interact with the molecules of the individual patient, how on earth can we harness all that molecular data, analyse it and then turn it to diagnostic or therapeutic advantage in real time.

Whilst one day we might have the technology to allow this level of complexity to be assimilated and used, today we don’t. But nature comes to our aid. Molecules don’t work independently, but rather as a hierarchy.

At the molecular level, rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most complicated diseases it is possible to imagine. But, in the 1980s I watched a video of a woman with rheumatoid disease being treated with an antibody to a naturally occurring molecule called TNF-α. The effect was astonishing. Following treatment this woman was able to walk, when before she could only hobble. The scientists and doctors behind the discovery had recognised that although the molecular profile of the disease was complex and differed from patient to patient, TNF-α was a master regulator of the molecular events occurring in the joints of their patients.

Turn it off and all the disease processes would be damped down. TNF-α was, therefore a therapeutic target, all that was needed was the bullet. This came in the form of a biologic, a molecule, an antibody, against TNF-α .

Recognising that there is a hierarchy of molecules involved in disease means that expression of certain specific molecules, or small group of molecules, can be used diagnostically, and changes in their expression can enable the success, or otherwise, of treatment to be monitored. These molecules, or groups of molecules, are called molecular biomarkers.

Identifying molecular biomarkers that assist diagnosis (diagnostic biomarkers), help monitor effects of treatment (theranostic biomarkers), predict outcome (prognostic biomarkers) or could become, like TNF-α, a target for treatment (therapeutic biomarkers) is taking off as a biomedical discipline.

As new biomarkers are discovered, for example in cancers, inflammatory diseases, in healing (or non-healing) wounds, there is a drive for them to enter clinical use. This so-called clinical translation is a process that is undertaken in the laboratories of the NHS by specialised doctors and scientists who collectively come under the heading of “pathologists”.

Translation is no mean feat. Regulation, funding, uptake by doctors, pressure from industry, NHS management and government all make the task complex, but not impossible. Manchester is at the forefront of this drive to bring novel molecular biomarkers to the clinic and this will pay huge dividends to the people of Greater Manchester. Manchester’s lead has been made possible, not only by the superb biomedical, engineering and clinical science across our Universities and Healthcare Trusts, but also by local politicians who have embraced the devolution of the health and social care budget from central government. Their vision for a healthcare system driven by technological advance and tailored for the people of Greater Manchester is unique and inspirational.

What will this “molecular revolution” in medicine mean to us? Medicine will change of that there is no doubt.

Monitoring patients in the community will mean earlier detection of disease, early initiation of treatment, and increased disease management in, or near, the

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patient’s home. We are looking at the disappearance of multiple large hospitals across Greater Manchester, and much more “near patient” diagnosis and management. There will be a reclassification of disease. Already large companies, working in conjunction with the NHS and Universities, are moving from a disease taxonomy based on changes at the organ and cellular level, to one based on the expression of molecules. This leads to something that I find very strange.

Diseases that I have known for 40 years of medical practice as being quite disparate (e.g. cancers and joint diseases) are suddenly seen as being close relatives in terms of deranged molecular function with similar therapeutic biomarker profiles.

Put another way there are inflammatory and malignant diseases that will respond to the same biologic. This shouldn’t be a surprise - after all the drug methotrexate is used to treat cancer and inflammatory arthritis, but somehow “getting my head around” linking diseases like pancreatic cancer and lung scarring pushes hard against all the principles and tenets of my medical training and practice. So not just me, but all doctors will have to change in the way they think about disease and how they investigate and manage patients, and this has to be reflected in the way we train doctors, nurses, pharmacists and all other healthcare professionals.

Finally the nature of “the doctor” will change. Diagnoses will still be made by caring and experienced clinicians, but they may not necessarily be the types of doctors we know today. Whatever else, the clinicians of the future will be guided as much by the results of molecular biomarker tests produced in pathology laboratories, than they will by the patients history and their own physical findings. A new type of doctor, the molecular pathologist, with an in-depth understanding of patient constitutions and the molecular biology of disease, will be guiding diagnosis and even directing treatment.

This is actually nothing new, there are numerous parallels already in the NHS. We already have interventional cardiologists stenting narrowed coronary arteries reducing the need for cardiac surgery; radiologists operating on brains from inside blood vessels replacing neurosurgery, CT scans replacing the need for unnecessary exploratory surgery. The list is very nearly endless. So having specialist doctors who diagnose and direct treatment from a laboratory is just another step along the journey of changing medical practice. Not just that, but machine learning and artificial intelligence will help to hone complex tests to gain the most from the smallest impact, whether that is measured by cost or patient pain/inconvenience.

There will, however, never be a substitute for the caring listening doctor who talks to patients and can put their symptomatology within a cultural and moral framework, but the new technology will allow them more time to interact with patients whilst the machine in the corner of the room, or attached to the patient’s arm, records the patients altered biology and initiates treatment directly or through interactions with the doctor.

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Professor Tony Freemont is the Procter Professor of Pathology at the University of Manchester. Born in 1953, he was brought up in Ealing, West London. In 1964 he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith. After completing A levels in Biology, Physics and Chemistry he entered St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School in London from which he graduated BSc (Anatomy 2:i), MB, BS in 1970. He trained in General Medicine in Portsmouth and Leicester, passing the MRCP (UK) examination in 1979, then entered into pathology training in the University of Manchester, passing the MRCPath examination in Histopathology in 1986. In 1984 he was awarded an MD for work on the migration of lymphocytes into diseased tissue. He has since been made FRCP(E)(1990), FRCP (1995) and FRCPath (1996). He has specialised in Osteoarticular (bone and joint) pathology since 1983 (when he was awarded an ARC Clinical Lectureship) and was promoted to a personal chair in 1993.His basic scientific and clinical research is focused in the broad area of molecular pathology and, in particular, the development and application of molecular pathology techniques to human skeletal tissues to obtain a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning disease.

He is also Director of MMPathIC (Manchester Molecular Pathology Innovation Centre), an MRC/EPSRC Molecular Pathology node with ÂŁ3M of funding from MRC/EPSRC to take novel molecular pathology and molecular pathology related engineering discoveries into clinical use in partnership with industry. This builds on his research in molecular pathology, and his seven years service on the NICE MTAC Committee.

He has authored or co-authored about 300 peer-reviewed publications, more than 50 reviews, about 30 book chapters, and 2 books. He has supervised 37 MD/PhD students and is a member of the College of Experts of the MRC and EPRSC and currently an editorial board member of two learned journals.

Correspondence to: tony.freemont@manchester.ac.uk

Why and how are we living longer?

THOMAS B. L. KIRKWOOD 16 March 2017

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The continuing growth in human life expectancy

uring the last decades of the 20th century, a phenomenon of global significance became apparent: the increase in human life expectancy that had been occurring steadily in higher-income countries for almost two centuries failed to hit its predicted ceiling and has carried on at the same rate as before.

To appreciate why this was unexpected, we need to recognise that until this point the increase in life expectancy had been caused almost entirely by reducing death rates in the early and middle years of life, not by altering the ageing process in any significant way. The earlier progress was made possible by multiple advances such as clean drinking water, sanitation, healthier housing, better education, improved nutrition, vaccines and antibiotics. By the latter stages of the century, the levels of such mortality had fallen so low that there was little scope for any further reductions to have much impact on life expectancy.

Since it was assumed that the ageing process itself was a biological given, it was expected that we would simply see greater numbers of older people, who would die at the same ages as the oldest of their predecessors. The surprising change has been that the death rates of those aged 80 and older began to fall.

The profound shift in the age structure of populations that has been occurring is altering almost every aspect of our lives. This necessitates fresh thinking about how to organise medical and social care, work and retirement, transport, leisure, and so much else besides. It has also become increasingly necessary to address questions about the science of ageing itself. Why does ageing occur? What is the relationship between ageing and disease? What factors influence individual trajectories of health into old age? How are our expectations of life, which are so much more than simple life expectancy, altering? In short, a new view of age is needed.

Why does ageing occur? An evolutionary perspective

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” wrote geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1973. If we can understand why ageing occurs – i.e. the ultimate reason shaped through the action of natural selection – we will be better able to investigate its proximate, mechanistic causes. That ageing has been influenced by selection is indicated inter alia by the fact that each species shows a characteristic pattern of survival and longevity, with some kinds of organism such as Hydra seeming not to age at all.

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Ageing is not merely the consequence of inevitably increasing entropy, as is sometimes suggested by mistakenly appealing to the second law of thermodynamics. The second law relates to ‘closed’ systems, whereas living systems are ‘open’ and could in principle apply their acquired energy to negating increases in entropic disorder. This begs the further question of how we can define whether or not ageing occurs. The accepted answer is that ageing is present when there is a progressive, generalised impairment of physiological functions, resulting in an increasing age specific death rate. In the case of Hydra, the evidence for absence of ageing is that individuals are observed to survive for long periods of time without any apparent functional decline or increase in age-specific mortality within the population.

Most adaptations are obviously beneficial for the organism. Ageing is unusual in that its effects on fertility and survival – the two principal determinants of Darwinian fitness – are deleterious. The idea that ageing might be programmed through evolution therefore faces immediate difficulties. To overcome its obvious drawbacks, it has been suggested that ageing evolved to control population size and to free up space and food resources for offspring. But in natural conditions most organisms die from extrinsic causes at ages well below those when senescence becomes apparent, and it is extremely hard to devise plausible biological scenarios where natural selection could in fact favour the evolution of a programme specifically to cause ageing. Instead, ageing is now understood to have evolved not because it offers any direct benefit itself but because natural selection either had limited scope to prevent it or had other priorities.

The fact that most animals in nature die young means that whatever happens to individuals at older ages is of greatly reduced evolutionary significance. Indeed, mathematical studies of how natural selection works across the life course show that its force inevitably diminishes with age. Not only does this mean that evolution is relatively powerless to get rid of any mutations that might arise within the genome which cause problems only at older ages, but also there is little to be gained by investing energy in better maintenance and repair than is needed to keep the body in sound condition beyond the kind of age that can reasonably be expected within the natural context where accidental hazards abound. If we consider mice, for example, field studies have shown that the vast majority of wild mice are dead before their first birthday. The wild mouse’s requirement for maintenance is therefore only that it should be good enough to keep the body in sound condition for perhaps 18 months. This is in fact what we see. The ageing process in pet or laboratory mice becomes clearly apparent only beyond a year, with death from old age occurring typically between 2 and 3 years. For humans, our ‘wild’ requirement for maintenance was to keep the body in sound condition for around 40 years. This again is what we see, significant ageing becoming apparent only beyond 40-50 years.

The idea that we age because it would not have a priority for natural selection to endow us with high enough levels of maintenance to last indefinitely is a concept known as the ‘disposable soma theory’. The term ‘soma’ refers to those organs and

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tissues of the body that do not belong to the ‘germ-line’, the latter being made up of specialised parts that constitute the reproductive lineage of cells resulting in the sperm and egg through which life is transmitted to the next generation. For the germ-line, of course, it is imperative that maintenance should be good enough that the lineage can continue indefinitely without progressive deterioration, or else the species would ultimately become extinct through internal system failure.

Important conclusions follow from this evolutionary insight. Firstly, ageing is caused by the progressive accumulation of damage. The logic applies with equal force to the whole repertoire of mechanisms for cellular maintenance and repair, so it is expected that multiple forms of damage will contribute in parallel, and perhaps synergistically, to the processes of ageing. Evidence for the pervasive impacts of damage driving the diverse hallmarks of ageing is compelling.

Secondly, the different longevities of different species are explained because the exposure to hazards varies from one species to another. Consequently selection will favour a higher investment in somatic maintenance in a species, such as a human, that is better adapted to evade the hazards of its ecological niche than in a species, such as a mouse, that is subject to a higher extrinsic level of risk.

Comparative studies of ageing consistently reveal that cell maintenance is greater in longer-lived organisms. In other words, long-lived species appear to ‘buy’ their longevity by investing in higher levels of maintenance.

What is the relationship between ageing and disease?

The defining feature of ageing is that it imposes an increasing risk of death.

The increasing likelihood of death is the consequence of becoming exposed to a growing risk of developing any of a wide range of age-related illnesses. This raises the important question of how ageing relates to disease. Current medical research is generally organised to examine diseases one by one. Yet older people commonly experience multi-morbidity – the simultaneous occurrence of more than one age-related, chronic condition. Within the Newcastle 85+ Study, for example, it was found that at age 85 almost three-quarters of the population had four or more co-occurring illnesses.

As medical research seeks to discover the causes that lead to any particular disease, it is important to work upstream from the end-stage pathology towards the initiating factors. The better we can understand what starts the processes leading ultimately to the disease, the more likely we are to be able to intervene in a preventative way. The interesting discovery is that as research progresses upstream from different specific diseases of ageing, such as Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, or heart disease, it is becoming evident that the initiating factors for different diseases have important features in common. These include many of the varieties of molecular and cellular damage that are now being discovered to be hallmarks of the ageing process itself. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it helps us to resolve a long-standing debate as to whether ageing and disease are essentially different biological processes. They are not, although different diseases arise when one or other form of damage comes to dominate the pathology in the

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relevant organ. Secondly, it suggests that new insights into the causes of chronic diseases might be expected if researchers can be better trained to understand the biology of ageing itself.

Factors affecting individual trajectories of ageing

A striking feature of ageing is its variability. Variability of ageing is of course characteristic of species other than humans. It is particularly noteworthy in organisms such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, where almost every other aspect of biology is strictly controlled. Laboratory populations of C. elegans tend to be isogenic (each individual having exactly the same genome as its neighbours), environmentally uniform and exhibit almost clockwork precision of development. Yet when it comes to ageing, the lifespans of individuals within the population are remarkably diverse. The origins of variability derive from the fact that, at its core, ageing is a process of progressive accumulation of defects that stem ultimately from random damage. Individual instances of damage are stochastic (i.e. subject to the play of chance). But although chance is an essential feature of ageing, this does not mean that trajectories of ageing are simply random. The rates at which molecular damage occurs, how bodily systems compensate and respond, and whether the defects lead to overt disease are all influenced not only by constitutional factors such as genetics, but also by environment and behaviour. Ageing is much more malleable than used to be thought.

That ageing is malleable is evident from the falling death rates in old age. The kinder conditions of modern life in high income countries, with fewer sources of physical stress and earlier interventions to maintain health, most likely explain why people now reach old age physically ‘younger’ than their parents and grandparents. Malleability is also evident in the ‘social gradient’ in health and life expectancy, whereby those of lower socioeconomic status have shorter life expectancy, often by more than a decade, and suffer disease and disability earlier, than those at the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Among the factors thought to explain variability in trajectories of ageing are nutrition, smoking, lifestyle, environment, attitude, and of course genetics. The traditional idea that longevity runs in families has been confirmed, in particular, by twin studies, from which the heritability of human longevity – the size of the genetic contribution – has been estimated to be about 25%. Over the last two decades, major studies have sought to identify genetic loci contributing to this heritability. Despite great effort, the findings have so far proved meagre. One set of genetic variants – those affecting the gene for apolipoprotein E (apoE) – has been found consistently to be associated with longevity, probably through its association with diseases such as dementia. However, apoE is the exception. The difficulty is that there is likely to be a large number of loci that together influence longevity but each of which makes too small a contribution individually to stand out as strongly statistically significant.

Of the non-genetic factors affecting trajectories of ageing, the most important are thought to be nutrition, lifestyle and physical activity. Epidemiological associations between dietary intake and health indicate clearly that the ‘Mediterranean

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diet’ is associated with a general lowering of mortality across the life course. In regions outside Europe, there are equivalents to the Mediterranean diet, notably in Japan and other far-eastern countries, where life expectancy tends to be high.

To go beyond these broad epidemiological associations is, however, difficult. Not only is it hard to conduct long-term trials where diet is modified, but it is difficult even to capture detailed data on individual nutritional intake other than in short-term intensive studies. Since the effects of nutrition on the trajectory of ageing will be generated across decades, this will remain a formidable obstacle for some time. Studies on the impacts of nutritional supplements, such as vitamins, have thus far generally failed to yield findings of major importance and are often negative.

Effects of exercise on the physiology of ageing are of major interest. Many studies indicate widespread health benefits that accrue from maintaining an active lifestyle. Equally, the negative impacts of physical inactivity on metabolic health are well documented. It is interesting to note that although exercise is clearly beneficial in the long term, it imposes stress and some short term damage.

Exercise may therefore be an example of ‘hormesis’ whereby moderate exposure to a damage-inducing agent confers an overall benefit by stimulating upregulation of maintenance. The case of exercise also highlights that there may be trade-offs in the impacts on trajectories of ageing. While exercise is of clear benefit to muscles, bones, respiratory function and the cardiovascular system, it can cause damage to joints resulting in an increased risk of arthritis.

The present understanding of factors affecting trajectories of ageing clearly needs to be taken further. Ageing is a gradual, life-long process, so this will take time. Some studies, such as the Newcastle 85+ study, have focused on the very old, a growing segment of the population, but one which has previously been seriously neglected. Other studies have started from early life, usually as investigations into child health, and followed cohorts that now are reaching old age. All such studies experience challenges of long-term funding and of maintaining methodological consistency over a timescale of several decades. Yet they are essential to provide the evidence to underpin strategies to improve health throughout the life course.

Changing expectations of life

Recent progress in research on ageing has generated considerable interest in the potential for science to extend the human health span – that is, the period free of significant disease or disability – beyond the improvements that are occurring already. These include the possibilities of (i) drugs targeting molecular pathways found to be involved in the regulation of lifespan, such as rapamycin and resveratrol, or enzymes such as telomerase; (ii) control of food intake through dietary restriction or intermittent fasting, to mimic long-standing observations on the life-extending effects of caloric restriction in rodents; (iii) so-called ‘senolytic’ strategies selectively to remove senescent cells from aged tissues and organs; (iv)transfer of plasma or serum from young to old individuals, based on pioneering (if rather ghoulish) studies using pairs of young/old rodents whose circulatory

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systems were connected; (v) re-purposing of existing drugs such as metformin, previously licensed for treatment of diabetes and now of interest for potential anti-ageing properties.

Despite the exciting potential for progress, it is important to reflect briefly on the main challenges confronting the attempts to extend the health span. Firstly, there is the obvious matter of timescale. The ageing process in humans is long. It is also progressive and cumulative. Any intervention is likely to have greatest impact if applied early. Secondly, because of the problem of timescale, it is common to use short-lived animal models, especially for studies on interventions. Whilst the problem of translating from animal model to humans is already well-recognised in biomedicine, there are particular reasons to be cautious in the context of ageing.

Differences in ecology and evolutionary history are likely to produced significant differences between short and long lived animals. Short lived animals evolved in circumstances where the environment is often less constant and there is greater pressure to evolve a higher degree of adaptive flexibility to deal with uncertainty.

This is seen strikingly in C. elegans, where conditions of crowding and nutritional stress led to the capacity for the developing nematode to switch to a longlived, stress-tolerant dispersal form (the dauer larva). Many of the genes and other interventions that have produced dramatic increases in lifespan in C. elegans are linked to this capacity for switching. Equally, the life extension that is seen in rodents during dietary restriction may result from having evolved the ability to divert resources from reproduction to maintenance during transient periods of famine. There is an evolutionary logic to the strategy, which has been shown to work for mice that make a relatively large investment in reproduction, but which is less likely to have evolved in humans. Thirdly, there are significant issues to be addressed concerning how any trials of drugs or procedures aimed at intervening in ageing processes can be regulated. For any such treatment to be maximally effective, it may need to be started well before an overt state of illness is reached, yet this poses major challenges in terms of ethics and acceptability, especially since there may be side-effects that need to be very carefully examined.

Beyond biology, our expectations of life are undergoing change in almost every aspect. The increase in longevity raises challenges with regard to health and social care, patterns of work and retirement, education, leisure, housing, communications, transport, family and social networks, and much else besides.

A new view of age

The traditional view of ageing might be summarised thus: (i) The body is programmed to die through a fixed ageing process; (ii) The ageing process is one of progressive, irreversible loss of functional capacity and of quality of life; (iii) Ageing is something that only concerns people in the later years of life; (iv) Increasing human longevity threatens to impose an intolerable burden on societies around the world.

Why and how are we living longer?

It is time for the traditional view to be replaced by a new view of age, in which it is recognised that: (i) The body is programmed for survival, albeit not well enough to survive indefinitely, so efforts to extend the health span are working with the grain of our biology, not against it; (ii) Ageing is intrinsically malleable; (iii) Youth and age are a continuum, such that the damage which will ultimately cause us to become frail and die begins to accumulate very early in life, meaning that it is never too soon to promote healthy living, nor too late; (iv) Increasing longevity is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, bringing major opportunities as well as challenges.

What might happen to human longevity in the future is of interest for all kinds of reasons. In the short term, the rate of increase in life expectancy in higher-income countries shows no definite sign of abating (although there has been some suggestion of a recent slowing in some countries that is perhaps due to effects of economic austerity). Whether this further extension of life expectancy will be matched by increases in the maximum recorded age at death is uncertain, the current record of 122 years having been set in 1997. It is possible, of course, that increased prevalence of obesity and of metabolic disorders, including type-2 diabetes, will slow, halt, or even reverse the trends of increasing life expectancy.

To date, this has not occurred and there are positive trends such as the falling death rates from cardiovascular disease and the declining risk of dementia in old age that give some grounds for being positive. There is certainly room to lessen the social gradient in health. Improving the prospects for those of lower socioeconomic status would increase life expectancy and average health span, as occurred in former East Germany following German re-unification.

It is as yet uncertain to what extent and when science will deliver targeted means to improve the health span. Given what we know already about the general nature of the ageing process, and of its malleability, it seems entirely reasonable, indeed probable, that improvements of this kind will occur. It would be wise, however, not to promise or expect too much too soon. However, the same science is likely to provide further evidence to support and encourage the kinds of changes in nutrition and lifestyle that are already known to be effective, and here it is reasonable to expect benefits to occur faster.

In closing, we might ask whether natural selection might itself drive further evolution of human longevity, even though the answer will not be known for several generations. During human evolution, lifespan doubled compared to that of our nearest relative, the chimpanzee. This most probably occurred because our increasing brain size, resulting in higher intellectual capacity and social living, caused reductions in natural mortality that created the pressure to invest in a higher level of somatic maintenance and repair. Selection acts upon trade-offs within the life history and there is some evidence in both historical and contemporary populations for the presence of genetic variation affecting trade-offs

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between longevity and fecundity. It may be that natural selection will produce further changes in the determinants of human longevity, even though the actions of ageing will mean that we ourselves shall not be here to see them.

Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE was until recently Associate Dean for Ageing at Newcastle University, having previously been Director of the Institute for Ageing and Health. His research is on the science of ageing and its relationship with age-related disability and disease. He initiated the Newcastle 85+ Study which has examined in detail the spectrum of health and associated biological, functional and psychosocial measures in a cohort of very old people. He has advised the UK government and international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, on various aspects of population ageing. He has published more than 300 papers and won several international prizes for his research.

His books include the award-winning Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Ageing, Chance, Development and Ageing (with Caleb Finch), The End of Age based on his BBC Reith Lectures in 2001 (see www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2001), and An Age of Wonders: the Story of the Newcastle 85+ Study (with Gordon Morris).

Engineering with Graphene ROBERT J. YOUNG 16 October 2017

G

Abstract

raphene is the world’s first two-dimensional (2D) material, just one atom thick, and it was first isolated in Manchester in 2004. The rapid rise in interest in this material led to the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics followed by world-wide programmes to find engineering applications for graphene. The structure and preparation of graphene are first described along with a review of the scale-up and production. Methods of characterisation are also described along with an outline of the exceptional mechanical properties of the material. Finally the first engineering applications of graphene in polymer-based nanocomposites are presented and examples given of the use of graphene to enhance the properties of tennis racquets and luxury watches.

Introduction

The development of the atomic theory can be traced back to a series of presentations made by John Dalton to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society at the start of the 19th century1. It is therefore most appropriate that graphene, the world’s first two-dimensional (2D) material just one atom thick, was first isolated in Manchester in 2004 by Novoselov, Geim and coworkers2. Graphene is now one of the most exciting topics in materials science and condensed matter physics in the 21st century and the material already has good prospects for applications in a number of different fields3, 4. It is not surprising, therefore, that Novoselov, and Geim were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics very soon after graphene was first isolated.

Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of sp2 hybridized carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure as shown in figure 1(a). It had previously been thought that the isolation of single-layer graphene would not be possible since a number of eminent researchers postulated that such 2D crystals would be unstable thermodynamically5 and/or might roll up into scrolls if prepared in the form of single atomic layers6. A large number of studies since 2004 have shown that this is certainly not the case!

There was excitement about graphene initially because of its electronic properties, with its charge carriers exhibiting very high intrinsic mobility, having zero effective mass and being able to travel distances of microns at room temperature without being scattered7. Thus the majority of the original research upon graphene concentrated upon electronic properties, aimed at applications such as using graphene in electronic devices8. Research upon the material has now broadened

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considerably as it was soon realised that graphene might have other exciting physical properties such as high levels of stiffness and strength, and thermal conductivity, combined with complete impermeability to gases. One obvious application of graphene is in the field of nanocomposites9-11 and this report will give details of why graphene nanocomposites are among the first engineering applications of graphene.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1(a): A molecular model of a single layer of graphene.

(Courtesy of F. Ding, Hong Kong Polytechnic University). (b) An optical micrograph of a single layer of mechanically-cleaved graphene (arrowed) on a substrate (courtesy of K. Novoselov, University of Manchester).

Preparation of Graphene

Since it was first isolated in 2004 several approaches have been employed to prepare graphene in relatively large quantities. One method is to break down graphite into graphene by techniques such as a mechanical cleavage or liquid phase exfoliation (often termed “top-down”). The other approach is to synthesise graphene using techniques such as chemical vapour deposition (CVD) or epitaxial growth on silicon carbide (often known as “bottom-up”).

Top-Down

The simplest way of preparing small samples of single- or few-layer graphene is by the mechanical cleavage (i.e. the repeated peeling of graphene layers with adhesive tape) from either highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite or good-quality natural graphite2. This method typically produces a mixture of one-, two- and many-layer graphene flakes that have lateral dimensions of the order of tens of microns.

The rapid rise of interest in graphene for use in applications that require high volumes of material, such as in composites, led to investigations into methods of undertaking large-scale production12-14. One of the first successful techniques was the exfoliation and dispersion of graphite in organic solvents14. Depending on the levels of agitation and purification, suspensions with large (>50%) fractions of graphene monolayers may be prepared. The material produced by this method is relatively free of defects and is not oxidised but the lateral dimensions of the graphene layers are typically no more than a few microns.

Bottom-Up

Engineering with Graphene

As well as producing graphene by exfoliation of graphite there are a number of way in which it can be grown directly using “bottom-up” methods. There are reports in the surface science literature that date back more than 40 years, claiming the preparation and observation of thin graphitic layers on metallic substrates15. In addition, the epitaxial growth of thin graphitic films on silicon carbide has been known for some time16.

An important breakthrough has been the growth graphene films with macroscopic dimensions on the surfaces of metals. Two general approaches have been developed; (i) the precipitation of carbon from a carbon-rich metal such as nickel17 and (ii) the CVD growth of carbon on copper using methane/H2 mixtures. It was found for both metals that the graphene films could be transferred to other substrates18. This process has now been scaled-up to a roll-to-roll production process in which the graphene is grown by CVD on copper-coated rolls. It can then be transferred to a thin polymer film backed with an adhesive layer to produce transparent conducting films for applications such as flexible electronic touch screens19.

Graphene Oxide

Many years before the recent upsurge of interest in graphene-based materials, considerable expertise had been developed in the preparation of graphite oxide which is made up of individual graphene oxide (GO) sheets. More than 150 years ago, in an attempt to determine the “atomic weight” of graphite, Brodie20 first reported the preparation of graphite oxide, though the oxidation of graphite using potassium chlorate and fuming nitric acid. The graphite oxide that was produced was found to be highly-oxidised with a C/O/H ratio of around 2.2/1/0.820. The Brodie method was subsequently modified by Staudenmaier21 and finally refined

by Hummers and Offeman22.

The interlayer spacing of the graphene oxide sheets in graphite oxide is between 0.6 nm and 1.0 nm depending upon the relative humidity23. Its structure is similar to that of graphite which is made up of stacks of more closely-spaced graphene sheets, but an important difference is that graphite oxide can be readily exfoliated by sonication to produce suspensions of graphene oxide sheets using a range of different solvents23. The ability to scale up production to produce material in large quantities for applications such as in composites has led to the present upsurge of interest in graphene oxide. The material that is produced directly from graphite oxide is, however, not particularly useful in that it is unstable thermally and a poor conductor of electricity. The stability of the material can be improved somewhat by heating or chemical treatment to produce reduced graphene oxide (rGO)24..

Characterisation of Graphene

A single atomic layer of graphene absorbs ~2.3 % of visible light and its absorption is virtually independent of wavelength25. Thus, being significantly optically active, graphene can be observed by simple optical methods on certain substrates (figure 1(b)). In fact, it is possible to distinguish between flakes of graphene with

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different numbers of atomic layers relatively easily even in a transmission optical microscope26.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was one of the first methods used to characterized graphene and it is still employed widely. Novoselov et al.2 noted in their original study of graphene that AFM indicated that some of their graphene layers were only ~0.4 nm thick. This is a signature of single-layer graphene since the interlayer spacing in graphite is around 0.335 nm and AFM is now used routinely for estimating the number of layers present in few-layer graphene samples.

Figure 2: Raman spectra of graphene showing the difference in spectra between monolayer, bilayer and multilayer samples.

Raman spectroscopy is a particularly useful technique to characterize graphene monolayers, bilayers and trilayers since, quite remarkably, Raman spectra can even be obtained from a single layer of carbon atoms due to strong resonance Raman scattering in this material27. Moreover, graphene samples with different numbers of layers show significant differences in their Raman spectra as can be seen in figure 2. In the case of single layer graphene, the 2D Raman band is twice the intensity of the G band whereas in the two-layer material the G band is stronger than the 2D band. In addition, the 2D band is shifted to higher wavenumber in the two-layer graphene and has a different shape, consisting of 4 separate bands due to the resonance effects in the electronic structure of the 2-layer material27. As the number of layers is increased the 2D band moves to higher wavenumber and becomes broader and more asymmetric in shape for more than around 5 layers, very similar to the 2D band of graphite.

Engineering with Graphene

The atomic structure of graphene can be observed directly using transmission electron microscopy (TEM)28. It is found that both an image of the graphene lattice and well-defined electron diffraction patterns can be obtained from suspended graphene sheets in the TEM28. The sheets, however, are not exactly flat but have static ripples out of plane on a scale of the order of 1 nm29. It was also found that there was no tendency for the graphene sheets to scroll or fold in the TEM in contradiction to one of the preconceptions of its behaviour6.

Mechanical Properties of Graphene

Lee et al. undertook the first direct determination of the mechanical properties of monolayer graphene through the nanoindentation of graphene membranes, suspended over holes of 1.0 - 1.5 Îźm in diameter on a silicon substrate, in an atomic force microscope (AFM). They determined the variation of force with indentation depth and derived stress-strain curves by assuming that the graphene behaved mechanically as a 2D membrane of thickness 0.335 nm. It was found that failure of the graphene took place by the bursting of the single molecular layer membrane at large displacements with failure initiating at the indentation point. The stress-strain curve for the graphene derived from the analysis of the indentation experiments is shown in figure 3. It can be seen that the stress-strain curve becomes non-linear with increasing strain and that fracture occurs at a strain of well over 20%.

30

Figure 3: Measured30 and calculated31 stress-strain curves for a graphene monolayer.

Liu, Ming and Li31 had earlier undertaken an ab initio calculation of the stressstrain curve of a graphene single layer. This is also plotted in figure 3 and it can be seen that there is extremely good agreement between the theoretical analysis and the experimentally-derived curve. The value of Young’s modulus determined from the indentation experiment30 is 1000 ¹ 100 GPa and this compares very well with

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the theoretical estimate31 of 1050 GPa. In addition, the strength of the graphene monolayer was determined experimentally to be up to 130 ± 10 GPa. This is the order of E/8, where E is the Young’s modulus, and so is close to the theoretically-predicted value of the strength of a defect-free material32.

The mechanical properties of graphene oxide are inferior to those of graphene due to the disruption of the structure through oxidation and the presence of sp3 rather than sp2 bonding. The elastic deformation of monolayers of chemically-reduced graphene oxide was investigated by Gomez-Navarro, Burghard and Kern33 using a similar AFM indentation technique.

It was explained earlier that Raman spectroscopy is an extremely useful technique for the identification and characterization of different forms of graphene, and it is also a very good way of following the molecular deformation of graphene through observing stress-induced Raman band shifts. Cooper, Young and Halsall34 were able to show that there was a linear dependence of the shift rate upon modulus, implying that there is a universal dependence of band shift upon stress for the 2D band in graphitic forms of carbon of -5 cm-1/GPa34. Large stress-induced shifts of both the G and 2D Raman bands are found when graphene is subjected to deformation35, 36 showing that significant bond stretching and lattice distortion takes place when the graphene is deformed.

Graphene Nanocomposites

There are a number of motivations for developing graphene-based composites.

Since a filler with nanometre dimensions is being used they are normally termed “nanocomposites”9-11. The first and most obvious reason is that addition of a filler with such impressive mechanical properties would be expected to lead to a significant improvement in the mechanical properties of the host matrix material. It is also found, however, that changes to the mechanical properties are also accompanied by modification of functional properties such as electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and barrier behaviour that make these materials increasingly more attractive.

Preparation

The most important aim during the manufacturing of graphene/polymer nanocomposites is to ensure that graphene will disperse adequately within the matrix11.

A homogeneous dispersion will give the best mechanical reinforcement of the matrix. Moreover, the nature of the interface between the graphene and the matrix along with the aspect ratio of the filler are key aspects for the design of polymer-based nanocomposites. A number of preparation strategies have been presented in literature and the most important ones, solution compounding, in situ polymerization and melt blending which will be discussed next.

The solution compounding method involves the mixing of a graphene-based suspension with a polymer that is either already in a solution or will be mixed with the graphene suspension (providing that it is compatible with the solvent) by simple or shear mixing or ultrasonication. This suspension can be cast into a mould and the solvent then removed. In general, solution processing provides

Engineering with Graphene

adequate dispersion of the flakes and it is quite versatile, since a number of different solvents can be used to dissolve the matrix and disperse the filler. Moreover, it is a rapid and simple procedure and for this reason it has been exploited widely11, 37.

During in situ polymerization38, the graphene flakes are mixed initially with monomers or pre-polymers and the polymerization procedure that is performed afterwards leads to the production of composites with good dispersion and strong interactions between the matrix and the flakes39. The procedure allows the grafting of the filler on the polymer (with or without functionalization) for the enhancement of compatibility between the components of the system.

Melt mixing is the procedure followed most widely in industry for the production of nanocomposites, since it is fast, inexpensive and relatively simple. It involves melting the polymer at elevated temperatures accompanied by mixing the graphene flakes and several graphene-based composites have been prepared with this technique11. In general, even though melt mixing usually leads to a poorer dispersion than in situ polymerization or solution blending40, 41, the preparation of composite materials with adequate properties and the potential of this process for engineering scale-up are enough for it to be adopted widely for the preparation of graphene-based nanocomposites. An example of a nanocomposite prepared by melt mixing with a uniform distribution of the filler is shown in figure 4(a). This shows an X-ray computer tomography (CT) scan through the nanocomposite (c.f. medical CT imaging).

Figure 4: Nanocomposites of natural rubber and graphene in the form of M15 nanoplatelets (20 phr). (a) CT scan of the nanocomposite showing the section of the graphene nanoplatelets. (b) Stress strain curves for the nanocomposites with different graphene loadings in phr (parts by weight per 100 parts of rubber).

Mechanical Properties

The addition of high-modulus graphene to a low modulus matrix can lead to significant reinforcement9, 42, 43. The evaluation of this reinforcement in graphenebased nanocomposites is most commonly performed by the study of the stressstrain curves obtained during tensile testing as shown in figure 4(b) for different

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loadings of graphene in natural rubber. Several parameters can affect the mechanical properties of graphene-based nanocomposites including the structure of the graphene, the preparation method, the dispersion of the filler in the matrix, the filler-matrix interactions and the orientation of the filler11. The Young’s modulus and tensile strength along with the toughness can show significant increases even with a very small amount of filler. The tensile strength is, however, heavily affected by aggregation of the filler and that is why it is often found that there is a linear increase of the tensile modulus with increasing filler content, while tensile strength saturates at lower filler loadings. Furthermore, graphene oxide is often preferred over few- or many-layer graphene nanoplatelets (even though the stiffness of GO is only about 25% of that of monolayer graphene) since the presence of functional groups in GO enables easier coupling interactions between the filler and the matrix39.

Engineered Graphene-based Artefacts

The Graphene Tennis Racquet

Figure 5: The HEAD® graphene tennis racquet.

One of the first commercially-manufactured graphene-based artefacts was a tennis racquet produced by the HEAD® company of Austria (see figure 5). It is presumed that the design of the racquet is based upon the patent published by the company in 201344. According to the patent US2013/0090193, ‘sporting goods may be designed to provide a user with a competitive, advantage, improve durability, enhance the user’s comfort or protect the user from being injured.

The marketability of sporting goods may depend on how effective they are at providing such benefits. As such, manufacturers of sporting goods continually seek to improve the materials and designs used in the construction of their products44. The patent describes further that the state of the art in the construction and design of tennis racquets is to use strips of aligned carbon fibres impregnated

Engineering with Graphene

with a polymer resin (prepregs) in the construction of the racquet frame. The main disclosure is an improvement in performance of sporting goods such as tennis racquets may be improved through the incorporation of graphene such that ‘at least one prepreg layer may further include graphene material’44.

It was shown that the combination of optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy is a powerful method of characterising the microstructure of a graphenebased tennis racquet45. It was found that the main structural component in the racquet is high-strength carbon fibres in an epoxy resin matrix. Resin-rich regions were found in the area where the head of the racquet is joined to the handle. It appears that this area, which is a point of potential of weakness in the racquet, is reinforced with graphene in form of nanoplatelets to produce a racquet with enhanced properties.

The Graphene Watch

In 2017 the University of Manchester collaborated with the Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille and McLaren F1 to create world’s lightest mechanical chronograph by pairing leading graphene research with precision engineering. The RM 50-03 watch (figure 6) was made using a unique composite incorporating graphene to manufacture a strong but lightweight new case to house the delicate watch mechanism.

The graphene composite known as Graph TPT™ weighs less than previous materials used in watchmaking due to a lower carbon density.

The strap of the new watch has also been improved by the addition of graphene material. The rubber of the strap was also injected with graphene which has shown to increase its elasticity and improve its resistance to wear.

Overall the ultralight watch weighs just Figure 6: The RM 50-03 graphene watch.

38 grams and is extremely durable. The watch was designed and inspired by the wishbone suspension structure of a 2017 McLaren-Honda Formula 1 car.

Combining the design and materials, it was found that the casing of the watch was able to withstand tremendous shock damage and survived unscathed in tests.

Conclusions and Prospects

Graphene is the world’s first two-dimensional material, just one-atom thick. It was first isolated at The University of Manchester in 2004 and has the potential

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to revolutionise a large number of technologies. Initial applications have been in the areas of sporting and luxury goods where performance may not be as critical as novelty value. Future applications are likely to be in areas of engineering such as high-performance composites with enhanced properties for the automotive and aerospace industries, as well as flexible, bendable mobile phones and tablets, water filtration and the next-generation energy storage.

Glossary

AFM (atomic force microscopy): A microscopic technique whereby a sensitive cantilever/probe is raster scanned over the surface of a sample to measure its topography.

Raman spectroscopy: A spectroscopic technique (named after Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman who won the 1930 Physics Nobel Prize for its development) used to observe vibrational, rotational, and other low-frequency vibrations in a material. Raman spectroscopy is commonly used in chemistry to provide a structural fingerprint by which molecules can be identified. Two characteristic peaks in the Raman spectrum of sp2 hybridized carbon materials such as graphene are the G band and 2D band.

Sonication: The use of ultrasound to break up and disperse particles suspended in a liquid. sp2 hybridized carbon atoms: Carbon atoms bonded to three other atoms in a planar form (as in graphene). sp3 hybridized carbon atoms: Carbon atoms bonded to four other atoms in a 3-dimensional form (as in diamond).

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graphene. Science, 320 (2008) 1308-1308.

26. Blake, P., Hill, E. W., Castro Neto, A. H., Novoselov, K. S., Jiang, D., Yang, R., Booth, T. J., Geim, A. K. Making graphene visible. Applied Physics Letters, 91 (2007).

27. Ferrari, A., Meyer, J., Scardaci, V., Casiraghi, C., Lazzeri, M., Mauri, F., Piscanec, S., Jiang, D., Novoselov, K., Roth, S. Raman spectrum of graphene and graphene layers.

Physical Review Letters, 97 (2006) 187401.

28. Meyer, J. C., Geim, A. K., Katsnelson, M. I., Novoselov, K. S., Booth, T. J., Roth, S. The structure of suspended graphene sheets. Nature, 446 (2007) 60-63.

29. Bangert, U., Gass, M. H., Bleloch, A. L., Nair, R. R., Geim, A. K. Manifestation of ripples in free-standing graphene in lattice images obtained in an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope. Phys. Status Solidi A, 206 (2009) 1117-1122.

30. Lee, C., Wei, X., Kysar, J. W., Hone, J. Measurement of the elastic properties and intrinsic strength of monolayer graphene. Science, 321 (2008) 385-388.

31. Liu, F., Ming, P. M., Li, J. Ab initio calculation of ideal strength and phonon instability of graphene under tension. Physical Review B, 76 (2007).

32. Kelly, A., Macmillan, N. H. Strong solids. 3rd ed.; Clarendon Press: Oxford Oxfordshire, 1986; p xiv, 423 p.

33. Gomez-Navarro, C., Burghard, M., Kern, K. Elastic properties of chemically derived single graphene sheets. Nano Lett., 8 (2008) 2045-2049.

34. Cooper, C. A., Young, R. J., Halsall, M. Investigation into the deformation of carbon nanotubes and their composites through the use of Raman spectroscopy. Compos.

Part A - Appl. Sci., 32 (2001) 401-411.

35. Gong, L., Kinloch, I. A., Young, R. J., Riaz, I., Jalil, R., Novoselov, K. S. Interfacial Stress Transfer in a Graphene Monolayer Nanocomposite. Adv. Mat., 22 (2010) 2694-2697.

36. Frank, O., Tsoukleri, G., Riaz, I., Papagelis, K., Parthenios, J., Ferrari, A. C., Geim, A. K., Novoselov, K. S., Galiotis, C. Development of a universal stress sensor for graphene and carbon fibres. Nat. Commun., 2 (2011) 255.

37. Liao, K. H., Park, Y. T., Abdala, A., Macosko, C. Aqueous reduced graphene/thermoplastic polyurethane nanocomposites. Polymer, 54 (2013) 4555-4559.

38. Xu, Z., Gao, C. In situ Polymerization Approach to Graphene-Reinforced Nylon-6 Composites. Macromol., 43 (2010) 6716-6723.

39. Potts, J. R., Lee, S. H., Alam, T. M., An, J., Stoller, M. D., Piner, R. D., Ruoff, R. S. Thermomechanical properties of chemically modified graphene/poly(methyl methacrylate) composites made by in situ polymerization. Carbon, 49 (2011) 2615-2623.

40. Kim, H., Miura, Y., Macosko, C. W. Graphene/Polyurethane Nanocomposites for Improved Gas Barrier and Electrical Conductivity. Chem. Mater., 22 (2010) 3441-3450.

41. Mahmoud, W. E. Morphology and physical properties of poly(ethylene oxide) loaded graphene nanocomposites prepared by two different techniques. Eur. Polym. J., 47 (2011) 1534-1540.

42. Young, R. J., Liu, M. F., Kinloch, I. A., Li, S., Zhao, X., Valles, C., Papageorgiou, D. G. The mechanics of reinforcement of polymers by graphene nanoplatelets, Composites Science and Technology. 154 (2018) 110-116.

43. Young, R. J., Lovell, P. A. Introduction to Polymers, Third Edition. CRC Press: Boca Baton, Florida, USA, 2013.

Engineering with Graphene

44. US2013/0090193 Patent, HEAD Technology GMBH, Sporting Goods with Graphene Material. Apr. 11, 2013.

45. Young, R. J., Liu, M. F. The microstructure of a graphene-reinforced tennis racquet.

J. Mater. Sci., 51 (2016) 3861-3867.

ProfessorRobert J. Young FREng, FRS Professor of Polymer Science and Technology National Graphene Institute and School of Materials - University of Manchester, UK Professor Young studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and gained his PhD in 1973. After working at Queen Mary College in London he became Professor of Polymer Science and Technology in Manchester in 1986. Between 2004 and 2009 he was Head of the School of Materials in the newly-formed University of Manchester. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006, the Royal Society in 2013 and to Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe in 2015.

Professor Young’s main research interest is the relationships between structure and properties in polymers and composites publishing a number of books and over 350 papers, many of which are highly cited. He has lectured extensively at international conferences.

His research interests have extended recently into the field nanotechnology, working in particular upon nanocomposites containing graphene.

Correspondence to: robert.young@manchester.ac.uk

Victorian Cemeteries MIKE HIGGINBOTTOM

T

7 November 2017

he great environmental concern of the nineteenth century was what the Victorians called “the Sanitary Question”. The rapid growth of industrial towns and cities created three major problems – supplying potable water, dealing with accumulated sewage and disposing of the dead. For lack of quick solutions to these overlapping difficulties, disease and death were rife among urban populations. The provision of water supply and sewerage left magnificent reservoirs and pumping stations to posterity, while the Victorian arrangements for their departed provided a rich legacy of landscaping, architecture and sculpture.

The Victorian attitude to bereavement is described as a “celebration of death”.

Death was, regrettably, a regular visitation, and dealing with it was a familiar ritual. It may be that the trauma of the First World War, when many families lost loved ones in brutal circumstances, often without a chance to bury and mourn the deceased, led to distaste for the etiquette of traditional funerals. Only at the end of the century, when the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 released a surprising wave of emotion, followed by the dignified pomp of the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002, did Britons seem once more to embrace the idea of commemorating the departed as an emotional event rather than a formal ritual.

During the twentieth century the great company cemeteries of large towns and cities went out of fashion, failed financially and became eyesores and a problem for local-authority planners, until in the 1970s local residents and academic historians combined to value such places and take practical steps to ensure their preservation. By the end of the twentieth century almost all the major British cemeteries, and many of the minor ones, were cared for by Friends groups, collaborating with site owners and local authorities to maintain paths and monuments, to sustain wildlife and to provide access and information for visitors.

Early company cemeteries

The precedent for making burial grounds an amenity came from Paris in the early nineteenth century. The ancient and overfilled Holy Innocents Cemetery [Cimetière des Innocents] in Les Halles was closed in 1780 and tons of human remains were transferred to the Catacombs.

After the upheavals of the Revolution the Cimetière de Père Lachaise, east of central Paris, opened in 1804 with dignified architecture and Elysian landscaping designed by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813). It offered plots in perpetuity with segregated pricing, securing for the grave owners social status and family identity. Two further cemeteries followed – the Cimetière Montmatre (1818-25) to the north and the Cimetière Montparnasse (1825) to the south, along with the smaller, exclusive Cimetière de Passy (1820) on the Left Bank.

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Figure 1: Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

In Britain, the rapid expansion of towns and cities and the increasing density of population overwhelmed the existing parish churchyards. William Hutton, the Birmingham historian, remarked in 1783 that “…instead of the church burying the dead, the dead would, in time, have buried the church”. Gravediggers were obliged to dig into partly-decayed human remains and would only carry out their lugubrious task when plied with strong liquor. The surgeon George Alfred Walker described the horrors in his Gatherings from Graveyards… (1839): …the “bone house”…is a large round pit; into this had been shot, from a wheelbarrow, the but partly-decayed inmates of…smashed coffins. Here in this place of “Christian burial”, you may see human heads, covered with hair; and here, in this “consecrated ground”, are human bodies with flesh still adhering to them. On the northern side, a man was digging a grave; he was quite drunk, so indeed were all the grave diggers we saw…a child’s coffin, which had stopped a man’s progress, had been cut, longitudinally, right in half; and there lay the child…wrapped in its shroud, resting upon the part of the coffin which remained. The shroud was but little decayed…

Though it took time for medical science to agree on the actual causes of infectious diseases such as cholera, there was a dawning awareness that epidemics were associated not with atmospheric pollution, which was called “miasma”, but with bad drinking water, non-existent sewage disposal and inadequate burial grounds.

Victorian Cemeteries

A further scandal arose from the desperate need of the medical profession for cadavers for training and research. The Murder Act (1752) released the corpses of executed murderers for dissection, but demand far exceeded supply and encouraged a gruesome market in “fresh” bodies furtively exhumed by the notorious “resurrectionists”. William Burke (1792-1829) and William Hare took the trade to extremes by murdering people to supply corpses to the infamous Dr Robert Knox (1793-1862), but elsewhere the pilfering of new graves provided unscrupulous men with a steady income, covertly condoned by surgeons.

This situation was remedied after the outcry about Burke and Hare’s crimes by the passing of the Anatomy Act (1832), which authorised the release of corpses of workhouse inmates, a process described by Professor Gwyn Williams as “the pursuit of the propertyless beyond the grave”.

Industrial towns and ports experienced unprecedented growth in the early nineteenth century. The population of what was termed Outer London more than doubled, from 959,000 in 1801 to 2,200,000 in 1841, and almost doubled again to nearly four million by 1881. In the twenty years 1811-31 Birmingham’s population nearly doubled. Similarly, in the twenty years 1821-41 Manchester’s population doubled while Liverpool’s and Glasgow’s nearly doubled. In the first half of the century, between the censuses of 1801 and 1851, Leeds’ population grew 3½ times, Manchester’s four times, Liverpool’s 4½ times, Glasgow’s five times.

Campaigns by the surgeon George Alfred Walker (1807-1884), the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) and the social reformer Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890) advocated the construction of privately financed cemeteries on the lines of Père Lachaise and other European examples in Germany and Italy.

The first two of these were both in Liverpool. The unconsecrated Liverpool Necropolis, otherwise Low Hill Cemetery in Everton, opened in 1825; it was quickly followed four years later by the St James’ Cemetery, laid out in the former quarry below the future site of the Anglican Cathedral. St James’ Cemetery was an immediate commercial success, paying a dividend of 8% in its first year of trading.

Both have now been cleared of gravestones, though St James’ Cemetery retains its exquisite mortuary chapel, the Oratory (1829) by John Foster Jnr, and the fine monument to William Huskisson MP (1770-1830), who was fatally injured by Stephenson’s Rocket on the opening day of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

These two pioneering company cemeteries exhibit the pattern that was repeated in many British towns and cities and elsewhere abroad. The initiative usually came from prosperous nonconformists who resented paying burial fees to Anglican priests; the newly emancipated Roman Catholics also preferred their own clergy. Prompted by the 1832 cholera epidemic which killed 50,000 people nationwide, and encouraged by a buoyant economic climate and an upsurge of civic pride, joint-stock cemetery companies employed high-quality architects and landscape designers to lay out spacious grounds and elegant buildings with an eye to discreet self-advertisement.

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Most of the early company cemeteries were provincial – Lower Hill Street, Cheltenham (1830), Key Hill, Birmingham (1832), Glasgow Necropolis (1833), Leeds General Cemetery (1833), Sheffield General Cemetery (1836), Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol (1837), Manchester Ardwick and General Cemeteries (both 1837).

London’s great cemeteries

The first London company cemetery was Kensal Green, constructed 1833-7, followed by West Norwood (1837), Highgate (1839) and Nunhead (1840) owned by the same company, the Nonconformist garden cemetery at Abney Park (1840) and finally Brompton (1839-42).

Figure 2: Kensal Green Cemetery, West London: Anglican Chapel

The Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green is distinguished by its handsomely austere classical architecture. In fact, the choice of style provoked a controversy within the General Cemetery Company. Elaborate Gothic designs by Henry Edward Kendall (1776-1875) were rejected by a faction within the board of directors in favour of Greek Revival designs by John Griffith (1796-1888). These reflected current tastes in townscape planning, and were intended to appeal to the middle-class clients who provided the main market, those who were sufficiently well-off to pay for a burial plot, but not rich enough to be buried in rural parishes on country estates.

John Griffiths’ buildings of 1833-4 comprise the Doric west entrance gate and lodges, flanked by semi-circular wings, on the Harrow Road, the east lodge and the petite Dissenter’s Chapel, marked by its Ionic portico and flanked by Doric loggias. The Anglican Chapel, completed in 1837, is a severe Doric temple with

Victorian Cemeteries

subsidiary colonnades, which cover the area of the extensive catacombs beneath.

These were accessed by means of a mechanical catafalque, quickly replaced by a hydraulic model, which lowered the coffin through the floor of the chapel at the committal.

Commercial success was more or less guaranteed when two members of the royal family, Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843) and Princess Sophia (1777-1848), were interred in monuments to either side of the Anglican Chapel at Kensal Green.

Kensal Green remains in business to the present day, along with its Roman Catholic adjunct, St Mary’s Cemetery (1858) and the West London Crematorium (1938-9). It is supported by an active Friends group, who provide guided tours of its dazzling variety of monuments.

In contrast to the Classical austerity of Kensal Green, the next London cemetery to open, West Norwood Cemetery (1837), was unambiguously Gothic, designed by a director of the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company, the architect Sir William Tite (1798-1873). Sadly, all the original buildings have gone except for the gatehouse. The cemetery was badly treated after its compulsory purchase in 1965 by the London Borough of Lambeth, until the practice of “lawn conversion” and the destruction of monuments was ruled illegal by a Consistory Court in 1993-4. The cemetery is now managed in accordance with the court ruling, vigilantly monitored by the Friends of Norwood Cemetery.

Nevertheless, there is much to see at West Norwood. The London Greek Orthodox community purchased an area, now rich in elaborate monuments with a mortuary chapel attributed to John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913). Two of the very few terracotta mausolea in Britain stand close together, one for the terracotta manufacturer Sir Henry Doulton (1820-1897) and the other for the sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899). The Friends’ guided tours include access to the catacomb beneath the site of the Anglican Chapel, with its Bramah & Robinson hydraulic coffin lift, complete but not in working order.

The third London cemetery to open was Highgate Cemetery (1839), set in a garden location downhill from Highgate village and distinguished by its views across London, its dramatic architecture and its bravura collection of monuments. The original West Cemetery was surveyed by John Bunstone Bunning (1802-1863) and landscaped by David Ramsey. The buildings were designed by the chairman of the London Cemetery Company, Stephen Geary (1797-1854), a minor architect who is credited with one of London’s first gin palaces and was responsible for the abortive monument to King George IV that is remembered in the name King’s Cross.

Geary’s buildings at Highgate exhibit a variety of styles and add theatricality to the picturesque setting. The entrance lodge, with its Anglican and Dissenters’ chapels, is in an attenuated Tudor Gothic. Cleverly graded paths lead to the Egyptian Avenue (figure 3), the centrepiece of the layout: a spectacular entrance, with obelisks, bulbous columns with lotus-bud capitals leads through a battered (i.e. sloping) arch to a street of the dead, flanked by sixteen vaults with iron double-leafed doors each decorated with an upturned torch, symbolising

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extinguished life. The avenue is tapered, creating a false perspective, and leads to the Lebanon Circle, a circus of mausolea built around a cedar that was 150 years old in the 1830s. Beyond stands the Gothic Terrace, a catacomb containing over eight hundred loculi, with a flat roof covered in early type of asphalt.

Figure 3: Highgate Cemetery, North London: Egyptian Avenue gateway

The original seventeen-acre cemetery was extended in 1855 by a further twenty acres across Swain’s Lane. A hydraulic bier from the Anglican Chapel led to a tunnel under the road so that coffins could be conveyed to the new East Cemetery with dignity.

Highgate Cemetery is rich in monuments, including the gigantic mausoleum of 1876 for Julius Beer (1836-1880), owner of The Observer newspaper, the 1956 monument to Karl Marx (1818-1883) and such lesser delights as the sleeping lion guarding the grave of George Wombwell (1777-1850), menagerist.

The Friends of Highgate Cemetery, formed in 1975 when the eventual owners of Highgate went bankrupt, were pioneers in rescuing a desperately dilapidated site, and have restored both West and East Cemeteries to a state of “managed neglect” which preserves their atmosphere as well as their fabric.

Victorian Cemeteries

Figure 4: Nunhead Cemetery, South London: Anglican Chapel porte-cochère

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The owners of Highgate Cemetery, the London Cemetery Company, opened Nunhead Cemetery in South London in 1840. Its Grecian entrance gates and lodges are by John Bunstone Bunning, and the imposing Gothic Anglican chapel (1844), now roofless after an arson attack in 1976, was designed by the less wellknown Thomas Little. Its imposing porte-cochère is ill-matched with the somewhat cramped octagonal chapel behind. The smaller Gothic Nonconformist chapel was bombed and subsequently demolished.

Nunhead Cemetery encountered serious financial difficulties in 1865 when the death of the first superintendent, Edward Buxton, revealed his systematic defrauding of the company. Over eighteen years he had relieved the accounts of £18,179 3s 2d. The company managed to remain solvent but took decades to recover. Ironically, Edward Buxton lies buried at Nunhead.

All three of the first London cemeteries were predominantly Anglican: nearly three-quarters of Kensal Green, nearly 90% of Highgate West Cemetery and 80% of West Norwood were consecrated. The pantheon of London Nonconformists was Abney Park Cemetery at Stoke Newington, opened in 1840. It was laid out as a garden cemetery that has strong associations with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nonconformity, in particular as the former residence of the great hymn-writer Dr Isaac Watts (1674-1748). He is buried at Bunhill Fields, Islington, but commemorated at Abney Park by a statue by Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867).

The burial policy at Abney Park was that there should be “no invidious dividing lines”. Moreover it was established without an Act of Parliament. By this means the company avoided paying burial fees to the Anglican incumbent, reducing the cost of basic funerals by about a fifth so that the cemetery could be “open to all classes of the community and to all denominations of Christians without restraint in forms”.

This unusual financial arrangement fell apart after thirty years when the government determined that the business model was essentially similar to those of a company cemetery authorised by Act of Parliament, so that the trusts on which Abney Park was founded became liable to tax on a commercial footing.

The imposing entrance by William Hosking (1800-1861) is Egyptian-revival, with a hieroglyphic inscription, but his chapel in the centre of the cemetery (figure 5) is an essay in the compromises required for a non-denominational religious building at the time: the cruciform design with a central tower and spire adopted a form of low Gothic that avoids elaboration, built in plain London stock brick with Bath stone dressings.

The monuments are dignified rather than ostentatious. Congregationalists, Methodists and Salvation Army burials predominate. Catholics and Jews are notable by their absence, and there are relatively few Anglican or Quaker burials.

The group of Salvation Army monuments includes the first General and his wife, William and Catherine Booth (1829-1912 and 1829-1890 respectively) and their son and daughter-in-law Bramwell and Florence Booth (1856-1929 and 18611957 respectively).

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Figure 5: Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London: nondenominational chapel

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Among the sombre worthies of nonconformity lie the music-hall entertainers George Leybourne (1842-1884), “Champagne Charlie”, with the epitaph “God’s finger touched him and he slept”, and his son-in-law Albert Chevalier (18611923), famous for the Cockney song ‘My Old Dutch’. The showman Frank Bostock (1866-1912), with his wife Susannah (1864-1929), lies beneath a white marble sleeping lion like his relative George Wombwell at Highgate Cemetery.

Frank Bostock introduced the big cage to British circuses, and is reputed to be the man who discovered that lions are frightened of chairs.

The least successful of the major London cemetery companies was the West London & Westminster Cemetery Company, which laid out the ambitious Brompton Cemetery on the site of brickworks and market gardens, bordered by a gasworks and a canal, between Old Brompton Road and Fulham Road.

Stephen Geary was initially involved, until he was acrimoniously replaced by Benjamin Baud (1807-1875), whose concept of an open-air cathedral, cruciform in layout, with a domed chapel as its centrepiece and extensive catacombs, was only partly completed. The landscape design was by Isaac Finnemore, advised by John Claudius Loudon. The project proved to ruinously expensive, badly built and tangled in litigation. When the Metropolitan Interments Act (1850) provided for the compulsory purchase of cemeteries, the directors leapt at the opportunity to unload their liabilities: their own valuation of the company was £166,762 12s 6d, but they settled for £74,921 14s.

Brompton Cemetery is now administered by the Royal Parks, and its wide open spaces contain many famous burials and attractive monuments. Two particularly significant tombs are to Valentine Princep (1838-1904), an associate of the Pre-Raphaelite school, and the Pre-Raphaelites’ patron, Frederick Leyland (18311892), whose monument was designed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

Provincial company cemeteries

Any short account of Britain’s Victorian cemeteries is inevitably a matter of personal selection, but there are some outstanding examples that are worth seeking out.

The 37-acre Glasgow Necropolis (1833) is particularly memorable for its site, overlooking Glasgow Cathedral. Built around an existing statue of John Knox erected in 1825, it is entered over a “Bridge of Sighs” over the Molendinar Burn (later culverted) which flows through the heart of Glasgow to meet the River Clyde. Extensive catacombs were planned but became redundant with the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act. Explicitly designed as the ‘Scottish Père Lachaise’, the layout of the Necropolis was entrusted to its Superintendent, the landscape gardener George Mylne. The buildings and some early monuments were by the Cemetery architect, David Hamilton (1768-1843), his son James (c1806-1862) and John Bryce (c1805-1851).

It is distinctive for its interdenominational nature – the first burial was a Jew, Joseph Levi, a jeweller – and the exceptional meticulousness of its burial records.

Birmingham has two cemeteries side-by-side – the nondenominational General Cemetery at Key Hill (1836) and the Anglican Warstone Lane (1848).

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Apart from the Gothic gatehouse to Warstone Lane all the buildings in both cemeteries have gone.

The Greek Revival chapel at Key Hill was designed by the Birmingham architect Charles Edge (1800-1867). Here lie whole families of the Dissenters that made Birmingham’s industry great, including the Birmingham Mayor and statesman Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), with his father and his two wives, in a modest tomb that is hard to find.

Warstone Lane had a fine Gothic mortuary chapel, dedicated to St Michael & All Angels, which was bombed and then demolished in 1958. Its outline is due to be retrieved as part of a scheme to create a “garden of memory and reflection”.

The cemetery’s most spectacular remaining historical feature is the two-tiered catacomb range, built into the existing sand-pit on the site.

The Sheffield General Cemetery, opened in 1836, was established in response to the 1832 cholera epidemic, which carried off 402 inhabitants, including John Blake, the Master Cutler.

The cemetery land was purchased on the south side of the valley of the River Porter, looking across to the Botanical Gardens (also opened in 1836) and the grand Palladian Wesley College (1838). The land rose steeply and yielded good building stone and clay for bricks, so the cemetery was laid out in terraces, with ample provision for brick vaults as well as graves.

The buildings were designed by Samuel Worth, who provided a Dissenters’ Chapel in Greek Revival style, but with sloping Egyptian windows and doors, the Lion Lodge which incorporates an entrance bridge over the river and a company secretary’s office and residence.

Legislation in 1845 required that paupers should be buried solely in consecrated ground and that consecrated burial space must be separated by a wall from unconsecrated ground. As a result, the Sheffield General Company added a further eight acres of ground, separated from the existing land by a feature which became known as the Dissenters’ Wall. The Anglican section was landscaped by Robert Marnock (1800-1889), the first superintendent of Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens, and was consecrated by the Archbishop of York in June 1850, together with the gothic Cemetery Church designed with a tall, highly visible spire by William Flockton (1804-1864) and his son Thomas James Flockton (1823-1899).

All the buildings except the Secretary’s Office fell into dereliction during the 1960s. The Cemetery was acquired by Sheffield City Council in 1978 and an energetic Friends group has supported the restoration of the Lion Lodge and the Dissenter’s Chapel. Only the fine Cemetery Church remains derelict.

In contrast, Bristol Arnos Vale Cemetery (figure 6) has survived the vicissitudes of the twentieth century remarkably well.

The Bristol General Cemetery Company purchased land from the Arnos Court estate, south-west of the city centre, in 1837: the first burial took place in 1839.

The cemetery was designed by the Bristol architect Charles Underwood (17911883) as an Elysian garden landscape with classical buildings set among picturesque curving paths. Much of the existing planting, which had hidden Arnos

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Figure 6: Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol: tomb of Raja Ram Mohun Roy (1772–1833) and Nonconformist Chapel

Victorian Cemeteries

Court from the main road, was retained. The landscaping, including two thousand ornamental trees and shrubs, was the responsibility of the local nurserymen James Garraway and Martin Hayes (c1801-1858).

The twin entrance lodges are in Greek Revival style, embellished with Doric porticos; the Nonconformist chapel stands on a substantial basement, distinguished by an Ionic portico, and the Anglican chapel, with Corinthian columns, is surmounted by an Neoclassical cupola supposedly based on the Roman monument at St RĂŠmy-de-Provence.

The proximity of military hospitals in the First World War meant that personnel who were wounded in action and died after repatriation came to be buried at Arnos Vale. A loggia memorial was constructed in 1921 behind the West Lodge; later, during and after the Second World War, a group of naval burials at the far end of the plateau were marked by a Cross of Sacrifice. All these graves are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

To maintain income in the face of changing fashion, the cemetery company built a crematorium, cloister and columbarium, designed by H G Malcolm Laing, around the nonconformist chapel in 1927-9. This was for a time the only crematorium in the South West, and attracted business from far into Devon and Cornwall.

By the 1970s the physical and financial condition of the site caused considerable concern, and it took until 2003 for Bristol City Council to take ownership. It is now maintained by the Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust and reopened to the public in May 2010.

An unusual and significant monument in the cemetery commemorates Raja Ram Mohun Roy (1772–1833), Hindu scholar and reformer, who was reinterred at Arnos Vale in 1843 under a chhatri [Bengali – umbrella] designed by William Prinsep.

Funerals by rail

By the late 1840s it became apparent that the private-company cemeteries were not a satisfactory solution to the problem of disposing of the dead in large towns.

Their prices were beyond the means of poorer families whose homes were almost always at a distance from the cemetery sites.

An attempt to respond within the joint-stock business model was offered by the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company, which bought two thousand acres of land on the outskirts of Woking, four hundred acres of which were laid out as a necropolis, Brookwood Cemetery (1854) (figure 7), served by a dedicated branch line from the London & South Western Railway.

Objections to rail-borne funerals from, among others, the Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield (1786-1857), reflected the social preoccupations of the age: It may sometimes happen that persons of opposite characters might be carried in the same conveyance. For instance, the body of some profligate spendthrift might be placed in a conveyance with the body of some respectable member of the church, which would shock the feelings of his friends.

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A suitably dignified Necropolis station was built at Waterloo, with a lift to raise coffins to platform level and dedicated funeral trains with class-segregated hearse-carriages and passenger accommodation.

Figure 7: Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey: former Anglican station, now the Shrine of St Edward the Martyr

Nevertheless, the periodical The Builder complained in 1856 about the sale of strong liquor in the refreshment rooms at Woking: At the funerals by the Necropolis Company, we are told that not unusually, mourners have carried drink with them, of which on the return journey, they had partaken to such an extent, that they have been found dancing about the carriage, by the ticket-collector.

The funeral trains ran until 1941 when the Necropolis Station was destroyed by enemy action. The course of the branch railway is still discernible among the graves, and though the western Nonconformist station has been demolished, the eastern Anglican station survives as the shrine of the Saxon king St Edward the Martyr (c959-978/9), maintained by the Brotherhood of St Edward, an Orthodox Christian community.

Brookwood Cemetery is still in business: there have been nearly a quarter of a million burials so far, yet two hundred acres of land remain available. Rail-borne funerals to out-of-town locations, in Britain at least, were the prerogative of the rich, and latterly those of minority faiths.

Victorian Cemeteries

Municipal cemeteries

The Metropolitan Interments Act (1850) proposed to establish two major publicly-owned cemeteries on opposite sides of London, one a Great Western Metropolitan Cemetery based on an enlargement of Kensal Green, the other a Great Eastern Metropolitan Cemetery at Abbey Wood. Nothing came of this, except that the provision effectively to nationalise existing cemeteries gave the owners of Brompton Cemetery the opportunity to relinquish their liabilities.

Instead, over a period of years, Parliament passed a series of Burial Acts (18527), requiring local authorities to establish Burial Boards tasked with providing public cemeteries for both Anglicans and non-Anglicans, with costs if necessary subsidised from local rates. The first of these cemeteries, St Pancras & Islington and Marylebone, opened in 1854 and they became ubiquitous throughout the United Kingdom. They are less spectacular than the great commercial cemeteries, and their monuments are more modest; sometimes the buildings – if they have survived – are simple, but others are sophisticated.

One example out of hundreds is Tinsley Park Cemetery in the industrial east end of Sheffield, opened in 1882 by the Attercliffe Burial Board to supplement an earlier cemetery adjoining the burial ground of Christ Church parish church (1826; bombed and then demolished).

This cemetery was designed by a local practice, Holmes & Johnson. Samuel Furness Holmes (1821-1882) was essentially a civil engineer: he had been a highway surveyor and was Borough Surveyor from 1864 to 1873. It’s likely therefore that the architectural work was done by his partner, C H Johnson, whose career and work appears to be unrecorded.

Yet the architecture of the funeral chapels, a typical pair – one for the Church of England, the other for the Nonconformists – with an archway, a timber loggia, a clock in the gable and twin bell-turrets is impressive. In particular, each of the arches of the carriageway is decorated with exquisite angel headstops carrying Biblical mottoes.

The Burial Board was taken over by the city in 1900, and Tinsley Park Cemetery remains in use under the care of what is now called Sheffield Bereavement Services.

The Cremation Society

The secular, hygienic argument for cremation as an alternative to burial was advocated in the mid-nineteenth century by such writers as George Alfred Walker and John Claudius Loudon, and was roundly rejected by many religious denominations. The Bishop of London, John Jackson (1811-1885), declared that the practice of cremation would “undermine the faith of mankind in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and so bring about a most disastrous social revolution”.

The Bishop of Manchester, James Fraser (1818-1885), rebutted these objections: Could they suppose that it would be more impossible for God to raise up a body at the resurrection, if need be, out of elementary particles which had been liberated by the burning, than it would be to raise-up from dust, and from bodies which had passed into the structure of worms?

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Cremation of the human body became a practical alternative through experiments using the gas-fired Siemens Regenerative Process in 1874, the year in which Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904), the Queen’s Surgeon, founded the Cremation Society.

The Society constructed a cremator – effectively a brick furnace with a tall chimney – in a field near Woking on land surreptitiously purchased from Brookwood Cemetery in 1879: the London Necropolis Company initially preferred to distance itself from this threat to its business.

There followed an uneasy hiatus because there was no indication whether cremation was legal in Britain. An 1884 court-case against Dr William Price (1800-1893) over the private cremation of his five-month-old son settled the question that cremation was not an offence “provided no nuisance was caused”.

The first public cremation at Woking took place the following year.

Figure 8: Woking Crematorium, Surrey

Local objections quickly faded because of the innocuousness of the cremation process. The Society opened a chapel and other buildings around the cremator in January 1891. Designed by Edward Channing Clarke (1843-1904) and built in brick with Bath stone dressings, they were designed in a reassuringly orthodox Gothic style, reflecting the ambivalence of the cremation movement towards organised religion: the exterior of the chapel is comfortably ecclesiastical, but the interior contained a catafalque and columbarium niches without an altar.

The Cremation Society, through its operating company The London Cremation Company PLC, still runs Woking Crematorium, along with the much bigger Golders Green Crematorium, opened in 1902.

Victorian Cemeteries

In 2016 the Cremation Society reported that 75% of disposals in the UK are cremations. In the same year the Institute of Cemetery & Crematorium Management recorded there were 232 crematoria in England.

Yet still a small number of burials take place in some of the original Victorian cemeteries, which are once more regarded as attractive, uplifting, peaceful places to rest, for the living as well as the dead.

Mike Higginbottom has lectured in social and architectural history for university departments of continuing education and for the Workers’ Educational Association since the early 1970s. He lectures for the Arts Society (formerly NADFAS) and runs tour-programmes with an architectural history theme, branded Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times, in conjunction with Norman Allen Group Travel Ltd. He has conducted leisure-learning residential programmes on country houses, theatres, the seaside, waterways and railways, cemeteries and sewerage, and the cities of Bath, Birmingham, Chester, Chicago, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, York and New York and in the Isle of Man. He maintains a blog about historic buildings, places and towns on his website, www.mikehigginbottominterestingtimes.co.uk.

Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications MANJI DOSANJH

C

14 November 2017

ERN was founded in 1954 as Europe, struggling to recover from WWII, was experiencing a brain drain of scientists to the USA. It was originally entitled “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire”, and had 12 member states, the UK included. The CERN charter stated that its research was to have absolutely no military purpose, its goal was to search for the fundamental nature of matter, and there was to be free access to the ideas for all. CERN is now the European Centre for Particle Physics (or more properly “Everyone’s Centre for Particle Physics) and it has 22 member states (European, except Israel) and worldwide associate states. In the canteen at CERN you will find physicists from every corner of the globe: here fundamental physics research knows no national boundaries.

Figure 1: The site of the Large Hadron Collider (image: CERN)

CERN now is most famous as the home of the 27km long “Large Hadron Collider”, a circular particle accelerator buried about 100m underground and straddling the French- Swiss border. Protons (which are hydrogen ions, but one

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of the simplest members of the “hadron” class of particle) are accelerated to speeds close to that of light and collide with one another in four major detectors, chambers as large as cathedrals. The showers of particles from these collisions can yield deep secrets about the nature of matter at high energies. In 2012 analysis of these collisions showed the presence of the long predicted Higgs boson; researchers at the ATLAS and CMS detectors were able to show that by different methods they were detecting similar signals implying the presence of this elusive particle.

CERN has a four-fold mission: • to advance scientific knowledge (e.g. in the search for new fundamental particles, in determining the state of the very early universe) • to develop new technologies for particle accelerators and detectors • to train the scientists and engineers of tomorrow • to unite people from different countries and cultures

Figure 2: Early milestones in the use of radiation

The use of ionising radiation in medical physics is over 100 years old, beginning with the work of Wilhelm Röntgen and his mysterious X-rays. X-rays are now identified as electromagnetic radiation of wavelength around 1 nanometre (10-9m) but at the time their nature was baffling, hence the X: unknown. In one of the most rapid applications ever of a new technology, Röntgen went from discovery on November 8th 1895 to taking an X-ray photograph of his wife’s hand on 22nd December. In January of the following year, X-ray tubes were being used in hospitals and in 1901 he was awarded the very first Nobel prize for physics.

At the same time, Marie and Pierre Curie were beginning their work in the classification of radioactive emissions and the discovery of radioactive elements such as polonium and radium. Sadly, both the Curies and those working with X-rays were unaware of the potentially harmful nature of the radiation, and its

Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications

carcinogenic effects. Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie discovered that radioactivity could burn skin by carrying out the very first radiobiology experiment and asked the question “might radiation from these newly discovered elements kill cancer cells?”

At CERN physics technologies are used to detect new particles such as the Higgs boson. This is dependent on the interplay of three important technologies: the accelerator, the detector and vast computer processing power. An analogy might be drawn between this and how an X-ray of a patient used to be interpreted: there is the X-ray machine, in which electrons are accelerated. The X-rays from the machine interact with the tissues of the patient, and produce an image on a plate (the detector). This image was processed visually by a medical professional, analogous to the computer analysis and reconstruction for detection of particles.

Figure 3: Predicted global cancer cases (WHO GloboCan)

Cancer is a growing societal problem: there were 3 million new cancer cases in Europe in 2015, and 15 million globally. Figures are set to rise, most because of increased life expectancy as well as better detection methods. Today, advances in medical physics, thanks to technology transfer from large particle physics laboratories, mean that we have far better ways of detecting and treating cancer.

Treatment is aimed at causing maximum damage to the tumour and minimum impact on surrounding tissue. It is therefore important to “see” the tumour to determine its boundaries clearly and then to deliver the radiation as precisely as possible with the aim that its energy is delivered to the tumour and that other healthy tissue is spared.

Treatment options for cancer are generally surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and it is radiotherapy that is much more directly dependent on physics and engineering. Radiotherapy is usually carried out with X-rays, with gamma

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radiation (for instance in brachytherapy where a small radioactive source is embedded in the tissues) or it might involve hadrons: protons ( the nuclei of hydrogen atoms), neutrons or heavy ions such as carbon (the nuclei of heavier atoms).

The imaging of tumours (as well as of functional activity of cells in organs, for instance the brain) has benefitted from the invention of the PET scanner, another medical application. This is Positron Emission Tomography, and positrons are the antimatter counterpart to electrons. When positrons and electrons meet, they annihilate (as in the Star Trek “Warp Drive”) releasing two gamma photons (like X-rays, these are high-energy versions of light). A radiopharmaceutical that emits positrons is injected into a patient; this radiopharmaceutical is typically 18FDG, a form of glucose with a positron emitting fluorine atom embedded, as a “label”.

Since a tumour has rapidly dividing cells, they need energy, and metabolise a lot of glucose for this purpose. So the labelled glucose radiopharmaceutical is concentrated in dividing cells and positrons are emitted from regions where the tumours are growing. These instantly encounter electrons and annihilate, releasing a pair of gamma photons travelling in opposite directions. As the patient lies inside the PET scanner the emitted pairs of photons are picked up and detected; its computing power allows a map of the origins of the gamma photons to be made, this is the scan showing the energy consuming tissues of the patient. Any tumour is revealed accurately. An animation of the process can be found here: http://www.nymus3d.nl/portfolio/animation/55 .

Ionising radiation, as Pierre Curie observed when he strapped radium to his skin, has the potential to kill cells, especially cancer cells, which are more prone to damage since they are fast-dividing. There are various types of ionising radiation that can be used: energetic photons (X-rays and gamma rays), electrons and hadrons (currently mostly protons).

Figure 4: Classic treatment with X-rays (© Geneva University Hospital casimage.com)

Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications

When photons and electrons pass through tissue, they lose most of their energy in the first few centimetres of the tissue. This means that if a tumour is deep-seated, the tissue in front of the tumour will received more of the energy than the tumour does. This is shown in the “classic treatment with X-rays� illustration.

Figures 5a & 5b: (a) 1990s: constant intensity from four directions; (b) Current: Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) – Multiple converging field with planar (2D) intensity variations

There are many good techniques to try to mitigate for this deposition of energy, for instance when the head of the therapy machine rotates around the patient as in the examples above , then the dose of radiation to the tumour is sent from many directions so that no one path to the tumour is exposed continuously.

Figure 6: The Bragg Peak

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When protons (and other hadrons) pass through tissue (and through materials generally) they behave remarkably differently from photons and electrons, and this has been known for protons (then just identified as hydrogen ions) since the work of William Bragg and his son Lawrence in 1903. They deposit most of their energy just before they come to rest. The more energetic the proton, the further into tissue it will travel before it comes to rest, allowing the location of the peak for protons in the graph shown to be adjusted. This property makes protons a powerful bullet for tumours: for a deeper tumour, accelerate the protons to higher energy so that they travel further before they stop and give up their energy.

Figure 7: Conventional X-Rays (left), and Ion Radiation (right).

Image courtesy of MedAustron

Proton Therapy was proposed in 1946 by Robert Wilson, a US physicist previously working on the Manhattan project and later to become director of the National Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab. The first use of Proton Therapy was at Berkley, California in 1954 when Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of the cyclotron particle accelerator, in collaboration with his brother and their team, treated their mother for cancer. From there, take off has been slow, mainly because of the scale and complexity of machine needed. for useful treatment.

In the UK, the first Proton Therapy machine was installed at Clatterbridge Hospital on the Wirral in 1989. This is used for eye tumours which are not deepseated and so are treated by protons at relatively low energy. As research in this field has grown so the number of treatment centres has expanded, and there appears to be exponential growth in the number of patients treated, as shown

Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications

on the graph. In the UK centres are under construction at Christie Hospital, Manchester and at UCLH, near London’s Euston Station, as well as smaller private facilities elsewhere.

Figure 8: Proton Therapy Centres (data from ptcog.ch)

Figure 9: The HIT facility in Heidelberg

In the illustration of the HIT facility in Heidelberg, the scale of the technology behind hadron therapy becomes clear. The patient appears to be in a treatment

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machine of human size, but behind the scenes there is a large particle accelerator and a vast gantry that can rotate the treatment head to the required position(s) relative to the patient. The size of this undertaking gives some explanation of why there was considerable traffic disruption in Withington as the Christie Hadron Therapy centre was constructed.

The Proton-Ion Medical Machine Study (PIMMS) coordinated by CERN working in collaboration with Med-Austron (Austria) and Tera (Italy) to

take therapy with both light ions and protons from theory to practice, and the first of the centres from this study opened in 2011 at CNAO in Pavia, Italy. An animation of the mode of operation of Hadron Therapy can be found in this animation from the ENLIGHT collaboration: http://enlight.web.cern.ch/media/videos/virtual-particle-therapy-centre

How this is used in concert with PET scanning can be found here: http://enlight.web.cern.ch/media/videos/envision-innovative-medicalimaging-tools-for-particle-therapy Radiation therapy centers (Updated on 6/1/2017 7:11:24 AM)

Equipment type (Updated on 6/1/2017 7:11:24 AM) Clinical accelerator Radionuclide teletherapy

11,440 2,186

Particle therapy 115 Circular accelerator 14

Income groups High Income (H) Upper middle Income (UM)

Income Groups Lower middle Income (LM)

6,202 2,000

Low Income (L) Temporarily unclassified (UC) 1

Clinical accelerator Radionuclide teletherapy Particle therapy Circular accelerator

Countries

RT centers

Equipment

LInac

Radionuclide Therapy

Circular Accelerator

Particle Therapy

139

7041

13755

11440

2186

14

115

Figure 10: Distribution of Radiation Therapy Centres

As a final thought, it is worth pausing to think just how much the technologies used to treat cancer are distributed globally as illustrated above. Medical technologies need new developments to increase their affordability and their accessibility to all, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hadron Therapy: from physics to medical applications

Dr. Manjit Dosanjh studied chemistry and biochemistry at Leeds University and subsequently obtained her PhD at the University of Birmingham. She has held research positions in the United States at MIT, LBNL Berkeley and Jackson State University and in Italy at the Universities of Padua and Cagliari.

She joined CERN in 2000 and is currently the Senior Advisor for Medical Applications. She was key in launching the European Network for Light Ion Hadron Therapy ENLIGHT which aims at coordinating particle therapy research in Europe. Manjit is actively involved in helping non-profit science, education and gender-related organisations in Geneva and is the UN representative for the International Federation of University Women GWI.

Aviation and the environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact JOHN FIELDING AND HOWARD SMITH 21 November 2017

R

Introduction

ecent years have seen increasing concern about anthropomorphic climatic effects on our planet. Some of the more obvious polluters are perceived to be commercial aircraft. Aircraft noise in airport localities has a significant impact, as have nitrous oxides in airport localities. Less immediately obvious are aviation’s effects on global warming.

Passenger travel arises from many motivations, including business, diplomacy, visits to family and friends, and holidays. Travel may also improve social interaction, as mentioned by the author, Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s life”.

Airline passenger travel continues to increase at a compound rate of some 5% per annum, and air cargo even more so, thus compounding aircraft – related pollution.

Aircraft manufacturers and operators have historically alleviated this problem by many means, including significant improvements in aircraft and engine design, but much more progress is needed. This requires a combination of improved technology and novel aircraft and/or engine configurations. This memoir will describe several such concepts that are being investigated by Cranfield University.

The major types of aviation-based pollution

Noise

The most obvious problem around airports is that of aircraft noise. Engine technology has made great strides in noise - reduction technologies, which has been reflected in the production of ever more stringent international noise regulations. Noise reduction is being enhanced by more attention being paid to airframe noise by the introduction of low noise engine nacelles, landing gears and high-lift devices. Operational improvements have resulted from quiet take-off and landing procedures, ramp operations, and possible future electrical taxiing. Cabin interior noise has also been improved by the incorporation of improved design and materials. Many environmental regulations have been produced the most important coming from ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), particularly for noise near airports. See www.icao.int.

Local air quality

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The burning of fossil fuels in aircraft produces many pollutants, of which nitrous oxide (NOx) is the most damaging to local air quality. This adds to ground-borne pollutants around airports to aggravate susceptibility to cardio-vascular ailments.

Developments are being made in modern gas turbine design to optimise performance, in terms of both NOx and carbon dioxide (CO2). Engine combustors are being designed to produce less NOx, but this may conflict with higher compressor pressure ratios, which reduce fuel burn and hence CO2.

Global Warming

There is a growing conviction in the scientific community that pollution caused by human activities is leading to increased global warming, with attendant adverse environmental consequences. Carbon dioxide emissions are considered to be the most important, but, “There is a scientific consensus that the climatic impact of the (aviation) sector is 2-5 times that of CO2 emissions alone. The uncertainty is related to the climate impact of Cirrus clouds that can form out of aviation – induced contrails1.

There is a perception that aviation is a major polluter, but it only contributes some 3% of anthropomorphic global warming, as compared to shipping’s 8%.

Nevertheless, aviation’s success has led to dramatic traffic growth, and thus drastic action must be taken to reduce pollution. Concern has been expressed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to the most recent European Environmental targets2: “1 In 2050 technologies and procedures available allow a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions per passenger kilometre to support the ATAG target10 and a 90% reduction in NOx emissions. The perceived noise emission of flying aircraft is reduced by 65%. These are relative to the capabilities of typical new aircraft in 2000.

2. Aircraft movements are emission-free when taxiing.

3. Air vehicles are designed and manufactured to be recyclable.

4. Europe is established as a centre of excellence on sustainable alternative fuels, including those for aviation, based on a strong European energy policy.

5. Europe is at the forefront of atmospheric research and takes the lead in the formulation of a prioritised environmental action plan and establishment of global environmental standards.”

Design changes to reduce pollution.

Evolutionary progress

Aircraft and engine design is constantly improving by a series of revolutionary and evolutionary steps. Figure 1 shows the improvements in relative fuel burn

Aviation and the Environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact

since the start of the commercial jet age, following the service introduction of the De Havilland Comet.

Figure 1: Trends in Engine and aircraft fuel burn performance (courtesy of the Royal Aeronautical Society)

The circles show the dramatic improvements due to more efficient engine designs, whilst the squares, for the whole aircraft. These include the effects of engine performance, but also reflect improvements in aerodynamic, structural, materials, airframe systems and avionic systems design. It is sad to note that in recent years there have been reductions of the slopes of the performance improvement curves.

It seems that the current aircraft and engine designs are reaching their limits, and more innovations are required.

Possible future technologies

Engine technological innovations are beyond the scope of this memoir. Figure 2 shows two technologies that offer significant fuel burn and pollution reduction, without the need to make radical changes to aircraft configurations. The left image shows variable – camber wing flaps that are able to optimise wing airload distributions, leading to reduced induced drag by means of small deflections in cruising flight. Skin friction drag can be significantly reduced if the airflow over surfaces remains in the laminar region. This can be made possible by carefully controlling aerofoil shapes and surface finish, as shown later for some Cranfield projects and is termed Natural Laminar Flow (NLF). This approach is impossible, however, if a wing has sweepback, as is usually required for the high subsonic speed regime. These conditions make it is necessary to provide suction surfaces near the wing leading edge, termed Hybrid Laminar Flow (HLF), as shown on figure 2, overleaf.

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Figure 2: Variable camber trailing edge flaps and Hybrid laminar flow technologies

Cranfield University MSc in Aerospace Vehicle Design Group Design Projects – a powerful means of investigating new technologies and concepts

Many Universities use group projects as a means of synthesising aeronautical teaching and to give experience of team work and design integration. Cranfield’s design course is unique in the depth of the student, staff and equipment resources used in its twice -yearly projects, some of which are shown in figure3, below. They allow significant in-depth design solutions at conceptual, preliminary and detail design stages in a virtual industrial environment. This environment is reflected in the fact that the aircraft conceptual design is produced by staff, who act as an initial project design office that delivers a detailed project specification.

Figure 3: Some of the resources used to support Cranfield University Group Design Projects

Between 30 and 85 graduate students are allocated responsibility for preliminary/ detail designs of major parts of the project aircraft such as the forward fuselage, a flying control surface or an airframe system such as fuel, environmental control, propulsion, landing gear, avionics or the control system. Further topics included

Aviation and the Environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact

performance, cost, reliability and maintainability. This allows much more realistic estimates to be made of mass and performance and demonstrates that the construction and system design methods are feasible.

The 8-month programme, using industry-standard design tools and methods, is supervised by more than 10 faculty staff and culminates in a challenging public presentation of the project to Industry experts, and external examiners. Up to 90,000 designer-hours of work are summarized in individual project theses.

Several examples of these projects are shown later in this memoir.

Aircraft using alternative fuels

The original aviation fuel was petrol (aviation gasoline) and it is still used by many light aircraft, but the predominant fuel is Aviation Kerosine (AVTUR).

Liquid hydrogen is attractive, in that it is lightweight, energy-efficient and less polluting. Drawbacks are its low density in gaseous form and even as a liquid. The latter requires the use of cryogenic temperatures and tanks pressurised to some 2 atmospheres. Liquid hydrogen supply and distribution would require significant infrastructure investment. Figure 4 shows two concepts proposed during the EU Cryoplane Project.

Figure 4: Liquid Hydrogen-fuelled concepts (Courtesy Cryoplane)

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is not as calorifically attractive as hydrogen, but the density and cryogenic effects are less severe. and LNG has good availability.

Electricity is a more radical fuel source, which has been made possible by the use of more efficient batteries, fuel cells or solar power. Commercial aviation requires batteries with higher power densities than currently available to give adequate flight performance. A hybrid propulsion solution is possible, such as the Cranfield Ae-16 project, shown as figure 5. Fans are driven by onboard batteries, augmented by a small gas turbine.

Figure 5: Cranfield Ae-16 Project

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Developments of conventional aircraft configurations

Conventional configuration aircraft, optimised for 4,000n miles, using advanced engines, systems and materials, can offer some 20% improvement in fuel burn and 13% in costs, relative to current aircraft. A 500-seat aircraft, designed for a limited range of 2000 miles, offers significant fuel, pollution, airport congestion and cost advantages. Natural laminar flow wings have been introduced in some business jets and the configuration shown in figure 6 shows how this may be extended to 250-seat aircraft. This cruises at a lower speed, and is a good candidate for open rotor propulsion.

Figure 6: Cranfield “Greenliner� natural laminar flow concept

Figure 7: Cranfield MRT-7 Civil Flight refuelling concept

Air-to-air refuelling is commonly used by the military services worldwide and allows extended flight ranges for bombers and fighters and potentially increase endurance for patrol aircraft. Figure7 shows a civil flight refuelling concept in which a receiving aircraft, sized for a fuel-efficient range of 4000 miles, uses a refuelling receptacle in the lower rear fuselage. The tanker aircraft deploys an actively-controlled, retractable forward boom. Extensive design, modelling and safety analyses have been performed to show the viability of this concept. The fuel

Aviation and the Environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact

transfer allows the receiving aircraft to fly some 8,000 or 12,000 miles without landing. Calculations indicate a fuel saving of some 39% and cost savings of 21% relative to the predictions of contemporary long-range designs.

Some novel aircraft concepts

Cranfield University has performed many novel projects, including a joined – wing concept that achieves aerodynamic efficiency, together with structural stiffness and reduced wingspan (figure 8). The project, however, showed challenges in obtaining sufficient fuel volume in its slender wings, complex stability and control characteristics, and difficult cargo loading.

Figure 8: Cranfield Joined wing aircraft

Several projects have studied very high aspect ratio strutted – wing aircraft, which produce very small values of induced aerodynamic drag.

Several successful Cranfield projects have been completed of one of the most radical configurations; the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB). This configuration has a much lower surface area than conventional aircraft, and offers significant aerodynamic and payload flexibility benefits. The passenger cabins need to be pressurized, which leads to challenges in fitting pressure vessels inside a BWB’s shape, which may be solved by clever structural design. Emergency evacuation regulations and the BWB’s lack of passenger windows may be satisfied by careful research into aisles and exits and “electronic” windows. Figure 9 (overleaf ) shows an image of a recent 550 seat long range aircraft.3 The BWB concept has been validated by sub-scale flying demonstrators including the Boeing/NASA/Cranfield X-48B and the Cranfield/BAE SYSTEMS Kestrel.

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Figure 9: Cranfield Long-Range Blended – Wing – Body

Conclusions

• Aircraft-related noise, local air quality and global warming are recognised as serious issues, which are likely to increase in the future, particularly because of aviation’s increasing popularity. These environmental impacts must be quickly mitigated by means of new operational, economic and technological measures.

• Conventional-configuration aircraft produce useful fuel burn benefits by using advanced aerodynamics, structures, systems and technologies such as laminar flow and variable camber flaps.

• Current aircraft configurations offer significant fuel improvements for long range flights by means of civil air refueling.

• Conventional – configuration aircraft and engines are unlikely to be able to meet proposed environmental targets.

• Intermediate - technology configurations, such as the natural laminar flow aircraft will be able to significantly reduce costs, noise and global warming.

They have modest risks but require lower cruise speeds.

• The box-wing concept is promising, in that it can produce significant fuel & cost benefits for mid and long-range operations. There are considerable technical risks associated with this concept, which would benefit from more research.

Aviation and the Environment: aircraft design for reduced environmental impact

• Blended – wing – body aircraft offer great benefits, but more research is needed to reduce project risk. The X-48B and Kestrel sub-scale flying demonstrators have done useful work, but larger and faster research vehicles are required.

• The future is exciting, and will be realized by young engineers such as those who have worked on the projects described above.

• Significant improvements are possible, given political will and sufficient resources. Mark Twain’s comments show the need for travel, but some pollution is inevitable. Offsetting carbon is one way to mitigate pollution, through organisations such as www.climatestewards.org.

References 1.

European Federation for Transport and Environment. 2007 Aviation in the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

2. Anon. Flightpath 2050: Europe’s vision for Aviation. European Commission, European Union, 2011.

3. Smith, H, Des 1100 Advanced Blended Wing Body High Capacity Airliner BW-11.

Project Specification. Cranfield University, Sept 2011

Professor Fielding had 12 years industrial experience as apprentice and design engineer in Manchester working on the Nimrod, BAE 748 and BAE 146 aircrafts. He then joined Cranfield University as the first ARB Research Fellow and subsequently became Professor of Aircraft Design and Head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

He was also Chief Engineer of the BAE Systems/EPSRC–sponsored DEMON technology demonstrator UAV. John Fielding is partially retired but is Professor Emeritus at Cranfield University where he teaches and carries out research. He is founder and Director of Fielding Aerospace Consultants Ltd. and specialises in research and education in aircraft design, reliability, maintainability and operational effectiveness. He acts as a consultant and expert witness and has published more than one hundred technical papers at conferences and in journals. The second edition of Prof Fielding’s popular textbook Introduction to Aircraft Design was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. He is a member of an aircraft company advisory board, and chairman of the Cranfield College of Aeronautics Alumni Association.

Formerly with BAE, Professor Smith heads Cranfield’s Aircraft Design Centre and is engaged in a number of fields of research and continues to make significant contributions in the areas of Aircraft Conceptual Design of Advanced Configurations and of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. He is internationally recognised in both domains.

His work covers military, civil and space vehicles. Recent work focuses on advanced concepts reducing aviation’s environmental impact. Prof Smith’s international reputation in the area of aircraft conceptual design methods and tools led to him working for Boeing in Seattle for a period to independently critique their future concept design

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methodologies. Many of his Research Assistants have been funded by customers to develop tools in this area. A significant number of his current PhD students are engaged in research in this domain.He has a continuing interest in the design and integration of UAVs. His design, manufacture and flight test of the Kestrel BWB flying demonstrator led to the £6.5million FLAVIIR contract to design, integrate, manufacture and flight test a jet UAV. Boeing also took an interest in Prof Smith’s Kestrel program and, subsequently, awarded Cranfield a $3million contract to design and manufacture the X-48b flying demonstrator followed by the X-48c continuation program.

At the request of the Nigerian Air Force, Prof Smith has built for Nigeria an indigenous UAV capability. Over a period of five years, Prof Smith developed their team by designing a number of reconnaissance UAVs. The latest vehicle was flown without assistance from Cranfield and acclaimed by President Goodluck Jonathan as “a landmark moment in our nation’s history”. He is a Fellow of the RAeS, Associate Editor of The Aeronautical Journal, Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology Journal and a Senior Member of the AIAA.

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse ALAN SEGROTT

1. Introduction to the Evolution of Bridge Design

Bridges have evolved over millennia. The earliest ones were simply fallen trees spanning rivers, and these were used by many animal species. Humans also felled trees to enable traffic across rivers and gorges, and these were suitable for pedestrian purposes. The next phase of bridge development was to construct these simple structures from stone slabs: which were stronger and more durable.

However, such spans were limited by the tensile strength of the particular stone, with the result that they could only span short distances. Different bridge designs were developed to overcome this problem. The arch bridge was the most common bridge type during antiquity. Bridge design then evolved through the ages and nowadays can be split into six broad categories: • arch bridges • suspension bridges • truss bridges • beam bridges • cantilever bridges • cable-stayed bridges.

1.1 Arch bridges

An ancient example of an arch bridge is the Pont du Gard (figure 1), a Roman multi-span, multi-tiered aqueduct built 40-60AD (CE). Arch bridges utilise the good compression properties of stone whilst minimising tensile forces. The arch directs forces as horizontal thrusts into abutments on either side, or by counterbalanced thrust in the case of a multi-arched bridge. Multi-arched bridges allow great distances to be spanned.

Figure 1: Pont du Gard: multi-arched viaduct

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The industrial age saw advancements in bridge design as different materials became easier to manufacture. An example of this was the first cast iron bridge; Ironbridge (figure 2) which was constructed in 1779. This is also an arch bridge, the tensile stress in the underside of the arch is reduced by transferring load to the stone abutments. This was particularly important because cast iron, while strong in compression, is relatively weak in tension.

Figure 2: Cast iron bridge at Ironbridge Shropshire

1.2 Suspension bridges

Figure 3: Schematic of a suspension bridge

Suspension bridges overcame the limitations of the arch design by suspending the deck of the bridge from cables suspended from towers; this type of design allows large distances to be bridged (figure 3). The main catenary cables have vertical suspender cables supporting the deck along which traffic can pass. Simple suspension bridges – using rope - were used in mountainous regions for centuries. Modern suspension bridge design appeared in the early 19th century. A key requirement of these bridges is the ability of the suspension cable to act in

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

tension. Modern suspension bridges could only be developed once materials that were good in tension were manufactured. The suspension bridge also relies on the weight of the bridge being transferred to large supports on the shore. The Menai Bridge (figure 4), built in 1826 uses a wrought iron suspension cable, which has good tensile properties compared to contemporary materials of that time.

As stated above, the suspension bridge relies on the main suspension cable being anchored in the embankments at the end of the bridge. The integrity of the bridge is completely dependent on the suspension system, and any problems with this requires major repair work, i.e. the bridge may need to be closed. The main evolution in long span bridges took place with suspension bridges during the 20th century. The development of steel wire used for the suspension cable was fundamental to this evolution. Examples include the Golden Gate Bridge (1937; 1280m), Humber Bridge (1981; 1410m); Akashi Kaikyo Bridge (1998; 1998m).

In the 21st century suspension bridges (figure 3) remain the design choice for the very longest bridges, but they are dependent on the strength and integrity of the ‘shore’ supports.. This situation can be avoided by the cable stay bridge (see Section 1.4).

Figure 4: Menai suspension bridge

1.3 Cantilever bridges

A fine example of the cantilever bridge is the Forth Railway Bridge (figure 5), built of steel in 1890. This is a triple cantilever trussed bridge, which had the longest span (520m) in the world for seventeen years. Each span of the cantilever bridge is effectively self supporting: the top tubes are basically in tension, while the lower tubes are in compression. The small centre spans apply bending moments to the basic spans, and also allow for settling movement in the foundations. This was the first major bridge in the UK to be built from steel, which has excellent compression and tensile properties.

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Figure 5: Forth railway bridge - cantilever bridge (Wikimedia Commons, Andrum99)

1.4 Cable stay bridges

In the cable stay bridge the deck is supported by a set of individual inclined cables: with design and material advances, cable stay bridges (figure 6) are becoming more popular than suspension bridges for spans up to 1100m. One of the advantages cable stay bridges have can be explained by considering the statics of these two types of bridges.. A major benefit is that little load is transferred to the abutments, which also removes any significant reliance on the local geological conditions. Also, if the integrity of an individual cable is compromised it should be possible for this to be replaced without major disruption to the bridge.

Figure 6: Schematic of cable stay bridge

A major example of a cable stay bridge is the Millau Viaduct, France (2004; 2.25km), and a more local one is the latest Forth crossing (figure 7).

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

Figure 7: Forth cable stay road bridge (Queensferry Crossing)

2. The Mersey Gateway Bridge

By the end of the 20th century it was becoming apparent that the existing NorthSouth crossing of the River Mersey was becoming over-congested and unreliable.

The traffic density on the Silver Jubilee Bridge, Runcorn - a steel through arch bridge opened in 1961 - had become unsustainable. This resulted in excessive travel times, and unreliable availability resulted from traffic incidents. A study was initiated in 2003 to define a replacement crossing. This required a significant amount of preparatory work, including feasibility studies and cost estimates, conceptual design, and public consultation. By 2003 options for the crossing were being appraised, resulting in a successful bid for funding from the Department of Transport in 2006. A Public Inquiry was held in 2009 leading to Conditional Full Approval in 2013. Several routes had been considered in the design phase and the accepted route for the new crossing is shown in figure 8. The Merseylink consortium was announced as the preferred bidder in March 2013, and construction began in April 2014. The project includes a 1 km long cable stay bridge with approximately 8km of new and upgraded highways.

The project is a Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Maintain contract with a concession period of 26 years, hence it was in the interest of the concession company to minimise the maintenance costs of the bridge. This resulted in the following choices: a concrete deck, cable-stay design, and early definition of an operating and maintenance strategy.

2.1 Basic design of bridge

The cable stay bridge has three pylons (figure 9), the north is 115m in height, the central is 80m in height and the south is 125m. This unusual configuration was dictated by the constraints of the location of the bridge. The nearby John Lennon Airport meant that the pylons could not be larger than 150m in height;

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a two-pylon bridge may have been an option otherwise. Additionally, the presence of the Manchester Ship Canal to the south of the bridge meant that the road level had to rise from north to south, to allow safe clearance for large ships to use the canal. The design therefore resulted in a 4 span 3 pylon cable stay bridge with spans of 181m, 294m, 318m and 205m. The bridge deck can accommodate three lanes of traffic in each direction, a cross-section is shown in figure 10.

Figure 8: Route of the Mersey crossing

2.2 Construction of the bridge

The bridge is founded on weathered sand stone. Figure 11 shows the south pylon spread footing foundation, which has a diameter of 21m and is the largest of the three. In order to install these foundations a temporary service ‘trestle bridge’ was built alongside the route of the main bridge, thus allowing access for the major construction vehicles. It was then possible to construct double skinned cofferdams to allow the construction of the bridge foundations, see figure 12.

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

Figure 9: Side elevation of the Mersey Gateway bridge

Figure 10: Cross-section of the deck of the Mersey Gateway bridge

Figure 11: Concrete plug slabs for supporting viaduct piers

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Rising out of the cofferdam in figure 12 is the south pylon. The pylons were built using jumping formwork which were progressively moved up in sections by an automated climbing system (ACS): this formwork can be seen near the top of a pylon in figure 13.

Figure 12: Cofferdam and temporary bridge

Figure 13: Construction of a pylon using self-travelling formwork

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

The decking was constructed using a similar automated technique, with the deck formers (one travelling in each direction to counterbalance the deck weight) being propelled horizontally from a pylon. A deck former can be clearly seen in figure 14, and the counterbalance approach, together with cable stays are shown in figure 15. The cable stays are fabricated from bundles of strands, see figure 16. Each strand comprises seven intertwined high strength steel galvanised wires encased in HDPE (high density polyethylene) to avoid corrosion. The number of strands in each cable varies between 41 and 91, depending on the load the cable takes.

These bundles of strands are also encased in an anti-corrosion sheath

Figure 14: Deck former (orange) during bridge construction

Figure 15: Construction of the deck, showing the counter-balancing achieved by building in both directions

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Figure 16: Cable Stay Arrangement

2.3 Construction of the viaducts

The cable stay bridge is linked to the surrounding infrastructure by approach viaducts. These are simpler structures and comprise spans of up to 70m. The deck cross section of the viaducts is similar to the cable stay bridge and is made from post tensioned concrete. The North Approach Viaduct is 707m in length and has 11 spans, and the South Approach Viaduct is 544m and has 8 spans. The viaducts are supported by piled foundations. An interesting incident occurred during the construction of these piled foundations when phosphorous was encountered within the ground. The Widnes/Runcorn area has a significant chemical industry heritage and the project had to be built over heavily polluted land which required substantial decontamination. Despite precautions being taken a pocket of phosphorous was encountered on one occasion during piling operations. No one was harmed however the phosphorous spontaneously combusted when it met the atmosphere. Once these ground problems were overcome, the major task of building the viaducts could commence. Again, an automated system was used, called a Mobile Scaffold System or MSS which was able to move itself from one span to the next and accommodate the curve of the required alignment, see figure 17. Figure 18 is an aerial photo of the last span of the north approach viaduct MSS fresh from its move from the previous span. The next step involved fixing reinforcing steel, and post tensioning steel, before the internal formwork was placed and finally the concrete poured. The MSS was able to construct up to 70m spans at a time and the cycle time between span concrete pours was between 3 to 4 weeks.

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

Figure 17: Mobile Scaffold System

Figure 18: MSS ready for next span

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Having completed the spine (central box section) it was necessary to add cantilever wing sections on both sides to complete the deck width., Another automated form work traveller was used for this purpose. A schematic of this is shown in figure 19. It travelled along temporary rails mounted on the spine, and when in location the sections of road decking could be poured. After this the decking supports were hinged down, andĆ’ the former was moved forward before the next section could be prepared and poured.

Figure 19: Travelling former for viaduct roads: note the rails on which it travels

3. Completion of the bridge

The Mersey Gateway bridge was completed on time and on budget and opened in October 2017. The completed bridge can be seen in figure 20.

Her Majesty The Queen and Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex carried out their first ever engagement together, as they visited Halton on 14 June 2018 to officially open the new Mersey Gateway Bridge.

The Mersey Gateway - a link to the Northern Powerhouse

Figure 20: View of the completed bridge across the Mersey

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Desmond Winterbone, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, for his assistance and encouragement in the development of this paper, and Merseylink Ltd for providing pictorial content.

Alan Segrott CEng MICE was Merseylink’s Lead Bridge Engineer during the construction project.

Lit-and-Phil Museums in the North-West ANTHONY BURTON

M

30 January 2018

ost museums have a sense of their own history, as one might expect.

When they write it down, however, they sometimes fail to avoid an air of self-satisfaction, often caused by a lack of awareness of the wider context of museum activity to which the operations of their own institution contributed. For a long time, the wider, general history of museums in England remained little researched. Recently, significant attempts to fill this gap have been made in a short book by Christine Garwood (2014), and a magisterial volume from Giles Waterfield (2015)1. In dealing with the nineteenth century, both books foreground the parliamentary legislation which permitted public money to be spent on museums: the Museums Act of 1845, and the Public Libraries and Museums Act of 1850, both instigated by the radical MP, William Ewart. Despite the importance of these Acts, their implementation was slow and patchy. Before and alongside them, more vigorous efforts to found museums were made by the many scholarly institutions which were created during the nineteenth-century in Britain, and were collectively known as Literary and Philosophical Institutions.

The “Lit-and-Phils” themselves have been the subject of much scholarly interest in recent years. The emphasis was at first on their rise and expansion in the eighteenth century2; they fitted well into accounts of the developing intellectual life of the Enlightenment. More recently, their continued development in the nineteenth century has been brought into better focus3. Even so, it is their meetings, their networks, and their publications which have been chiefly studied.

Little attention has been paid to their museums 4.

The first English local learned society is generally held to be the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (founded 1710), which had – and has (it survives) – a museum. But this swallow did not make a summer, and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that learned societies began to spring up in greater numbers. The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society was founded in 1781, and claims to be “the first and oldest Literary and Philosophical Society in the World”, while conceding, in view of Spalding’s seniority, that it is “the second oldest Learned Society in the United Kingdom”. One of the earliest accounts of learned societies, by Abraham Hume in 1853, remarked that “one of the first objects in the smallest provincial town where … a [learned] society can be organised, is to procure a Museum; and, when once a beginning is made, the liberality of individuals aids or surpasses the more direct effects. Thus the teaching that would be abstract is happily illustrated…”5. As it happened, the Manchester Lit-and-Phil did not found a museum, though other Manchester museums will be noted shortly.

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Many Lit-and-Phils did start museums. At least 80 can be traced up to 1900.

Perhaps ten of these survive as independent museums, still run by their original Lit-and-Phil sponsors, or by some independent body which evolved from a Lit-and-Phil. Many Lit-and-Phils have perished, but most of the Lit-and-Phil museum collections have survived: only about half a dozen were junked. Most were passed on to other museums, run by city or regional authorities, universities, and such institutions. So the heritage of the Lit-and-Phil museums endures; some Lit-and-Phil exhibits may well be lying doggo within contemporary museums, but, with the present interest in local history, some are celebrated.

The contents of such museums reflected the interests of the Lit-and-Phils.

Fine art (painting and sculpture) tends to capture most attention and prestige in the museum world these days. But, while the Lit-and-Phils did not ignore art, it was not as central to their concerns as other disciplines such as natural history, archaeology, geology, ethnography. (As to the defining phrase “Literary and Philosophical”, “literary” signified book-learning in whatever field, and “philosophical” would now equate with “scientific”.) In their intellectual inclinations, the Lit-and-Phils accorded with the British Museum (which has always left fine art to the National Gallery), and, when they started a museum, they probably hoped to create a small, local version of the BM, embracing a wide range of knowledge. At the same time, they naturally had a keen interest in their own local area.

The intellectual endeavours of the Lit-and-Phils, and their assembly of material knowledge in the form of museums, make a significant chapter in British cultural history. Examples drawn from the North-West give a good impression of the bigger picture.

In Manchester, while the Lit-and-Phil did not have a museum, there were other learned societies which did. A Natural History Society, founded in 1821, built up a collection, which was housed (from 1835) in a fine Greek Revival building designed by Richard Lane in Peter Street (figure 1). On show were “waxen models of fruits and esculent plants of the tropical climates”, and stuffed birds (“plumage more brilliant and attitudes more spirited cannot possibly be imagined”), together with a mummy from Thebes juxtaposed with a mummified “corpse of an old maiden lady of Manchester”6. This museum was joined in 1850 in the same building, by the collections of the Manchester Geological Society (founded in 1838). Eventually, these museums declined to the point where in 1869 they were taken over by the newly founded Owens College. This became the University of Manchester, and the collections remain in the university museum, in the building, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, that was designed for them in the 1880s.

Another important Manchester organisation was the Royal Institution, founded in 1823. Originally conceived as an “Institution for the Promotion of Literature, Science and the Fine Arts”, it never made much headway with literature and science, but did collect art, and eventually evolved (in 1882) into the City Art Gallery. It still occupies its important original (1825) building designed

by Charles Barry, together with the adjoining Athenaeum (also by Barry, 1837) which still on its cornice proclaims that its purpose was “The Advancement and Diffusion of Knowledge”.

Lit-and-Phil Museums in the North-West

Figure 1: The Manchester Museum of Natural History

Liverpool was as lively intellectually as Manchester, perhaps more so7. Its Lyceum is claimed as the first subscription library in Europe. It had a building designed by Thomas Harrison of Chester, who also designed the Portico Library in Manchester, which followed Liverpool’s example in 1806. Liverpool had a Lit-and-Phil in 1779 (again ahead of Manchester), but this survived only a few years, and a more robust Lit-and-Phil emerged in 1812. This was closely associated with Liverpool’s Royal Institution (figure 2, overleaf ), founded in 1814 (before Manchester’s Royal Institution). The Institution was housed in a building (not purpose-built but converted from a house) in Colquitt Street. This offered lectures and ran a school. It also had a museum and an art gallery. The art gallery was across the road, in a purpose-built block with plaster casts of sculpture on the ground floor and paintings exhibited above. The paintings eventually (after the decline of the Institution and its demise in 1948) came to rest in the Walker Art Gallery. In the main building of the Institution was a natural history museum: rooms devoted to quadrupeds, birds and insects, together with a herbarium and fossils. These collections passed eventually to the university, and thence to the municipal museum.

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Figure 2: The Liverpool Royal Instution

Figure 3: The Preston Literary and Philosophical Institution

Lit-and-Phil Museums in the North-West

The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, founded in 1848, was based in Liverpool, and is still active in fostering and publishing research. It had a museum, which contained such things as fragments of ancient British burial urns, Roman vases and coins, an Egyptian scarab, medieval bronze keys, clay tobacco pipes, and a seventeenth-century iron chest. Most of these exhibits had turned up locally. The Society handed its collections over to the municipal museum, when this was founded in 1852, and, though a catalogue of them survives, the collections were mostly destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. Among the industrial towns of Lancashire, Preston had a strong intellectual tradition. Its Literary and Philosophical Institution was founded in 1840, and was housed in a building of 1846 in Winkley Square, quite an impressive building designed by local architect John Welch in a more-or-less Tudor-Gothic style (figure 3). It had a museum, which was “rich in well-preserved specimens of British birds, and has a fine series of shells, fossils and minerals”8. It also contained locally excavated archaeological material9. Before the Lit-and-Phil, Preston had an Institution for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, set up in 1828. This was more of a Mechanics’ Institute than the Lit-and-Phil, which was for more refined persons (and conveniently next door to the Winkley Club House for gentlemen).

The Institution for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in a building of 1846 designed by the versatile Mr Welch in Greek Revival style, also aspired to a museum, but in 1857 it was recorded that this “has not yet been fitted up … its contents have been greatly neglected, and portions irretrievably injured”10. The early museum activity in Preston was to be subsumed in the efforts of the local council to start a municipal museum, for which they bought up the Lit-andPhil collections. Their efforts achieved success when they received a bequest from a deceased clergyman, Edward Harris, to fund a building: this resulted in the monumental Harris Museum.

The Lake District, one of England’s first tourist destinations, saw the appearance of several private museums in the late eighteenth century. These were not without scholarly value, but tended not to survive their owners. One, founded in 1796 by John Todhunter, taxidermist and bookseller, was sold after his death in 1835, but quite a lot of it passed into the hands of the Kendal Natural History and Scientific Society (figure 4, overleaf ), founded in that year. The Society, which included William Wordsworth and Robert Southey among its members, continued to run the museum, in various premises in Kendal, until in 1913 it presented the museum to the town to form the basis of the town museum, which still continues, with a strong sense of its origins.

At the other end of the region which can be called the North-West is Chester.

Here there were several early nineteenth-century attempts at learned societies, but it was not until the 1870s that positive activity began. A revived Archaeological Society (originally founded in 1849) was now joined by a Natural History Society, founded in 1871. They joined forces to start the Grosvenor Museum, named after the Duke of Westminster, who put up the money. The museum opened in 1886, and was taken over by the city of Chester in 1915. It is chiefly a local history

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Figure 4: The Kendal Literary and Scientific Society in Stricklandgate House

Figure 5 : Llewellynn Jewitt

Lit-and-Phil Museums in the North-West

museum now, with important holdings of local Roman archaeological remains.

This concludes a survey of Lit-and-Phil museums in the North-West, but it is perhaps worth extending our scope to Derby, because it was here that the best known local museum curator of the nineteenth century held sway. The Derby Town and County Museum and Natural History Society dates back to 1836; its collections were displayed in various places, and eventually passed to the Corporation of Derby in 1870, which opened a new building for them in 1879.

From 1857, their curator was Llewellynn Jewitt, wood-engraver and journalist turned antiquary, who was an effective museum official but also achieved widespread recognition for his writings (figure 5). Few other museum officials of the Victorian period had such a high profile; most of the Lit-and-Phil museums were probably curated by modest amateurs.

A brief account of the Lit-and-Phil museums perhaps inevitably gives the impression that they were rather quaint. They did not escape being regarded in this way in their own time. One contemporary commented that they were: “[a] receptacle of rubbish brought by resident gentlemen from all parts of the world – one giving a collection of minerals for which he has not room; another, a few drawers of butterflies of which he has grown tired.

South Sea Islanders’ weapons, elephants’ tusks, and other spoils of the chase are scattered about in corners and on walls, and the collection of oddments is dubbed a ‘museum’.” 11 But however various their contents may have been, they have often, when subsequent generations have returned to them, proved interesting and instructive in the light of later knowledge. The Lit-and-Phil societies were (and are) a worthwhile cultural practice, and their museums, if little known, are an admirable part of their achievement.

References 1.

Garfield, Christine, Museums in Britain: A History, (Shire Publications, Oxford, 2014). Waterfield, Giles, The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions, 18001914, (Yale University Press, London, 2015).

2. Clark, Peter, British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800: the origins of an associational world, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000).

3. Lubenow, William C., “Only Connect”: Learned Societies in Nineteenth-Century Britain, (Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2015).

4. Burton, Anthony, The Development of Museums in Victorian Britain and the Contribution of the Society of Arts, (William Shipley Group for RSA History, London, 2010). Much of the present article derives from this publication.

5. Hume, Abraham, The Learned Societies and Printing Clubs of the United Kingdom, (G. Willis, London, 1853). Enlarged from first edn of 1847.

6. Head, George, A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England, ( John Murray, London, 1836), pp77, 78.

7. Wilson, Arline, “The Cultural Identity of Liverpool, 1790-1850: The Early Learned Societies”, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 147 (1997), 55-80.

8.

9.

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A Topographical Dictionary of England, (S. Lewis, London, 1848).

Hardwick, Charles, History of the Borough of Preston, (Worthingon & Co., Preston, 1857), pp7, 42, 197, etc.

10. Hardwick, op.cit., p.450.

11. From an article in the magazine Iron, reprinted in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 7 November 1873, p.933.

Anthony Burton spent most of his working life as a curator at the V&A Museum , London, specialising in the history of typography and book illustration. After a period as Head of the branch museum at Bethnal Green he returned to the V&A, began his researches into Lit-and-Phil museums and published Vision and Accident (1999), a history of the V&A and The Great Exhibitor: The Life and Work of Henry Cole, a biography of the museum’s founding Director (2003). Having retired to Marple where he grew up, he has recently served as a Trustee of Elizabeth Gaskell’s house in Plymouth Grove.

Railway Engineering – Yesterday and Today MICHAEL BAILEY

T

6 February 2018

echnology has advanced remarkably over the last two hundred years, and no more so than in railway engineering. To illustrate this progress, comparison may be made between the surveying and construction of the London and Birmingham Railway in the 1830s and the forthcoming first stage of the High-Speed 2 (HS2) railway line between the same cities.

The London and Birmingham Railway

In 1833 the Act was obtained allowing the building of the London & Birmingham Railway, and shortly afterwards the Engineer-in-Chief, Robert Stephenson (1803-1859), was appointed. At the same time a further Act was passed allowing the building of the Grand Junction Railway northwards from Birmingham to Manchester and Liverpool, for which George Stephenson was initially appointed as Chief Engineer. The two railways represented the largest civil engineering project the world had ever seen since the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China.

The building of the London & Birmingham Railway required the services of several professional disciplines: • Surveyors, to determine the best route along the chosen corridor to avoid expensive earth-works and structures, • Civil Engineers, to determine the design specifications for earth-works and structures, • Parliamentary lawyers, to prepare the Bill for its passage through Parliament, • Conveyance lawyers, to negotiate with land owners and tenants, • Architects, to design stations, depots and some bridges, • Accountants, to provide all cost control and management information, • Locomotive Engineers, with mechanical engineering expertise to tender for locomotive requirements, and • Carriage and wagon engineers, with coaching and mechanical engineering expertise to tender for all vehicle requirements.

The selection of the route was controversial, and a compromise from the optimum route, largely because of the views of the influential landowners who objected to the passage of the line through their estates. The exact alignment was determined by teams of surveyors on the ground using theodolites and poles. Robert Stephenson himself walked the route several times with his five resident engineers to ensure the best alignment of horizontal and vertical gradients for the line.

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The selected route ran from Camden, in north London, via Watford, Tring, Rugby and Coventry, a distance of 112 miles. It was presented to Parliament with detailed drawings of land ownership and tenancies and with a broad corridor to allow not only for embankments and cuttings, but also for minor variations to overcome local problematical features. Section drawings were also prepared to illustrate the location of bridges and culverts and to provide indications of the volumes of soil movements required.

The House of Lords rejected the first Bill of 1832, largely due to the influence of the affected landowners. A second Bill the following year was passed and enacted following further, and more expensive arrangements with those landowners. A further Act was later obtained extending the line from Camden down to London’s ‘New Road’ at Euston.

Construction was undertaken from 1833, the alignment being divided into five lengths, each under the supervision of a resident engineer. Contracts were let for each separate length and structure requiring detailed design and specification work to enable contractors to tender. When work commenced, the contractors were carefully monitored by the resident engineers.

Figure 1: The Euston Station ‘Arch’

A major propylaeum was erected outside Euston station (the ‘Doric Arch’), through which passengers were to pass, signifying their journey through to a new world of opportunity. The design of Euston station was carefully undertaken to anticipate passenger needs and adopting the experience of the

Railway Engineering - Yesterday and Today

earlier rail route between Liverpool and Manchester. The tracks from Euston up the bank to Camden passed through London clay, an extremely difficult material which shrank and swelled according to prevailing weather. Major retaining walls were required, which were later shown to be inadequate, requiring the walls to be subsequently reformed to cope with the pressures of the clay.

Figure 2: The Primrose Hill tunnel

The trains were hauled up the Camden bank by ropes powered by large stationary steam engines to keep noise and pollution at acceptable levels as required by the Euston Extension Act. At the top of the bank, the railway passed over the Regents Canal, for which a new form of bridge design was required to maintain a minimum overhead clearance for passing canal traffic. At Camden the line had to tunnel through Primrose Hill, also formed largely of London clay requiring several rows of bricks and special mortar to resist the pressures that were encountered.

Major cuttings and embankments were required along the length of the railway, notably at Tring in Hertfordshire through a deep trench of chalk, requiring hazardous practices by the contractors to remove the spoil, and rock cuttings, such as that at Blisworth in Northamptonshire, requiring large numbers of men to split and remove the excess rock. A high embankment at Wolverton in Buckinghamshire had to pass over swampy ground requiring innovative practices to avoid excessive spreading of the material.

The largest contract on the line was that of the Kilsby tunnel in Northamptonshire which was required to pass through boulder clay and gravel over a lias base. This had been pre-determined using bore-holes, which unfortunately missed a seam

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of water-bearing sand crossing the rail alignment. Large pumping engines had to be installed to pump the water over several months to drain the seam, resulting from which an entirely new understanding was obtained of how to deal with such a difficult feature. Several bridges and viaducts along the line were designed in different materials according to the specific requirements of the site, ranging from the brick viaduct at Wolverton to the cast iron Nash Mill bridge across the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire.

Figure 3: The Propylaeum at Birmingham Curzon Street.

At Birmingham, the terminal station at Curzon Street was also endowed with a propylaeum, although rather smaller than that at Euston. That at Curzon Street survives as a Grade I listed structure, which will sit alongside the proposed terminal station site for the new HS2 route.

Railway Engineering - Yesterday and Today

The High Speed Railway HS2

Although basically following the same requirements of the 1830s railway, HS2 is being designed adopting very sophisticated technology; but the railway will maintain one characteristic in common with Robert Stephenson’s line, namely the track gauge of 4 ft 8½ ins. The new railway is required because capacity has been reached on the 1830s route, but the line is being designed for much higher speeds which will be a bonus for passengers and a stimulus for economic activity.

Because of the much more severe planning requirements for rail-building in the 21st century, by comparison with the 1830s route, the planning has taken ten years or more. The Act for Phase 1 of the HS2 line was passed in 2017, and work to build the line will shortly get under way, with a planned finishing date of 2026.

The HS2 alignment has been just as controversial as its predecessor, although with a much higher population in Great Britain in the 21st century, many more people will be affected by the new alignment. As in the 1830s, the alignment is a compromise to meet as far as possible all the objections that have been raised. The professional services required for the new line are: • Land surveyors, to undertake much the same work as their forebears, but using also aerial photographs, computer mapping and GPS systems, • Quantity surveyors, to use computerised mapping of the ground formation and to calculate soil movements and arrange for adequate deposit grounds, • Soil engineers, to undertake slope calculations, buttress requirements, tunnel material removal and drainage requirements, • Bridge engineers, responsible for all bridges and viaducts, to adopt different materials and designs as dictated by prevailing land conditions, • Structural engineers, to undertake design calculations for all bridges, viaducts, stations and other buildings, • Permanent Way engineers, to undertake all track design, including points and crossings, • Electrical Supply and Distribution engineers, to determine grid supply feeder stations, and design of overhead line equipment, • Signalling and Control engineers, to design all electronic control equipment, computer programming and safety programming for train control no longer adopting lineside signalling, • Mechanical engineers, to undertake train specification and design, and component design of train bodies, bogies and suspension systems, • Aerodynamic engineers, to develop exterior profiling and air smoothing designs, • Electrical engineers, to design all train motors and transmission systems, • Electronic engineers, to develop all train control and safety systems, • Interior Design engineers, to carry out all fitting-out designs, communication systems, door controls and passenger comfort, • Architects, undertaking design work for stations and depots, using experience on passenger flows to minimise congestion and assist smooth passenger flows,

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• Parliamentary lawyers, to prepare the Bill for its passage through Parliament, • Conveyance lawyers, to negotiate with land-owners, tenants and local authorities, • Accountants, to provide all cost control, and management information.

Figure 4: HS2

The HS2 project thus provides excellent career opportunities for young men and women: opportunities for pursuing careers through many different disciplines.

Pursuing those opportunities can be undertaken with a reference to the HS2 office and with the assistance of the various professional institutions.

Dr Michael R.Bailey, MBE was a transport professional for many years including six years in railway service. He has published several books and papers reflecting his interest in and passion for early railway history and locomotives. He is a Past-President of the Newcomen Society for the History of Engineering and Technology and is now President of the Stephenson Locomotive Society.

Correspondence to: michaelrbailey99@gmail.com

The Life and Work of James Clerk Maxwell KENNETH M LETHERMAN 5 March 2018

J

Early Life

ames Clerk Maxwell was born on 13 June 1831 at the family home, 14 India Street, Edinburgh, which is now the property of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation. The Maxwell family were landed gentry, with an estate in Galloway, South-West Scotland. James’ mother Frances died (probably of abdominal cancer) at the early age of 47, when James (an only child) was eight years old.

He had a wide-ranging curiosity, always wanting to know how things worked, asking “what’s the go of it?”, and for special cases, “what’s the particular go of it?”

At the age of ten he started at the Edinburgh Academy, joining the second year entry, as the first year was full. He had a difficult time at first, arriving at school in a suit and shoes designed by his father, which gave him an eccentric appearance. The boys immediately gave him the (exceptionally inappropriate) nickname of ‘Dafty’. He soon showed his precocious academic talent. The Maxwell family were friendly with the family of William Thomson, who later (as Lord Kelvin of Largs) became the most renowned British physicist of his time.

James was only 14 when he produced his first piece of original research. This involved an investigation of the properties of Ovals – elliptical closed curves defined by two fixed points, or foci, for which the sum of their distances to any point on the ellipse is constant. This was the basis of his first academic paper: ‘On Oval Curves’. In his paper, James examined various cases, including curves with more than two foci, and showed that the curves could be constructed by ingenious arrangements of pins and lengths of string. The paper was presented at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. As James was considered to be too young to read the paper himself, it was read for him by Professor Forbes.

Cambridge

James initially enrolled at Edinburgh University in 1847 at the age of 16, but it seems he found the curriculum in Natural Philosophy (as Physical Science was then called) to be rather restricting, and he soon decided to transfer to Cambridge University. He continued to work on areas of physics which interested him, and at about this time he developed a method of observing the strain pattern in a structure under load, by constructing a glass model of the structure and observing it with polarised light. He also developed the general theory of photo-elasticity based on strain functions, which is still used by structural engineers.

At Cambridge, he entered Trinity College, where the main goal of undergraduate study was the Mathematical Tripos exam in the final year. Passing this exam

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was a requirement for graduating, and a candidate’s performance determined their degree award. In the Tripos, James was ‘second wrangler’ to Edward Routh, who was a formidable mathematician, and who invented the Routh Criterion for determining the stability of the solution of differential equations. This criterion became of practical importance a century later, when the whole subject of automatic control theory was developed for application to such things as guided missiles. Maxwell also made an early contribution to this subject in his 1868 paper ‘On Governors’.

After graduating in 1854, James was free to pursue his own interests. One subject he particularly wanted to explore was the process of colour vision. As there was at that time no instrument capable of looking into human or animal eyes, he invented one, in effect the first ophthalmoscope. In particular, he wanted to explore how colour vision worked. Newton had shown that white light was made up of a continuum of all the colours in the visible spectrum, but it was not understood how the eye saw colours and transmitted the signal to the brain. It was known that the eye has three types of receptor in the retina, for the primary colours red, yellow and blue, but it was not understood how all the spectrum of colours could be generated from these.

James found that he could use a spinning disc with a different combination of three primary colours red, green and blue arranged in segments, and by rotating the disc at speed so that the eye saw only one colour all intermediate colours could be generated by appropriate mixtures of the three.

He represented this graphically by producing the Colour Triangle, (now called the Chromaticity Diagram) which is still used nowadays in the design of colour TVs for example, as a way of generating the whole spectrum from three primary colours.

He also started to work on the great scientific problem of the nineteenth century: the nature of electricity and magnetism. At that time, knowledge of these phenomena was fragmented and no unified theory existed to explain the ‘action at a distance’ of electric and magnetic fields. The leading exponent of field theory (as we call it now) was Michael Faraday, and Maxwell found himself leaning more and more to agree with Faraday’s conclusions. He used an analogy between the electrical field in empty space, and the flow of fluid through a porous medium.

His work on electric and magnetic fields is described in further detail in section 4 of this article.

Aberdeen

In 1856 (at the age of 25) he was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College in Aberdeen. In his time at Aberdeen, he was awarded the prestigious Adams Prize by Cambridge, for work demonstrating the conditions for which the rings around the planet Saturn are stable. Apparently, the examiners for the prize had set the task without expecting much response – the problem was of the greatest difficulty. Maxwell’s was the only entry, and it demonstrated his mastery of mathematical problems of great complexity. He assumed that there

The Life and Work of James Clerk Maxwell

were three possibilities for the structure of the rings: a solid circular flat ring, or a set of concentric continuous rings, or a random collection of pieces of various sizes. He showed that the last of these was the only one with a stable behaviour, and this was confirmed about 120 years later by a space probe from NASA, which allowed the ring structure to be observed in detail.

He also worked with the great German physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, on the statistics of gas dynamics, and was able to deduce the distribution of the speed of travel of molecules in a gas. What is now known as the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution gives the number of molecules n with a speed v as:

n(v) = v2.exp(-k.v2)

where k is known as the Maxwell-Boltzmann constant. Lord Kelvin described this work as ‘a touch of genius’.

At that time, there were two colleges in Aberdeen: Marischal and Kings. In 1860 it was decided to merge them into one, to form the University of Aberdeen – but with only one chair of Natural Philosophy. Maxwell applied for the post, but it went to David Thomson (known as ‘Crafty Dave’!) from King’s College. In the event, this was probably a good thing for Maxwell, as it prompted him to move from the relative backwater of Aberdeen to the centres where the most important work in Physics was being done: first in London, and later in Cambridge.

London

In October 1860 James moved to London with his wife Katherine to take up the chair in Natural Philosophy at King’s College, London University. Living in London gave James the opportunity to attend meetings at the Royal Society (he was elected an FRS in 1861), and at the Royal Institution, where Michael Faraday had worked since 1821. Faraday had established a tradition of popular lectures, open to the public (still continued on TV), and in May 1861 James was invited to speak about his experimental work (carried out during vacations, with his wife Katherine) on colour vision. At that time it had recently become possible to project a black and white photograph on to a screen, and James wished to use this technique to show a colour photograph for the first time. He took three photographs of a tartan ribbon through Red, Green and Blue filters and superimposed the images, producing the world’s first colour photograph for the lecture.

Apparently it had worked by good luck, and subsequent attempts at repeating it failed – the full explanation was discovered about 100 years after the event.

Between 1863 and 1866 he did major work on the molecular theory of gases.

Notably, he was able to verify his 1859 prediction that the viscosity of a gas is independent of density, a result that appears to go against expectation. This led to his celebrated paper On the Dynamical Theory of Gases, published in 1866.

He then became heavily involved in an entirely different area of Physics, which may seem mundane, but which was of the greatest importance for the development of the modern world. He started to work on establishing a coherent set of units for Electricity and Magnetism, a subject which was bedevilled by a chaotic

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system of many different incompatible units, and a lack of understanding of the nature of electric and magnetic fields. Historically, magnetism and static electricity had been known for centuries, but were regarded as separate unrelated phenomena. It was Michael Faraday who in the 1840’s established a link, showing that an electric current flowing in a wire loop was caused by a change in the magnetic flux passing through it. The magnitude of the current was proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux.

In the mid-1860’s, James turned to the problem of unifying the work that had been started by Faraday and others, on the relationship between electricity and magnetism. The work of Faraday and Oersted had established the unexpected result that magnetic and electric fields are interrelated, the magnetic field strength being dependent on the rate of change of the electric current generating it, and the research of Gauss showed that the electric field strength is similarly dependent on the rate of change of the magnetic field.

Maxwell’s first major contribution to the unification was to establish a unified system of units. On this basis, he was able to express the interrelationships between electric and magnetic fields in the simplest form by using the vectors B and E. B is the magnetic flux density produced by the magnetic field intensity H, and E is the electric flux density.

These equations are: 1.

Gauss’s Law for Electric Fields: allows the electric field strength E at any point on a closed surface due to an enclosed charge qenc to be calculated. is the electric permittivity of free space.

2.

Gauss’s Law for Magnetic Fields: the total magnetic flux B passing through any closed surface is zero.

3.

Faraday’s law: allows the e.m.f. in any path of a surface due to a changing magnetic field to be calculated.

4.

Ampere-Maxwell law – an electric current or a changing electric flux through a surface produces a circulating magnetic field around any boundary path of the surface. μ0 is the magnetic permeability of free space.

The Life and Work of James Clerk Maxwell

The naming of these equations (Gauss, Faraday, and Ampere) indicates the wide range of work done by the various people over a long period and brought together

by Maxwell. The first and fourth equations include the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability of free space, and the velocity of light can be calculated from the product of these. Maxwell was able to compare this numerical result with a direct measurement of the velocity of light which had been carried out

by Foucault in 1860. The results agreed within about 3%, thus strengthening his conclusion that light waves are electromagnetic waves, and part of the wider electromagnetic spectrum.

To help clarify the subject, James invented what we now call dimensional analysis, whereby all physical quantities are defined in terms of the basic properties of mass, length (or distance) and time, symbolised by M, L and T. Hence, velocity has dimensions L/T, acceleration L/T2 etc. This seems to us now a simple and obvious way of determining the dimensional correctness of the terms in an equation, but no-one had thought of it before Maxwell.

His main aim in the work on electricity and magnetism was to establish a set of physical standards for electrical units to which, in principle, all measurements could be related. This involved mounting a circular coil of wire on a vertical axis and spinning it rapidly in the Earth’s magnetic field (the existence of the North and South magnetic poles of the planet had been known for some years), thus inducing a voltage in the coil, which would cause a current to flow, in turn generating its own magnetic field. One aspect of this work had a result which is worth mentioning, illustrating as it does James’ wide range of brilliance. This relates to the requirement to keep the coil spinning at a constant speed. It was driven by a small steam engine, which was prone to lose speed if for example the steam pressure was allowed to fall.

The ‘flyball governor’ (invented by James Watt) was commonly used in such cases to maintain a constant speed automatically. The governor has a pair of weighted arms rotating on a vertical axis and driven by the steam engine. If the engine speed drops for any reason, such as an increase in the loading, the arms will experience a reduced centrifugal force and drop down on their axis, thus causing the steam valve to open further and restore the speed to its previous value. This is the basic principle of negative feedback. James analysed the conditions for stability under various feedback arrangements and for changes in the load, and wrote up the results in his 1868 paper On Governors. This was the first mathematical analysis of negative feedback in control systems, and became the foundation of modern automatic control theory.

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Figure 1: A flyball governor for steam engine (From: R.Routledge, Discoveries and Inventions of the 19th century 13th Ed, 1900)

The Cavendish

In 1871 the Duke of Devonshire endowed a new Chair at Cambridge University, in Experimental Physics, and James was appointed to the post. The endowment included a grant to build the new Cavendish Laboratory building, named in honour of the Duke’s Great-Uncle, Henry Cavendish, who was active a century earlier. Cavendish was probably the most eccentric scientist ever known, but his scientific work was remarkable: for example, he showed that water is a compound, not an element, he measured the density of the Earth to within 2% of its true value, and he discovered Ohm’s law 50 years before Ohm. James undertook to edit a collection of Cavendish’s unpublished papers, dealing with his experiments in electricity, and he spent about three years on this.

His collected edition of Cavendish’s work was published in 1879 under the title Electrical Writings of the Hon Henry Cavendish.

James also published three major pieces on his own research: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, On Stresses in Rarefied Gases Arising from Inequalities in Temperature, and On the Average Distribution of Energy in a System of Material Points. These publications laid the foundations for the modern subjects of Electrical Engineering and Gas Thermodynamics.

The Life and Work of James Clerk Maxwell

Figure 2: Engraving of James Clerk Maxwell by G. J. Stodart from a photograph by Fergus of Greenock (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) Last days

In the spring of 1877 James began to suffer from heartburn, which initially was relieved by doses of Sodium Bicarbonate. This treatment became less and less effective, and early in 1879 he was getting attacks of severe pain which were diagnosed as abdominal cancer, the same condition that his mother had died from. At that time medical science had very little treatment available for this condition, and it soon became clear by October 1879 that he had not long to live. He died on 5 November 1879, at the age of 48, and was buried at the family estate in Glenlair, Galloway.

Bibliography

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Mahon, B. The Man Who Changed Everything, ( J. Wiley, Chichester, 2003).

Tolstoy, I. James Clerk Maxwell: A Biography, (Canongate, Edinburgh, 1981).

Fleisch, D. A Student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equations (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Kenneth Letherman took his first degree in Physics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, in the department headed by Prof Henry Lipson (twice President of the Lit & Phil). After graduation, he joined the Scientific Civil Service, working at the Building Research Station near Watford on the development of a hybrid computer to model the annual energy consumption of heating systems in buildings. This prompted his interest in the applications of science to building services systems, particularly to heating and air-conditioning. He spent three years lecturing at the (then) Borough Polytechnic in Southwark, before returning to Manchester University in 1967 to take the MSc course in Automatic Control Engineering, (and took the opportunity to marry Rosemary, a Manchester girl), and then took up a lectureship in the Department of Building Engineering in UMIST. He later became the first Professor of Building Services Engineering at UMIST, and, among the developments in that department, was responsible for initiating the world’s first postgraduate course in Pharmaceutical Engineering, which includes such topics as the design of ventilation systems to prevent cross-contamination during the production process. He retired in 2001.

From diamonds to DNA: three women who uncovered the hidden structures of nature GEORGINA FERRY

U

15 March 2018

ntil the 20th century, history produced only isolated examples of women making original contributions in science. With the advent of women’s higher education at the end of the 19th century, and the increased professionalisation of science as a career, opportunities began to open up for women to engage in laboratory research. However, they remained in a minority, and even today, when many more young women are undertaking degrees and doctorates in science, the highest levels of recognition often seem stubbornly out of reach. Only 8.5 per cent of living Fellows of the Royal Society, Britain’s preeminent science academy, are female.

One way of understanding this imbalance is to look at the exceptions. Three of the most successful women in British science in the 20th century were all X-ray crystallographers. Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) was one of the first two women to be elected Fellows of the Royal Society, and the first woman to hold a chair in science at University College, London. Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) was a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 – only the third woman, after Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie, to win this prize. Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) died tragically young, but her name is bracketed with those of the Nobel prizewinners James Watson and Francis Crick, for her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. It could just be coincidence that they were all crystallographers, but I believe it is significant that the field was new, it was interdisciplinary, and from its inception had been led by people who favoured an egalitarian research environment without established hierarchies. In 1912 the German chemist Max von Laue, working in Munich, discovered that passing X-rays through crystals such as copper sulphate or zinc sulphide produced regular diffraction patterns. At the University of Leeds Professor William Bragg repeated the experiment, and his son Lawrence (then still an undergraduate at Cambridge), demonstrated that the spots in the diffraction pattern could be interpreted to reveal the arrangement of atoms in the crystal.

So began a technique that is still in wide use today to help understand how the structures of very complex molecules determine their function.

Bragg senior had recently returned to the UK after spending two decades as a professor at the University of Adelaide. He had absorbed the egalitarian ethos of Australia, and ran his lab in that spirit. After the end of World War I he moved to University College, London. Looking for new recruits, in 1922 he turned to the results of the final examinations in physics at the University of London,

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and found that the top mark had been obtained by one Kathleen Yardley of the all-female Bedford College. He immediately wrote and offered her a post as a research assistant, which she accepted. She was still only 19 years old.

Kathleen had been born in Ireland, the tenth child of a postmaster whose alcoholism was a risk to the financial security of the family. Her mother had brought the family to live in Essex when she was five years old, and her aptitude for science and mathematics had become obvious during her education at the local high school for girls. She had won a scholarship to attend Bedford College on leaving school at 16, having had to attend classes at the neighbouring boys’ high school in order to study physics and mathematics.

In Bragg’s laboratory, first at UCL and after 1924 at the Royal Institution in London, Kathleen was part of a team that were the first to use X-ray crystallography to examine organic compounds (those that contain carbon, including the thousands of molecules in living organisms). Each member of the team had his or her own project, and Kathleen began a study of benzene, which she continued after she married a fellow graduate student, Thomas Lonsdale, and moved to Leeds. When she had children, Bragg arranged a grant for her specifically so that she could pay for childcare and continue her work.

She discovered that the benzene ring, a basic component of many organic molecules, was hexagonal and flat, a finding that made her name as a pioneer in the field. Moving back to London, she continued her work on crystals and contributed to the development of tables of crystallographic data to help others with their work. Later in her career, she built up her own research group at UCL and investigated the structure of synthetic diamonds.

Brought up as a Baptist, Kathleen rejected religious dogma and became a Quaker. When World War II broke out, as a conscientious objector she refused to register for war work. She refused to pay the fine she was charged, and was sent to Holloway women’s prison for a month. This became ‘one of the most formative experiences of her life’, according to her husband. She was appalled at the conditions, and particularly at the lack of opportunities for useful activity offered to the inmates.She herself managed seven hours of theoretical work a day, on top of her prison responsibilities. She later campaigned for prison reform, and became a prison visitor.

From the Royal Society’s foundation in 1660 women had been deemed ineligible for Fellowships, but a change to the legal status of women made this position untenable. In 1943 the statutes were amended, and in 1945 Kathleen and the biochemist Marjory Stephenson were elected the first female fellows. She was awarded a DBE in 1956, became the first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography in 1966, and the first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1968.

Lonsdale was a great internationalist, and travelled indefatigably in the cause of scientific exchange and promoting peace. In a Penguin book she wrote in 1957, Is Peace Possible?, she wrote ‘It is… essential that the nations shall, separately and together, urgently seek ways and means of totally abandoning the use of force and war preparations… and that this research is an immediate imperative, not a distant aim.’

From diamonds to DNA: three women who uncovered the hidden structures of nature

Figure 1: Pamphlet written by Kathleen Lonsdale on prison reform (LSE Library, via Wikimedia Commons)

Lonsdale’s ability to combine science, family and international causes was an inspiration to Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Like Kathleen, Dorothy had a mother who encouraged her to pursue an independent career, a radical attitude at a time when the best most parents hoped for their daughters was to make an advantageous marriage. Dorothy was the eldest of four daughters of John Crowfoot and his wife Grace, known as Molly. She was born in Cairo, where her father was a colonial administrator in the education service.

From the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Dorothy and her sisters lived in the Norfolk village of Geldeston, cared for by friends and relatives while their parents were abroad. As the eldest, by her teens she was used to making decisions and taking responsibility for herself and her sisters. Having been ‘captured for life’ by crystals at primary school, she opted for chemistry at her mixed state secondary school, one of only two girls to do so. She won a place at the all-female Somerville College, Oxford, to read chemistry in 1928.

Dorothy had come across X-ray crystallography in a book of lectures for children by William Bragg, given to her by her mother. She set her heart on pursuing that field, and after Oxford went to Cambridge to do a PhD with John

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Desmond Bernal – a left-wing radical who had trained in the field with Bragg at the Royal Institution. As with Bragg’s lab, there was no obstacle to women working in Bernal’s. She and Bernal became the first to publish an X-ray diffraction image of a protein crystal, the digestive enzyme pepsin: while still a graduate student, her name became synonymous with the foundation of protein crystallography.

Returning to Oxford, Dorothy began her own research on another important protein, the hormone insulin, supported by Bragg who let her use the superior equipment at the Royal Institution. She met and married her husband Thomas Hodgkin, a historian and lecturer in adult education, and had no difficulty persuading her family that even after her three children arrived, she should continue with her research. During World War II she solved the structure of the antibiotic penicillin, work that made her another early female Fellow of the Royal Society, at the age of only 36.

Figure 2: Dorothy Hodgkin with her children Toby, Elisabeth and Luke on the day her Fellowship of the Royal Society was announced. (credit: Oxford and County Newspapers)

With her now expanding research group, which included several women, she went on to solve Vitamin B12, and, in a demonstration of her dedication and persistence, eventually solved the very difficult insulin structure in 1969, 34 years after she had started working on it. By that time she had already been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964, and been admitted to the Order of Merit the following year. Like Lonsdale, she was passionate about international

From diamonds to DNA: three women who uncovered the hidden structures of nature

collaboration and mutual understanding, and was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union and China. She actively campaigned against the Vietnam War, and tried to persuade her former student Margaret Roberts – then Margaret Thatcher – to open up dialogue with the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Perhaps the best known of the three women whose lives are very briefly outlined here, Rosalind Franklin did not directly experience the influence of the beneficent Braggs during her early career. However, having trained as a physical chemist in Cambridge, she learned her X-ray crystallography in Paris from Jacques Mering – who in turn had studied under a former Bragg student, Marcel Mathieu.

In Paris she experienced a vigorous but good-humoured style of debate that suited her combative nature, which had been honed at home during passionate political arguments with her banker father over the breakfast table. Under pressure from her family to return to the UK, in 1951 she accepted a post at King’s College London, where the professor of physics, John Randall, told her she would be taking over crystallographic work on fibres of DNA. Randall had previously told Maurice Wilkins, who was already working on DNA, that Rosalind was coming as his assistant.

The ensuing misunderstanding was never resolved as Wilkins hated confrontation. Rosalind worked on with her student Ray Gosling, and they produced the iconic ‘Photo 51’ that held clues to the molecule’s structure. After two unhappy years at King’s, she left for the much more congenial environment of Bernal’s lab at Birkbeck College. Wilkins then showed Photo 51 to James Watson, who immediately rushed back to Cambridge and with Crick, built the first correct model of the DNA structure. Their paper in Nature was published back-to-back with a paper from Rosalind, but they did not acknowledge that they had seen the photo, and she was never to know that her work had been instrumental in their discovery, even though Crick subsequently became a close friend.

At Birkbeck Rosalind moved on to work on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus, showing for the first time how protein subunits were stacked around a core of nucleic acid. She was invited by Lawrence Bragg, who had succeeded his father as the grand old man of British crystallography, to build a model for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. But almost to the day the model went on show in April of that year, Rosalind died of ovarian cancer. She did not live to see the Nobel prize awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins in 1962. In his obituary for The Times, Bernal wrote ‘As a scientist, Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.’

These three women had different personalities, but much in common. Chief among these was determination and a high sense of duty to humanity, combined with joy in the process of discovery. They all benefited from parents who encouraged independence of mind. They were all helped in their careers by more senior mentors, mostly male, who recognised their unique talents. And they all worked in a field that had an ethos of equality and sharing, not always to be found among other branches of science.

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The question remains whether these circumstances can be replicated today as efforts continue to encourage more young women to pursue careers in science.

As Dorothy Hodgkin said in her speech to the Stockholm students at the Nobel ceremony, ‘I was chosen to reply to you this evening as the one woman of our group, a position, which I hope very much will not be so very uncommon in future that it will call for any comment or distinctions of this kind.’

Further reading:

Hudson, G (2004) ‘Lonsdale (née Yardley), Dame Kathleen’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/31376 Ferry, G (2014) Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (reissue), Bloomsbury Reader Maddox, B (2002), Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Harper Collins.

Georgina Ferry is a science writer and broadcaster and author of seven books on science.

Her latest book is A Better World is possible: The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Social Progress, published by Profile Books Ltd. (London, 2017) Correspondence to: mgf@georginaferry.com

Earthrise: the first views of Earth from space ROBERT POOLE

I

24 April 2018

n 1968 the first views of the whole Earth from space were not merely an image but an event. Such images have become so casually available now that it is difficult to think ourselves back to a time when no-one had any real idea what the Earth would look like from the outside. From classical times, a few visionaries had fantasised about looking down one the Earth from the heavens. The consensus was that humanity would be humbled by its own ant-like insignificance. The British astronomer Fred Hoyle also believed that Earth itself would be cut down to size when seen from afar, although he felt that this would be a good thing, promoting a second Copernican-style revolution in awareness of Earth’s peripheral place in the universe. NASA administrators, who might have been expected to embrace the public relations potential of humanity’s first sight of itself, took no interest in ‘holiday snapshots’ of the Earth. The crew of Apollo 8, the first mission to leave Earth orbit and look back upon the home planet from afar, were left entirely to themselves as to what to say when broadcasting from lunar orbit on Christmas day 1968. The crew had reluctantly agreed to carry a black and white TV camera to send back grainy pictures, but when they tried it out on the receding Earth all they could send back was a blurry, bouncing white dot.

It was only on their fourth orbit of the Moon that the Apollo 8 astronauts saw the Earth, just after they had flipped the spaceship round to face the Earth. Its appearance took them completely by surprise, and the on-board voice recorder captured their inarticulate astonishment as they scrambled for cameras and colour film. At that period pictures could not easily be transmitted from space, and the public, who knew nothing about the Earthrise moment at the time, had to wait for several days after splashdown for the film to be retrieved, processed, printed, and the images mailed out to the press and then published. They created a sensation. The weekly magazines such as Time and Life, which were then the main providers of colour visual news, instantly recognised the impact of these extraordinary colour photos of Earth and splashed them across many pages. At a time when the attention of both NASA and the media was focused on the outward journey to space, the sight of the whole Earth in colour, visibly a planet but also visibly unique, provided a dramatic reversal of perspective – a reversal underlined by the crew’s powerful reading on Christmas morning of the opening verses from the Book of Genesis describing the creation of the heavens and the Earth.

On their subsequent international goodwill tours, the astronauts presented prints of Earthrise to heads of state the world over. The overwhelming public reaction was similar to that of crew member Bill Anders, who took the photo later

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known as ‘Earthrise’: ‘I was almost immediately overcome by the thought that we came all this way to the Moon and yet the most significant thing we’re seeing is our own home planet, the Earth.’

Figure 1: Earthrise from NASA

Why was the response to Earthrise so powerful at the end of 1968? Somewhat surprisingly, in retrospect, there hadn’t been any good-quality picture of the whole Earth from space. The Gemini missions of the mid-1960s had brought back stunning blue Earthscapes from orbital distances, but the whole Earth had not until then been seen by human eyes. The counter-cultural activist Stewart Brand had run his own miniature campaign to get NASA to take a picture, hinting at some sort of conspiracy to keep the truth from the public eye. A robot probe called Lunar Orbiter had sent back a relatively low-resolution Earthrise two years before, but in black and white the distant Earth was widely mistaken for the Moon, and the lunar landscape for that of some desert part of the Earth. With the full colour prints of the Apollo 8 Earthrise there could be no doubt, and the knowledge that there were human eyes behind the camera (and every other member of the human race in front of it) turned an image into a shared experience. Still fresh in the public mind was the extraordinary Christmas morning broadcast of Apollo 8 from the Moon, when the astronauts had imaginatively placed themselves and their hundreds of millions of viewers in the place of God, looking down on creation at the dawn of time by reading the creation story from the Book of Genesis: ‘and God saw that it was good.’ Now this ‘God’s-eye view’ of Earth was shared by all.

Earthrise: the first views of Earth from space

Earthrise conveyed not only drama but surprise. The Earth did not look as expected. The first Times Atlas of the World, with its enthralling naturalistic images of continents inspired by orbital photography, had not yet been published. The familiar world maps all used stylised representations of human features: national borders, contour lines, cities, grid squares and the like. NASA simulations envisaged the Earth as a geographic globe on an almost cloudless day, dominated by green and brown northern hemisphere land masses, set off by a scattering of white clouds. Viewers were wholly unprepared for the impressionistic-style Earth of blue and white, a natural object in which even the land masses, let alone any signs of human activity, were invisible. Earth seemed not limitless and indestructible, as always assumed in this era of optimism about progress, but small and fragile. The environmental movement, which had been taxiing since Silent Spring in 1962, took off. The new Friends of the Earth organization now had an image which showed, as no amount of argument could, that the Earth’s resources were indeed finite, and that there were natural limits to human expansion.

The Earthrise picture was also a long-term shock to the space programme.

This was not immediately obvious, for Apollo 8 was followed only seven months later by the first Moon landing, the apex of the space age and the ultimate symbol of human progress. But until Earthrise the space programme had embraced the astrofuturist proposition that the human future lay in space, just as in renaissance Europe it had lain across the Atlantic ocean. The Earthrise photograph challenged that assumption. It showed a Moon that was bone-dead against an Earth that provided the only colour in all of space, an Earth that was the only island of life in an ocean of funereal black. It gave visual force to the idea that that the home planet was after all the most important thing in creation. Not space but Earth was, and is, the future.

The image of Earth as a planet, miraculously alive in the sterile blackness of space, proved inspirational. For the biologist Lewis Thomas and the independent scientist James Lovelock it came as dramatic visual confirmation that the Earth could be understood as a self-regulating network of living systems. This was the core of Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis that ‘the Earth . . . is actively made fit and comfortable by the presence of life itself.’ In Britain, David Bowie was inspired by ‘Earthrise’ to compose ‘Space Oddity’, a song about a doomed astronaut which became an elegy for the space age (‘Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do’). In the USA, the global citizenship campaigner John McConnell used an Apollo 8 Earth image as an Earth flag. He went on to found the first Earth Day in San Francisco on 21 March 1970, shortly followed by its more enduring east coast cousin on 23 April. The years of the Apollo programme, 1968-1972, were also the years of the environmental renaissance which culminated in the first UN ‘Earth summit’ at Stockholm in 1972. Friends of the Earth was founded in 1969, part of a new environmentalism that rejected the old divide between humanity and its environment and which took the whole Earth as its symbol. The widespread assumption that the Earth could not be fundamentally altered by human activity lost credibility in the face of photographs that clearly showed that the Earth had limits, defined by an atmosphere no thicker (relatively speaking) than the skin of an apple.

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Four years after Apollo 8, the last Apollo astronauts took off for the final manned Moon mission, Apollo 17. Since that time no-one has left Earth orbit, or seen the whole Earth, while awareness of the effects of human activity on the planetary environment has become near-universal. Pictures from space have assisted our understanding of these problems, but space has provided no answers, no refuge. All the news from the ever-expanding final frontier suggests that, for all practical purposes, Earth is unique and humankind is on its own. On their way out the crew of Apollo 17, better prepared than their predecessors on Apollo 8, took that other iconic image of the space age, the ‘Blue Marble’ picture of the full Earth. The Earth it showed is now part of history. The next genuine ‘Blue Marble’ – let it be soon! – will look different, for the Earth’s ocean currents, atmospheric circulation patterns and polar ice caps have since changed irreversibly. As the journalist Norman Cousins put it in his submission to a Congressional Inquiry into the future of space travel, ‘what was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the Moon, but that they set eye on the Earth’.

Further Reading

Robert Poole’s book Earthrise: how man first saw the Earth (Yale, 2008) is out of print, but still available via Abebooks and other online outlets.

Robert Poole, ‘What was whole about the whole Earth? Cold War and Scientific Revolution’, in Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts (eds.), The Surveillance Imperative: the Rise of the Geosciences during the Cold War (New York: Palgrave USA, 2014), 213-35.

‘Pale Blue Dot: an Alien View of Earth’, US National Public Radio

‘Living on Earth: Seeing our planet, finding ourselves’, US National Public Radio

The fiftieth anniversary of Earthrise in December 2018 will be marked by the appearance of a documentary film, First to the Moon.

A recent reconstruction of the taking of the Earthrise photograph can be found by searching for ‘NASA Earthrise 45th anniversary’ on YouTube.

The earlier ‘Earthrise’ photo from 1966 by the Lunar Orbiter probe, included in the lecture, can be found by searching the NASA website for ‘Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project’, at https://loirp.arc.nasa.gov/loirp_gallery/ Dr Poole is Guild Research Fellow and Reader in history at the University of Central Lancashire. Correspondence to: rpoole@uclan.ac.uk

The End of Humanitarianism?

ANTHONY REDMOND

W

14 May 2018

hen David Beckham was introduced on desert island discs as a “footballer and humanitarian”, I once again wondered about what being a humanitarian might be in the modern age. Would those early and original “humanitarians”, who for example fought huge vested interests to abolish slavery, and gave so much of themselves to right a terrible wrong, irrespective of race, creed, colour or wealth, see themselves as having joined cause and company with a multimillionaire international soccer star? The UN say “David has committed to using his powerful global voice, influence and connections to raise vital funds and encourage world leaders to create lasting positive change for children”.

So is fund raising enough to earn the sobriquet? There are many “celebrity humanitarians” who, while having no special expertise in disaster management or emergency response, use their celebrity status to draw attention to a “good cause”.

That’s good; and for me, in the case of George Clooney and Darfur for example, very good. But there are potentially serious downsides to engagement without expertise, and not just for celebrities (who in fairness may, in practice, have a very light touch on events) but for anyone who engages in complex issues without the necessary experience and expertise.

For me, in the medical profession, I am expecting and expected to be accountable to my patients. But when doctors and nurses go on “humanitarian” missions to poorer countries, are they always licensed to practice there, and do they have medical indemnity insurance? They need it for their own country in order to be accountable to their patients. Yet we also know that too many don’t bother, and perhaps consider the recipients of their humanitarianism should just be grateful for what they get.

Another issue is imagery. Looking at celebrities who sponsor in this way, and indeed the promotional material for many humanitarian organisations themselves, the imagery is too often of the “white saviour”; a picture of heroic Westerners riding to the rescue of the hapless and the helpless. At its zenith (or perhaps more correctly its nadir), there is an approach to Africa akin to a homogenisation and infantilisation of a whole continent. Not only is this a gross misrepresentation of the countries within Africa and their range of capabilities, it is ironically too often played out against a history of the earlier actions or in actions of “westerners” having produced, contributed to, or exacerbated the very problems they are now seeking to address in the first place. Surely we need to work together as partners, supporting and strengthening national systems and matching the emergency response with long term support to capacity building. After all, implicit in the early use of the word humanitarian, was reform. Righting a wrong but at the

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same time ensuring it won’t/can’t happen again. The Uganda UK Health Alliance is a good example of country to country working, where projects are developed together and the Government of Uganda can approve then monitor the work of others in their country and ensure that they are accountable for what they do.

Similar issues of accountability arise around the funding of humanitarian work by, as Naomi Kline and others call them, “philanthrocapitalists”. Should having accrued vast amounts of money be the sole criterion for deciding how or where it should be spent? Obviously it’s your money, but is that enough to determine priorities rather than local governments for example? As Caroline Fiennes writing in Nature last year advocated – perhaps we now need a science of philanthropy.

Whatever the original meaning of the word humanitarian, it is not used in that way now, but commonly to imply a sort of inherent goodness in a person or action; whether justified or not. In the aid business it is used in technical terms to differentiate emergency “humanitarian assistance” from longer term development aid. A false dichotomy in my view. My concerns about “humanitarianism” and its assumed goodness, date back to my first experience of an emergency, humanitarian response some thirty years ago this December when I responded with my colleagues to a major earthquake in Armenia, then part of the Soviet union. On my return I gave my first talk on the subject and emphasised five key learning points. These are still highly relevant.

1. Emergency humanitarian assistance, if it is to be of most value, needs to be in response to an identified need. Giving what is wanted not simply what you have. I saw inappropriate medical equipment dispatched at great cost only to be left to rot at an airport by officials who didn’t know it was coming and didn’t know what it was.

2. Establish if medical assistance, as opposed to broader assistance, is truly needed. There is often an assumption that medical things will be needed when a disaster occurs but it’s not always the case. The most urgent needs are usually clean water, sanitation, food, shelter and security. The most urgent is water – you will die of thirst before you die of hunger. I discovered a number of medical myths, the greatest being that the unburied dead cause epidemics. They don’t. Only if they died of a disease that stays active in the corpse will this occur, and we are talking here essentially of cholera and ebola. If you are well and the building falls on top of you and you die, your body will not suddenly become a greater risk to your neighbor than when you were alive. But what about decomposing bodies contaminating the water table I hear you ask? Well there is simply no evidence for this; think of the millions of bodies that lie buried in the UK. Some if not many must find their way into the water table but without disaster. There is in fact no recorded epidemic that followed as a direct consequence of an earthquake and the large numbers of unburied dead. But what about Haiti I also hear you ask? The epidemic came several months later and was not caused by the unburied dead from the earthquake but imported by an international UN worker.

The End of Humanitarianism?

3. Do they need people or things? Many affected countries have those with the required skills and expertise but lack resources; usually money. I understand the need to give of oneself and to be physically present. However by turning up unannounced and uninvited, you are creating another mouth to feed, another demand for shelter and even if willing to pay for them, you are still a drain on limited resources. With regards to giving money I am often told “but you don’t know where the money goes”. Perhaps, but you’re even less likely to know where things you send to disasters go. It is far better, unless you have a special skill and have been specifically asked, to give your money to a reputable organisation, for example through the Disasters Emergency Committee, who will distribute funding in response to identified needs and through established reputable organisations.

4. Aid needs to be targeted. You can’t do everything for everyone, so find out first what is most needed and will have the greatest benefit.

5. Work with and through local people. Put yourself in their position. If an earthquake occurs here we will not be sat in the rubble waiting for a rescue team from Nepal, nor doctors from China. We will sort it out ourselves. If outside help is needed we will ask for it and when we get it we will want it to support, and not compete with, what we are doing.

I have probably responded to every major earthquake since, but my experience of working in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010, and then carrying out research there later in the same year, revealed that many of these lessons had gone unheeded in the intervening 22 years. Many of the medical teams that responded were inexperienced, under qualified, under prepared and unaccountable. Amputation rates ranged from 5% to greater than 45%, with the less experienced teams amputating injured limbs more frequently than those with more experience. Even more worrying was that these inexperienced teams produced few, if any, medical records and did not appear to be getting informed consent from the patients they were operating upon. This failure to apply the standards we expect and take for granted at home when working in other, usually poorer, countries also extends into non-emergency settings, where it has been shown by Kelly McQueen and others that international organisations providing surgical services can be diverse but with a consistency of providing only rudimentary analysis of their work and limited post-operative follow-up and integration into local health services. This is not good enough. Any help is not always better than no help, as I hear far too often, but particularly when you are carrying out surgery! You need first of all to be a qualified surgeon (not always the case in Haiti), fully trained in the procedures you carry out (not always the case in humanitarian/charitable missions), and work within the local and national healthcare systems (too many run their overseas work alongside, rather than as a part of, the national system). My own experience of working in Africa, for example, is that too many surgical teams fly in and fly out without strengthening the long-term development of local and national health care systems.

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It is not all doom and gloom however. Far from it. When we do organise ourselves and apply standards to the care we provide we can eliminate, or certainly minimise, bad practice. If any good came out of Haiti it was the follow on meetings with the World Health Organisation (WHO), that led to an International Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) initiative and the setting of minimum standards. This international system invites emergency medical teams to register with WHO before disasters occur and complete a verification process that leads to their classification according to their capacity and an assurance to receiving countries that they meet a set of minimum standards. This is part of a wider move towards a global health emergency workforce to which the UK contributes a Public Health Rapid Support Team and a UK International Emergency Medical Team. At a stroke, inappropriate medical - and particularly surgical - responses to sudden onset disasters appear to have been eliminated. There have been no accounts of inappropriate or inadequate surgery having been carried out by international medical teams in the large earthquakes in Ecuador and then Nepal that followed after Haiti and the establishment of the EMT initiative. In fact the associated on-site registration and monitoring of teams led to the Nepalese government asking three international medical teams to leave the country, as they did not, in practice, meet the standards to which they had claimed to adhere.

So what’s my beef about humanitarianism? After all I work in the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. Well we agonised over including the word humanitarian in the title for the reasons I have discussed here. However, not including it would have made it difficult to easily present to a broader audience the type of work that we do. So for the time being we appear to be stuck with the word. It has meaning; but different meanings to different people. So is humanitarianism a useful concept? In its original form, where it included reform and removing the factors that led to the need for humanitarian intervention, I certainly find it useful. However in its current use it separates emergency assistance from longer-term support when I believe the two are intimately connected, and it can appear to support an ‘us and them’ attitude alongside a rich versus poor paradigm, and at its worse facilitate or at least condone the provision of help without rules, regulations or accountability. Where it comes into its own still, and has an important use in my view, is in the response to complex emergencies. These are when Civil War, conflicts, internal displacement of people and a number of other factors come together to create an ‘humanitarian’ emergency, where standard/orthodox responses are difficult to execute. Going back to the Civil War in Nigeria in the 1960s and the parlous state of the Biafran people, the Red Cross and other international agencies did not intervene to provide ‘humanitarian’ assistance as this was an internal affair and their mandate did not allow them to cross international borders without the specific invitation of that state. It was a number of, originally Red Cross, doctors who defined themselves as doctors without borders who went into Biafra, ignoring all the usual rules to provide much-needed assistance.

Thus Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) was formed and continues to be, for me, a beacon of true humanitarianism. And by that I mean selflessness and altruism.

The End of Humanitarianism?

You can see the same issues at play in Syria, where there are a number of warring factions within the boundaries of an established state and the international community again having great difficulties in providing aid to those most in need. My usual advice to only respond in a disaster to a request for help from someone in authority is difficult to adhere to in Syria. On whose authority would you go to many of the areas? It also challenges the concept of neutrality. However I have found that you can not take sides but still give assistance to those most in need. When I worked in Bosnia for example, I did not take sides, but viewed the needs of the Bosnians in Sarajevo under siege by the surrounding Serbs to be far greater, and so concentrated my work in Sarajevo. I was accused of taking sides, but to my mind I was helping those most in need. The humanitarian world has always been a complex moral minefield. Florence Nightingale described an organisation like the Red Cross “alleviated the responsibilities of warring governments and by providing aid on humanitarian grounds on a voluntary basis and funded by charity it would actually make it easier for armies to carry on killing one another”.

A final ingredient in the humanitarian mix is, once more, money; but specifically being paid. In our image of a humanitarian we probably see an unpaid volunteer going where no-one else wants to go, to help the most needy in their hour of greatest need. But not perhaps a highly-paid employee. But only the wealthy could devote all their time to good deeds without the burden of having to earn a living. So this creates a dilemma. If people are not paid for this work, then few will be able to do it and most who do, if unpaid, only for a short period of time.

This will limit the impact of the work that they do. We have looked to overcome this in the UK by seconding people from the NHS, with their salaries intact, to work in emergencies overseas; but again this can only be for a limited period as we need to maintain the NHS. The large numbers employed by the NHS though mean that we can extend the length of a project by rotating larger numbers for shorter periods of time.

Most full-time humanitarian aid workers receive very low salaries and so find it difficult to sustain a long-term career. Again we are trying to address this in the UK by blending humanitarian work into their NHS work over the course of their career. This also prevents the NHS losing skilled and altruistic workers to the aid industry. The issue of payments to humanitarian workers was put in stark relief by the deployment of surgical field hospitals to Mosul last year. Because of the complexities of working there, many established aid agencies were reluctant to respond, so WHO recruited from the private sector where healthcare staff who “volunteered” to work there were paid what were thought to be very large salaries.

They were accused by some of those who didn’t respond of being “humanitarian mercenaries”. But they still risked their lives to deliver help to those most in need.

We in the NHS can also receive good salaries for doing “good work”. It’s complex, doing good.

Looking back over what I’ve just written I see that I am promoting the concepts of altruism, accountability and professionalism. Altruism, with its disinterested

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and selfless concern for the wellbeing of others, is for me at the heart of what I regard as humanitarianism, and I have seen many brave and selfless acts carried out in the most difficult and dangerous of circumstances. But without accountability and the standards associated with professionalism, concern for one’s fellow man may remain just that. To turn that concern into true and lasting help needs more, and when harnessed to accountability and professionalism, our efforts to help those most in need will I believe become truly humanitarian.

Tony Redmond is currently Professor of International Emergency Medicine at the University of Manchester where he co-founded and is Deputy Director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. He was the first Chair of the Foreign Medical Teams Working Group at WHO Geneva and is now a Lead Mentor for WHO EMT Verification. He is also Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emergency Medical Teams and Emergency Capacity Building, based at HCRI, and President of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine, Correspondence to: anthony.redmond@manchester.ac.uk

Why do we get fat - and how does it make us ill?

STEPHEN O’RAHILLY 3 May 2018 This account of Professor O’Rahilly’s lecture has been prepared by Dr Paul Miller, who accepts responsibility for any errors or omissions

O

besity is not a new phenomenon as evidenced by the Venus of Willendorf, an 11 cm statuette of a grossly overweight woman thought to date from around 25,000 BCE. In 1727 the British physician Thomas Short wrote “No age has seen more instances of corpulency than our own “. Body mass index (BMI – weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared) is however increasing at an alarming rate and obesity is widely regarded as reaching epidemic proportions in many developed and second world countries.

Figure 1: The Venus of Willendorf, Natural History Museum, Vienna (Wikimedia Commons: Matthias Kabel)

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Why do we get fat?

Clearly the recent rapid increase in the prevalence of obesity has to have an environmental or cultural basis. In relation to income, food had never been cheaper, more readily available, more calorie dense, nor richer in fat and sugar. Mechanised transport and labour-saving devices make it easy to live without expending much energy in physical exertion.

At the simplest level obesity is an expression of the law of conservation of energy/matter. If energy intake in food exceeds that consumed by metabolic processes and physical exertion then it has to be stored. In practice this is achieved by laying down fat or adipose tissue. Fat (triglyceride) is a particularly efficient storage form since it contains about 9 kilocalories per gram, more than double that in a gram of carbohydrate, which is not stored in the body to any extent. A non-obese 70 kg man contains less than 1 kg of carbohydrate and about 9 kg of fat. If the same man gains weight to 90-100 kg he is likely to carry 20-25 kg of fat.

The hypothalamus is a tiny part of the brain weighing about 1.5 g which sits centrally in the skull just above the pituitary gland, the function of which it regulates. It has been known for well over a hundred years that tumours in the region of the hypothalamus can lead to increased appetite and obesity. Moreover experiments in rats some 60 years ago showed that circulating humoral (hormonal) factors were involved in the regulation of appetite and body weight. In para-biotic rats (two genetically identical rats with small areas of skin joined together so that circulating factors can pass from one to the other) a lesion in the hypothalamus of one causes it to overeat and become obese while the second rat eats little and loses weight. This is interpreted as demonstrating a feedback mechanism in which one or more humoral factor(s) produced as a result of overeating by one rat cannot suppress its appetite because of the damaged hypothalamus but it/they cross the circulatory anastomosis to suppress the appetite of the rat with the normal hypothalamus which loses weight. The circulatory connection is not sufficient to allow caloric equilibrium between the two animals.

Genetic factors in obesity

The question arises as to whether lean people are ‘morally superior‘, using will power and making conscious choices in terms of diet and physical exertion to avoid becoming overweight, or are they simply biologically different? Both are probably true to some degree and twin studies suggest that 40-70% of the variation of BMI in the population is related to inherited factors. Studies of identical twins who are separated soon after birth show that their subsequent BMI resembles that of their twin rather than that of the family in which they grew up.

There are likely to be significant genetic factors underlying profound obesity particularly when present in childhood. Most of the mutations which lead to severe obesity have been found to influence appetite and energy intake. In 1995 the author’s group described a middle-aged woman with a history of childhood obesity, high levels of proinsulin and low levels of insulin. She proved to have defects in prohormone processing, specifically in the PCSK1 (pro-protein

Why do we get fat - and how does it make us ill?

convertase subtilisin kexin type 1) gene. She weighed 36 kg at the age of three years. She was able to control her body weight to a limited extent by diet and was only moderately obese (BMI 34.4) at the age of 43 years.

The sequence of the mouse ob (obese) gene had been reported by Friedman et al in New York in 1994 and the gene product was subsequently called leptin (Greek λεπτος = thin). Leptin is a peptide hormone produced in fat cells which circulates in the blood and acts in the hypothalamus to suppress appetite and promote energy expenditure. Circulating levels are proportional to fat mass but the dose response curve is markedly non-linear and levels only fall significantly in starvation when body fat is grossly reduced, stimulating appetite in an attempt to avoid disaster. Giving additional leptin to normal weight or obese individuals has little effect and it is not therefore a potential treatment for obesity in the general population. In 1997 Professor O’Rahilly and colleagues published the finding of leptin deficiency in two cousins from a highly consanguineous family. The leptin deficient children were ravenously hungry more or less regardless of how much food they consumed and were profoundly obese. At the age of 8 the girl weighed 86 kg and at the age of two the boy weighed 29 kg. Daily subcutaneous injections of recombinant leptin led to suppression of appetite and rapid weight loss; the girl losing 16.4 kg in 12 months.

Severe obesity due to congenital leptin defi ciency is treatable. A 3-year-old patient

Figure 2: Severe due(a)tobefore congenital treatable.

3-year-old patient with leptin obesity defi ciency and (b)leptin aged 7 deficiency years, after is treatment withArecombinant human leptin. (a) before and (b) aged 7 years, after treatment with recombinant human with leptin deficiency leptin (Farooqi, IS, Clinical 14 (2014) 286-9) From Farooqi, IS., Clinical Medicine 14 (2014) Medicine 286-9

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Subsequently the author’s group has identified a number of other single gene mutations, downstream of leptin in the melanocortin pathways, which also lead to obesity. These include defects in the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) and in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its receptor Tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB). Other workers have identified mutations in proopiomelanocortin (POMC), the leptin receptor and SIM1 (single-minded homologue 1).

Specific treatments are generally not available yet for these defects but a recent report describes spectacular effects of a MC4R agonist in two patients with proopiomelanocortin deficiency.

Apart from these rare single gene mutations causing severe obesity in childhood much of the genetic component of the variation in BMI in the general population is likely to be the result of multiple genetic polymorphisms of relatively small effect. Genome-wide Association Studies (GWAS) have identified 97 genetic loci associated with BMI. It was concluded that as much as 21% of variation in BMI can be accounted for by common genetic variation. Most of the genetic variants which lead to obesity have been found to influence appetite and energy intake rather than metabolic efficiency or energy expenditure.

The leptin-melanocortin system regulates fat stores over the medium to long term but there are also humoral factors originating in the gastrointestinal tract which send signals to the brain about the size and composition of individual meals and determine the point at which satiety is reached. These include ghrelin produced in the stomach which stimulates appetite while cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), oxyntomodulin and peptide YY (PYY) from the small and/or large intestine are all inhibitory. It is suggested that it is modification of gut hormone secretion that is responsible for much of the beneficial effect of bariatric surgery (a variety of operations involving banding, bypass or partial removal of the stomach) rather than mechanical restriction of food intake or induced malabsorption.

Why does it make us ill?

Being overweight has adverse mechanical consequences contributing to osteoarthritis of the hips and knees, gastro-oesophageal acid reflux and sleep apnoea. It is also associated with a variety of common cancers including breast, colon and adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus. At the metabolic level increased weight is associated with insulin resistance, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (angina, heart attack and stroke) and fatty liver.

Commonly overweight subjects store fat not only in subcutaneous adipose tissue, where it is regarded as metabolically safe, but also in other (ectopic) sites such as muscle, liver and pancreas. They develop resistance to the effects of insulin so that they have to produce much higher levels of insulin to keep blood sugar levels within the normal range and prevent the development of type II diabetes.

After a time the insulin producing cells in the pancreas become exhausted leading to insulin deficiency and diabetes. Insulin resistance is a key component of the so-called metabolic syndrome which also includes high blood pressure and abnormal concentrations of blood fats (cholesterol and triglycerides). It predisposes, as does frank diabetes, to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Why do we get fat - and how does it make us ill?

Not all obese people become insulin resistant or diabetic; not even all the very obese. It is suggested that those that can store large amounts of subcutaneous fat may be able to do so safely up to the point that their capacity to put fat in subcutaneous stores is exceeded, whereupon triglyceride is deposited in ectopic sites such as muscle, liver and pancreas, insulin resistance develops and may in time progress to type II diabetes. Some subjects develop ectopic fat deposition and its metabolic consequences at normal body weight and this may reflect a limited ability to store fat in subcutaneous sites. This is dramatically seen in the lipodystrophies, an uncommon group of disorders in which the patients lack subcutaneous adipose tissue to varying degrees and readily develop ectopic fat deposition with its metabolic sequelae.

An example which has been elucidated by the author’s group and their collaborators can be found in Familial Partial Lipodystrophy resulting from defects in perilipin 1. Perilipin 1 is a protein which coats the fat droplet in the adipose cell and which regulates the initial step in the breakdown of stored fat to release free fatty acids when required in the fasting state as a source of energy. Inheriting a defect in the PLIN 1 gene from a single parent is sufficient for a failure of this regulation so that those affected break down fat even in the fed state when they should be storing it. The women have more or less absent gluteo-femoral fat and have an android phenotype. The continuous flood of free fatty acids into the circulation leads to their uptake at ectopic sites and to the development of insulin resistance, type II diabetes and premature vascular disease.

Fifty-three genetic variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNP) have been identified by the author and his colleagues which are associated with the features of insulin resistance such as high insulin levels, low serum High Density Liporotein (HDL) cholesterol and raised triglyceride concentrations, as well as with type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Traditionally these features of the metabolic or insulin resistance syndrome are thought to be associated with increased visceral fat deposited in and around the abdominal organs. In this study however a risk score based on the 53 SNP was more strongly associated with reduced fat storage in the buttocks and thighs tending to support the hypothesis that it is this limited storage capacity which when exceeded leads to the overspill of stored triglyceride into liver, pancreas and muscle with the development of insulin resistance, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

What can we do to avoid obesity and its consequences?

Put simply, try to avoid positive energy balance. Avoid insulin resistance and exhausting the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Exercise helps to maintain insulin sensitivity independently of its effects on body weight. If you cannot avoid positive energy balance be sure to store the accumulating fat safely under the skin and not in liver or muscle!

Restricting energy intake however is not easy particularly for those who have the misfortune to have inherited a major single gene mutation, like the leptin deficient children, or alternatively, and more commonly, a variety of genetic polymorphisms which predispose to increased appetite and hyperphagia. Specific

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treatment is available for leptin deficiency and a recent study of a melanocortin-4 receptor agonist in patients with POMC deficiency produced dramatic weight loss. No specific treatments however are yet available for most genetic defects.

Liraglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue used in the treatment of diabetes does promote significant weight loss but most pharmacological agents that have been introduced for the treatment of obesity in the general population have not stood the test of time because of adverse effects. Only one survives in regular clinical use, an inhibitor of pancreatic lipase (orlistat) which reduces fat absorption and can facilitate modest weight loss though it causes fatty diarrhoea if the diet contains much fat. Bariatric surgery, though limited in its availability (particularly in the UK), can be extremely effective in reversing the metabolic effects of morbid obesity. For the time being we are largely reliant on lifestyle measures supported by public health programmes to induce cultural change and reduce the ready availability of high sugar, high fat foods. In this way it is hoped to arrest the current epidemic of increasing adiposity and avoid the numerous health hazards to which substantial weight gain predisposes. Extensive research continues in an attempt to find pharmaceutical agents which can facilitate weight loss in the general overweight population and to target specific defects in those with identifiable genetic causes.

Bibliography

*Locke, A.E. et al. Genetic studies of body mass index yield new insights for obesity biology. Nature 518 (2015) 197-206. *This paper has approximately 350 authors which are given only as an appendix at the end.

Kozusko, K., Tsang, V.H.M., Bottomley, W., Cho, Y.H., Gandotra, S., Mimmack, M.L., Lim, K., Isaac, I., Patel, S., Saudek, V., O’Rahilly, S., Srinivasan, S., Greenfield, J.R., Barroso, I., Campbell, L.V. and Savage, D.B. Clinical and Molecular Characterization of a Novel PLIN1 Frameshift Mutation Identified in Patients with Familial Partial Lipodystrophy. Diabetes 64 (2015) 299–310.

Kühnen, P., Clément, K., Wiegand, S., Blankenstein, O., Gottesdiener, K., Martini, L.L., Mai, K., Blume‑Peytavi, U., Grüters, A and Krude, H., Proopiomelanocortin Deficiency Treated with a Melanocortin-4 Receptor Agonist. New.Engl.J.Med. 375 (2016) 240-6.

Lotta, L.A., Gulati, P., Day, F.R., Payne, F., Ongen, H., van de Bunt, M., Gaulton, K.J., Eicher, J.D., Sharp, S.J., Luan, J., De Lucia Rolfe, E., Stewart, I.D., Wheeler, E., Willems, S.M., Adams, C., Yaghootkar, H., EPIC-InterAct Consortium, Cambridge FPLD1 Consortium, Forouhi, N.G., Khaw, K-T., Johnson, A.D., Semple, R.K., Frayling, T., Perry, J.R.(B deleted)., Dermitzakis, E., McCarthy, M.I., Barroso, I., Wareham, N.J., Savage, D.B., Langenberg, C., O’Rahilly, S. and Scott, R.A., Integrative genomic analysis implicates limited peripheral adipose storage capacity in the pathogenesis of human insulin resistance. Nature Genetics 49 (2017) 17-26.

Why do we get fat - and how does it make us ill?

Montague C.T., Farooqi, I.S., Whitehead, J.P., Soos, M.A., Rau, H., Wareham, N.J, Sewter, C.P., Digby, J.E., Mohammed, S.N., Hurst, J.A., Cheetham, C.H., Earley, A.R., Barnett, A.H., Prins, J.B and O’Rahilly, S., Congenital leptin deficiency is associated with severe early-onset obesity in humans. Nature, 387 (1997) 903-8.

O’Rahilly, S., Harveian Oration 2016: Some observations on the causes and consequences of obesity. Clin.Med., 16 (2016) 551-564 O’Rahilly, S., Gray, H., Humphreys, P.J., Krook, A., Polonsky, K.S., White, A., Gibson, S., Taylor, K and Carr, C., Impaired Processing of Prohormones Associated with Abnormalities of Glucose Homeostasis and Adrenal Function.

New.Engl.J.Med. 333 (1995) 1386-90.

Parker, H.E., Gribble, F.M and Reimann, F., The role of gut endocrine cells in control of metabolism and appetite. Exp.Physiol. 99.9 (2014) 1116–20.

Pi‑Sunyer, X., Astrup, A., Fujioka, K., Greenway, F., Halpern, A., Krempf, M., Lau, D.C.W., Le Roux, C.W., Ortiz, R.V., Jensen, C.B and Wilding, J.P.H., A Randomized, Controlled Trial of 3.0 mg of Liraglutide in Weight Management.

New.Engl.J.Med. 373 (2015) 11-22.

Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly MD FRCP FRCPI FRCPath FRS FMedSci is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine and Director, Metabolic Research Laboratories, University of Cambridge and Director, MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit.

His research has been concerned with the elucidation of the basic causes of obesity and Type 2 diabetes at a molecular level and the translation of those discoveries into improved diagnosis and therapy for patients.

Correspondence to: so104@medschl.cam.ac.uk

T

Annals of Manchester, 2016

he idea of publishing an annual record of events in the Greater Manchester area along the lines of the much-consulted Annals of Manchester, compiled

by William Edward Armytage Axon, was one of the final projects initiated by Professor Donald Cardwell before his death in 1998. That the publication of such a record will be of interest not only to present readers but future historians and researchers can hardly be questioned. Readers should note that Axon’s Annals, covering the years to 1885, is now available on the internet. It is also fully searchable, yielding far more references than can be identified using the printed index, which is heavily weighted towards the names of individuals. This will further increase the usefulness of this most valuable local reference work.

As in previous years, corrections and amendments to this year’s entries should be sent to Terry Wyke, Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, off Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6LL (t.wyke@mmu.ac.uk). Entries for inclusion in the Annals for 2017 should be sent to the same address.

The entries below cover the period from the beginning of January to the end of December 2016 Friday 1 January Thousands of people gathered in Albert Square to watch a firework display and welcome in the New Year.

New Year’s Day concert by Manchester Camerata in Bridgewater Hall.

Saturday 2 January Residents in Lower Broughton and other parts of Greater Manchester continued to clear up following severe floods on Boxing Day.

Friday 8 January Lonely Planet guidebooks named Manchester as one of the must-see cities of the world.

Monday 11 January Police increased armed patrols following spate of gangrelated shootings in Levenshulme and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Thursday 14 January Plans announced to open an independent 200-seat theatre in Hope Mill, Ancoats.

Monday 18 January Salford film-maker Mike Leigh announced plans for new film about the Peterloo Massacre.

Friday 29 January Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre was named Regional Theatre of the Year in The Stage Awards.

Monday 1 February Manuel Pellegrini, manager of Manchester City since 2013, to leave club in June.

Tuesday 2 February Commercial property company Bruntwood reported profits of £15.3 million. Its current Manchester projects include the development of the former BBC site on Oxford Road.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Friday 5 February Domenyk Noonan, 51, jailed for 11 years for offences including arson and blackmail.

Monday 8 February Lee Nolan, 48, jailed for life for murder of Katelyn Parker in Heywood in August 2015.

Thursday 11 February Tony Lloyd, current interim mayor of Greater Manchester and Police Commissioner, and Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South, announced they would be candidates for Greater Manchester mayor in 2017.

Saturday 13 February ‘The Imitation Game’, an exhibition by contemporary artists opened in Manchester Art Gallery.

Thursday 18 February Muslim cleric, Jalal Uddin, 71, was murdered when walking home from Jalalia Mosque, Rochdale. Mohammed Syeedy, 21, was convicted of the crime and jailed for life in what was claimed to be an Isis-inspired murder.

Another man, Mohammed Kadir, involved in the crime escaped abroad. Uddin’s attackers believed he was practising taweez (amulets) which they regarded as a form of black magic.

Saturday 20 February ‘Mister Stokes: The Man Woman of Manchester’, a play about a Victorian policeman who was born a woman, performed at the People’s History Museum as part of LGBT history month.

Wednesday 24 February The Earl of Wessex visited Manchester City Football Academy as part of the Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme.

Thursday 25 February Ferranti Computer Systems opened its first Manchester office in Mediacity since closing in 1990s. Ferranti pioneered the world’s first commercial computer in Manchester.

Monday 7 March Salford Council introduced a Public Spaces Protection Order in Weaste to curb incidents of dumping rubbish.

Adele performed first of four sold-out concerts at Manchester Arena.

Friday 11 March Doreen Massey, geographer and political activist, died, aged 72.

She was born in Wythenshawe in 1944 and attended Manchester High School for Girls. She was professor of geography at the Open University and wrote a number of Marxist and feminist geography books and articles including Spatial Divisions of Labour (1984) and World City (2007).

Monday 14 March Peter Maxwell Davies, composer and the Queen’s Master of Music, died, aged 81. He was born in Manchester in 1934 and trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was a prominent figure in the New Manchester Music group of composers, known for radical contemporary music. He composed ten symphonies, concertos, operas (‘Taverner’ and ‘The Lighthouse’) as well as popular compositions like ‘An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise’. He was knighted in 1987and made a Companion of Honour in 2014.

Annals of Manchester

Tuesday 15 March Wythenshawe Hall was severely damaged by fire. Jeremy Taylor, 28, was arrested, charged and found guilty of arson.

Tuesday 22 March Ahmed Mohammed, 20 (known as Mudz) was stabbed and killed on Crondall Street, Moss Side in what was believed to be ongoing feud between teenage gangs in south Manchester (Moss Side Bloods and Rusholme Crips). Abdirashid Boos was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder.

Thursday 24 March Manchester Victoria Station and Salford Central closed for eleven days as part of railway improvement scheme carried out by Network Rail.

Stations reopened on April 4th.

Friday 25 March Streetwise Opera, comprised largely of homeless people, performed Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Castlefield.

Friday 1 April Local boroughs, clinical commissioning groups, hospitals and community services in the Manchester region were given greater control of their budgets.

Sunday 3 April Tramline between Portland Street and St Peter’s Square reopened, part of Metrolink’s second city crossing.

Thursday 7 April Don Warrington’s powerful portrayal as a black King Lear at Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre was acclaimed by the critics.

Sunday 10 April Greater Manchester Marathon held.

Monday 11 April A record 23.5 million passengers flew from Manchester Airport in 2015, an annual increase of 5.4 per cent.

Friday 15 April Police searching for driver of Vauxhall car who threatened another driver with a gun on Mancunian Way.

Wednesday 20 April Victoria Wood, playwright and comedian, died, aged 62.

She was born in Bury in 1953 and was to become one of the country’s bestknown female entertainers. Her plays included ‘That Day We Sang’, which was based on the recording by a choir of Manchester schoolchildren of Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds in 1929.

Saturday 23 April Patrick Herbert George, landscape artist, born in Knutsford, died, aged 93.

Tuesday 26 April Junior doctors began first all-out strike over government changes to their contracts.

Wednesday 27 April Snow showers in Manchester.

Monday 2 May Altrincham and Tatton were identified as the top income taxpaying areas outside south-east England. The average income tax bill in Altrincham was £10,400 with a gross income of £45,900, Tatton £10,600 with a gross income of £46,000.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Thursday 5 May Local elections held. Labour Party won all seats on Manchester City council with the exception of Didsbury West which was won by John Leech for the Liberal Democrats.

Hallé Orchestra began series of concerts celebrating music of Dvorák at Bridgewater Hall.

Thursday 12 May Abdul Hafidah, aged 18, was stabbed and killed in Moss Lane East. Thirteen people were arrested and charged with murder including six men local to the Moss Side area.

Sunday 15 May A dummy bomb left by a security firm at Manchester’s United stadium at Old Trafford resulted in the evacuation of the stadium and calling off of the final game of season.

Monday 16 May Manchester universities established Greater Manchester Dementia Consortium to coincide with Dementia Awareness Week.

Wednesday 18 May Carl Austin-Behan is new Lord Mayor of Manchester. He is the first openly gay Lord Mayor in the city’s history.

Andy Burnham, former health minister who had stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, announced he would be a candidate in the election for mayor of Greater Manchester in May 2017.

Friday 20 May Great City Games held in Albert Square and Deansgate in centre of Manchester attracted large crowds. Athletes competing included Olympic champion Greg Rutherford.

Saturday 21 May Manchester United defeated Crystal Palace after extra time at Wembley to win the FA Cup for the twelfth time.

Thursday 26 May 55,000 fans attended Bruce Springsteen concert in the Etihad stadium.

Friday 27 May José Mourinho replaced Louis van Gaal as manager of Manchester United, the club’s third manager since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in May 2013.

Thursday 9 June Bernard Shrimsley, journalist and novelist, died, aged 85. He began his career as a journalist working in Manchester on the Daily Mirror and Sunday Express in 1950s. He went on to edit the Liverpool Daily Post, The Sun, News of the World and Mail on Sunday.

Monday 13 June A vigil remembering those who had been killed in the Orlando massacre was held in Sackville Gardens. It was attended by the Lord Mayor, Carl Austin-Behan and Crime Commissioner, Tony Lloyd.

Friday 17 June Greater Manchester reported rise in religious hate crime, especially Islamaphobic hate crimes.

Annals of Manchester

Sunday 19 June Large crowds watched the spectacular street parade that was the highlight of the Manchester Day celebrations.

Monday 20 June Man seriously injured in gas explosion and fire at house in Abbey Hey Lane, Gorton.

Tuesday 21 June Police arrested three youths following racial abuse of Juan Jasso, a passenger travelling on Manchester tram.

Thursday 23 June Voting took place in the European Union Membership Referendum. Wigan (63.9 per cent), Tameside (61.1 per cent), Oldham (60.9 percent) Rochdale (60.1 per cent), Bolton (58.3 per cent) and Salford (56.8 percent) voted to leave; Manchester (60.4 per cent), Trafford (57.7 per cent) and Stockport (52.3 per cent) voted to remain. The turnout in Manchester was 59.8 percent (121,823 votes to remain, 79,991 to leave), considerably below the national average of 73.0 per cent.

Friday 24 June Leevon Birchall was attacked and stabbed 24 times by a gang of masked men when walking on Mango Way, Pendleton. In 2012 Birchall was one of the first people to be served an injunction banning him from parts of Salford and mixing with named individuals.

Saturday 25 June Greater Manchester Fire Authority to axe 253 fire-fighters and introduce a 12-hour shift system to meet budget cuts. The brigade has 1,450 firefighters in 2016 compared to 2,200 in 1996.

Friday 1 July The centenary of the battle of the Somme was marked by a national two-minute silence, a wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph, St Peter’s Square and a service of commemoration in Manchester Cathedral. An evening concert featuring the HallÊ Orchestra was held in Heaton Park.

Saturday 2 July Caroline Aherne, writer and comic actress, died, age 52. She was brought up in Wythenshawe, attending school in West Didsbury. She co-wrote and starred in the award winning comedy television series the The Royle Family.

Tuesday 5 July Staff at University of Salford took industrial action over pay dispute.

Sunday 10 July Several thousand people took part in Black Lives Matter march from Alexandra Park, Moss Side to Albert Square.

Thursday 14 July George Osborne, MP for Knutsford and key proponent of Northern Powerhouse, resigned as Chancellor of Exchequer. This followed the resignation of the Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Memorial unveiled to two female police officers, Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone, who were killed in gun and grenade ambush in Mottram in 2012.

Monday 18 July Andrew Percy appointed Parliamentary Undersecretary of State and Minister for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Friday 22 July Opening of Manchester Jazz Festival. The main venue was Albert Square; artists and composers featured included Tim Garland and Ben Cottrell.

Saturday 23 July Opening of exhibition at People’s History Museum, ‘The Art and Politics of Walking in Manchester and Beyond’, featuring the activities of Manchester’s Loiterers Resistance Movement.

Manchester-born boxer Anthony Crolla lost his WBA lightweight title on points to Jorge Linares at Manchester Arena.

Monday 25 July Manchester hosted the biennial Euro Science Open Forum, attended by over 4,000 scientists. Features included an exhibition on graphene at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Thursday 28 July Plans announced for a landmark development of 21-storey office block, two tower apartment blocks and luxury 31-storey hotel on 1.8 acre site off Jackson Row and Southmill Street in city centre. The developers, St Michael’s Partnership, include Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs and Brendon Flood.

Tuesday 2 August Research by Resolution Foundation reported a fall in home ownership in Greater Manchester from 72.4 per cent in 2003 to 57.9 per cent in 2016.

Monday 8 August Paul Pogba joined Manchester United from Juventus for a world record fee of £93 million. The French international had previously played for the club before moving to Juventus in 2012.

Tuesday 9 August Death announced of Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, age 64.

Thursday 11 August Luke Benson, 25, and Adam Acton jailed for life for murder of Daniel Smith, a homeless man, in Salford in January while high on Spice.

Friday 15 August University of Manchester was placed 35= in the Shanghai Rankings Academic Rankings of World Universities.

Saturday 20 August Morrissey performed concert at Manchester Arena.

Monday 22 August Manchester School of Theatre, Manchester Metropolitan University ranked as the country’s leading drama school according to student satisfaction in National Student Survey.

Friday 26 August Beginning of annual Manchester Pride festival, including street parade on Saturday.

Sunday 4 September Gorton carnival included street parade beginning at Sacred Heart playing fields and ending at Debdale Park.

Tuesday 6 September University of Manchester was ranked 29th in the annual QS World University Rankings.

Annals of Manchester

Tuesday 13 September Maxine Peake played Blanche DuBois in production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Manchester Royal Exchange. The theatre celebrated its fortieth anniversary, opened in September 1976.

Severe storm caused flooding and travel disruption in Manchester. The weather caused postponement of Manchester City’s Champions League match against Borussia Monchengladbach.

Thursday 15 September Sir Howard Bernstein announced he will retire as chief executive of Manchester City Council in spring 2017. He joined the town hall in 1971 as an office junior, becoming chief executive in 1998. He has played a decisive role in the regeneration of city and is widely recognised as one of most successful local government chief executives.

Shelter’s 50th anniversary was marked by an exhibition of photographs taken by Nick Hedges of housing conditions and street life in Moss Side and Hulme in the 1960s, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Friday 23 September Manchester Piccadilly was named Major Station of the Year in the National Rail Awards.

Wednesday 28 September Police launched national manhunt for Mark Ryder, a convicted murderer who absconded from a bail hostel in Bury. He was arrested in Bolton in October.

Thursday 29 September Sir Mark Elder, honorary professor and Music Director of The Hallé, gave his inaugural lecture, entitled ‘Are Conductors Really Necessary?’, at the University of Manchester.

Thursday 6 October Police carried out excavations at former Bank of England pub, Pollard Street, Ancoats in connection with disappearance of Martin Joyce who went missing in September 1999. Joyce was believed to have been murdered.

Friday 7 October Opening of the tenth Manchester Literary Festival.

Friday 14 October Large crowds turned out to see Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on visit to Manchester. The royal couple visited the National Football Museum, Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester and the Francis House Children’s Hospice, Didsbury.

Saturday 15 October Exhibition charting early years of Oasis, curated by photographer Lawrence Watson, in old Granada Studios.

Sunday 16 October Over 12,000 runners took part in the Manchester Half Marathon, despite the heavy rain.

Tuesday 18 October Heavy rain caused a section of recently installed roof at Victoria Station to collapse, injuring two people.

Wednesday 19 October University of Manchester awarded honorary degrees to Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, and Sir Norman Stoller, businessman and philanthropist.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

A 23-year-old man was raped and robbed in Brazil Street in the early hours of morning.

Thursday 20 October Opening of Manchester Science Festival for ten days, including Chronarium Sleep Lab (Arndale Centre) and esports (Manchester Metropolitan University).

Thursday 10 November Opening of Manchester’s international Christmas Market which, since 1999, has developed into one of the biggest outdoor Christmas markets in Europe.

Sir Howard Bernstein received the Mitchell Henry prize at the 24th Manchester Evening News Business of the Year awards for his contribution to the development of the city and region. Other winners included JD Sports Fashion, Rhino Design and Sodexo.

Friday 11 November Greater Manchester mayoral candidate Andy Burnham launched his campaign with a promise to be a ‘radical’ leader and to break London’s grip on power.

Sunday 13 November Remembrance Sunday marked by ceremonies at war memorials throughout the city.

Saturday 19 November Exhibition of works by Andy Warhol at Whitworth Art Gallery.

Sunday 20 November Craig Gill, age 44, drummer of Manchester group Inspiral Carpets died. He suffered from tinnitus which caused him to take his own life.

Tuesday 22 November Heavy rainfall caused Metrolink to suspend services on the East Didsbury line when a tree fell on the tracks.

Friday 25 November Two homeless people, James Evans, 57, and Wayne Bardsley, 51, died in fire in building in Nicholas Street, Chinatown. Police treated the case as murder and later offered £50,000 for information.

Black Friday sales attracted shoppers to city centre.

Monday 28 November Central government to fund study to improve transport links in region, including a new orbital motorway outside the M60.

Thursday 1 December Report by Shelter on homelessness identifies Manchester as the North West’s top ‘homelessness hotspot’ with an estimated 2,000 people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.

Joanne Roney, chief executive of Wakefield council, recommended to be appointed as Chief Executive of Manchester.

Monday 5 December First Manchester bus company to close bus depots in Bury and Tameside.

Annals of Manchester

Wednesday 7 December Manchester Airports Group (MAG) reported rise in profits. Councils in Manchester will benefit as part-owners of the airport, Manchester receiving £16.6 million.

Thursday 8 December Increase in violent and abusive incidents on the Metrolink network, especially on the Rochdale line.

Thursday 15 December Public consultation on plans to regenerate the London Road fire station

Saturday 17 December Police evicted about 30 squatters from former restaurant in South King Street which they had been occupying since November.

Friday 23 December Plans unveiled for new radical arts complex, Factory Manchester, designed by Rem Koolhaas, on the former Granada TV studios site.

Sunday 25 December The Old Nags Head, Jacksons Row, off Deansgate, provided free food and drinks, and handed out clothes to vulnerable people.

Friday 30 December The ‘crime severity score’, a measure of violent and sexual crime produced by the Office for National Statistics, placed Greater Manchester ahead of London.

Plans published for redevelopment of the University of Manchester’s Sackville Street campus.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

BOOK REVIEW

The Seven Ages of One Man

or How One Man Started the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester

by Richard L. Hills, MBE

T

he Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) is now one of the world’s leading science museums and, with annual visitor attendance figures exceeding 700,000, the leading tourist attraction in Manchester.

It may not generally be realised what a significant part two of the Manchester Lit & Phil’s members, the late Professor Donald Cardwell and the Reverend Dr Richard Hills played in its foundation. Ironically, it has taken the sad death of Dr Hills’ wife, Bernice, in 2016 to direct his mind to writing the story of its establishment and of his remarkably wide-ranging and varied life. This book* is an absorbing and stimulating record of that life. It is very readable, not least due to the division of the overall narrative into the ‘Seven Ages’ referred to in its title’.

Born in 1936 near Lewisham and brought up during the war, Richard describes life as a young boy during that time. After becoming a boarder at a preparatory school in Tunbridge Wells he developed an interest in steam railway engines and became fascinated by mechanical machinery such as that of a disused windmill.

A major change came when he entered Charterhouse, not only academically, but also in developing wider interests such as model engineering, camping, rock climbing and the narrow-gauge railways of North Wales. His later great interest in climbing started with Charterhouse Mountaineering Club through which the eminent Everest climber, Wilfred Noyce, then a master at the school, invited him to assist on checking a rock climb in Snowdonia.

Leaving school with A-levels in Classics and after National Service, when he was able to continue his climbing activities, he entered Queens’ College in 1957 where he read Economic History. This was a subject he enjoyed and included mention of an “industrial revolution” during the 13th century when water power was succeeding human effort in several important processes. How much more important, though was the development of steam power during the 18th and 19th centuries which with its many adaptations had resulted in the Industrial Revolution. These developments which had led to the huge growth in Britain’s contribution to civilisation were being neglected by university departments involved in teaching the History of Science by their failure to include studies of technological developments. It was this neglect which was an important reason for his arrival at UMIST in Manchester during 1965.

While at the University, he had purchased a 1924 Lancia Lambda, a vintage motor car which he would use for over 50 years. Some twenty pages, well-diagrammed and illustrated, make fascinating reading about its maintenance and use.

Also in his spare time he became an instructor with the Cambridge University Mountaineering Club, leading parties of young people on climbs, including a

Seven Ages of One Man

tackling of all fifteen Welsh peaks over 3,000 feet in one day. However, it was as an Outward Bound instructor leading a team in the Lake District that he sustained a serious leg injury which became gangrenous and requiring hospital treatment.

Nevertheless, he passed his Dip.Ed course at Cambridge and taught until 1963 in two schools (one for the blind).

In 1964, he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts at Cambridge, whilst the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London conferred on him its Diploma of Membership for a thesis he had submitted on Drainage of the Fens.

In the 1950s university departments began to provide for the study of the history of science and technology, a neglect which he had noted throughout his early encounter with Economic History at Cambridge. However, outside the universities, museums of science and technology for the general benefit did not exist. In 1963, Lord Bowden, then Principal of the Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), mentioned to Donald Cardwell the possibility of establishing a science museum in Manchester. Cardwell, to this end, formed a joint committee representing the City Council, the University and UMIST and in 1966 the committee reported favourably. The principal function of such a museum would be to acquire, conserve and, where possible, restore and display exhibits or exact replicas of them which characterised and determined the scientific, technical and industrial history of the UK, and more particularly of the North West region.

Richard first met Donald Cardwell in 1965, a relationship which was to prove of great value to both in the development of what initially became the North Western Museum of Science and Industry in Grosvenor Street. Although accountable to the joint committee or its representatives, Richard as Director had control of the appointment of staff and the planning of the display of exhibits and collections. It was at the museum in Grosvenor Street in 1964 that the Manchester Regional Industrial Archaeology Society (of which Richard was the first Secretary) was formed, which still organises regular lectures, visits to places of interest, the practical recording of sites and buildings under threat and the like.

In 1978, Greater Manchester Council purchased Liverpool Road Station which was to become the iconic location of MOSI. Over the next few years the move from Grosvenor Street was completed and a visit was paid by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1983. Richard regards as perhaps his greatest single triumph the locating, purchase from South African Railways and shipment back to Manchester (its place of manufacture) of a Beyer-Garratt steam locomotive, the most powerful built in Britain, comprising three coupled units in total weighing about 160 tons.

However, it proved to be his finale at the museum. By then, GMC had formed its own trust to run Liverpool Road as a new museum. Richard would become Curator Designate, whilst a new Director was appointed. There was regret at his decision to retire but, after the efforts which he and his team had expended to achieve MOSI, such a future held no appeal. Leaving the museum was at first a form of bereavement at the loss of what he had established, but for the 15 years since he first came to Manchester it had become a very busy life with little time

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

for other interests. Christianity had always played a part in his outlook on life and in 1987 he was ordained in Manchester Cathedral, later becoming Secretary of the Society of Ordained Scientists, seeking to explore science and technology in religion and the effects of the Industrial Revolution.

An appendix in the book lists some 15 publications, including a three-volume work on the life of James Watt, and over 190 articles. Two notable publications are ‘The Drainage of the Fens’ (which led to the award of the Diploma of Imperial College, London in 1964) and ‘Papermaking in Britain 1488-1988’.

For his contribution to the knowledge of papermaking, he was acclaimed as an Honorary Member of both the International and the British Associations of Paper Historians. In fact, Richard’s major interest in the history of papermaking came after he agreed in 1968 to give a permanent home, then Grosvenor Street, for the artefacts of the National Paper Museum. A noteworthy paper, ‘Feasibility Study for a Textile Museum at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal’ for the National Trust in 1969 resulted in the preservation of the mill’s working state.

Two events which he was able to share with his wife, Bernice, were the presentation to him in 2014 by Manchester University of its Medal of Honour and in 2015 his appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to Industrial Heritage.

On reflection, it was very appropriate that, after the mutual respect and esteem they held for each other in realising eventually the establishment of MOSI, it was the Rev Dr Richard Hills who delivered the eulogy at Donald Cardwell’s funeral.

Richard Hills - the Kentish Man who awakened Manchester and its Citizens to their Industrial Heritage.

David Higginson, 2018

*The Seven Ages of One Man is published by The Choir Press in association with Seven Ages Publishing, price £18. A PDF version, suitable for computer or tablet, is available by email from sevenages@tkershaw.co.uk

Obituaries BILL (WILLIAM HENRY) AIKMAN 2 August 1919 - 4 November 2016

Bill was born in Germiston, South Africa coming to the UK with his family soon afterwards and living in Harrow, London and then Bradford. He attended Bradford Grammar School from 1928 to 1938. He then went up to Queen’s College Oxford to read Classics. His university studies were interrupted by the war, where he served as an officer with the Royal Artillery. He returned to Queen’s in 1946 and transferred to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics gaining a First in 1947. This did not end his academic life as he enrolled to study Theology at Manchester University and graduated in 1993 at the age of 73.

Bill started his working life with Tootal Broadhurst Lee in 1947 and stayed with them for 20 years. He managed their factories in Newton Heath and St Helens and became a director in 1964. He was then employed by a company (now called the 3i Group) as a management consultant advising small industries throughout the UK until 1979. He later shared his expertise through Enterprise Training in business schools in Manchester, London, Durham and Warwick Universities and the Cranfield Institute of Technology.

Bill and Jean Aikman

Bill and Jean married in September 1950 and had three daughters, Alison, Rosemary and Margaret. They settled in Didsbury in 1959 and lived most of their married life there.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Bill was heavily involved in Manchester arts, community groups and politics. He was a member of the Oxford Society, Didsbury & District Rotary and Probus Clubs and a Governor of both Chetham’s School of Music and Whalley Range High School. He was elected a Councillor for Manchester City Council in 1976 and served in that post until 1995.

JEAN AIKMAN (NEÉ KIRKWOOD) 5 April 1920 – 15 December 2017 Jean was born in Folkstone, Kent. Her family moved to Stafford where she attended Stafford Girls’ High School. After school she attended the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science on a career path to become a dietician, but the war disrupted her plans. She joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service and served with them until 1947, including a year in Mombasa, Kenya. After the war she worked in London at St Mary’s Hospital and Unilever before meeting and marrying Bill.

Jean contributed to the community giving her time to the Church, school (she was a parent Governor at Manchester High School for Girls), civic and cultural life, mostly in the Didsbury area. In 1959 she began 36 years of service with the Citizens Advice Bureau, firstly as a volunteer in central Manchester and latterly setting up and finding volunteers to run the Withington office. She was also heavily involved with Victim Support and as a result was awarded the Paul Harris Medal by the Didsbury Rotary Club.

Bill and Jean moved to Edinburgh in 2014 to be near their youngest daughter.

They were married for 66 years and received two cards from the Queen to mark their 60th and 65th anniversaries. They were joint members of the Lit & Phil from 1965 until moving to Scotland.

Other Deaths 2016-17 Members will be saddened to learn of the following deaths, which occurred during the above period.

Dr John King Dr John Peel John Buckley Nigel Wilkins

Named Lectures 2016–17 A complete list of the Named Lectures prior to 2016 is given in volumes 151 to 154 of the Memoirs.

2016 Oct 26

2017 Mar 3

The Dalton Lecture The History of sp2 Carbon in England Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov FRS

The Percival Lecture The future of the UK’s Digital and Creative Industries Professor Robin Bargar

The Joule Lecture 2017 Mar 30 Art and Science of Concert Hall and Opera House Design Robert Harris The Manchester Lecture 2017 Jun 19 Manchester Airport: An Economic Powerhouse Adam Jupp

Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society

Proceedings

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COUNCIL, 2016-2017 Lectures arranged by Council Transport Curiosities & Relics in the North West Dr Angus McDougall, member and Chair of the Young Persons Section, gave the AGM Lecture in September, where he illustrated some of the fascinating transport curiosities in the north west of England which he has discovered during his lifelong interest in railways and other forms of transport. Those present were able to see obscure relics, such as the plaque at the place where Huskisson was killed during the opening of the Manchester to Liverpool Railway, and also ones now lost which were depicted in his slides and described with enthusiasm by him.

Attendees were encouraged to find for themselves those relics which still exist before they too disappear. Interestingly Angus’ voyage of transport discovery has taken him all over the UK and to 53 other countries.

S and J Watts: Founders of a Great Wholesale Empire and of Kendal Milne The President’s Lecture which was given by Dr Diana Leitch MBE in early October featured the remarkable Watts family who originated as simple weavers in Burnage, south Manchester, but built up the enormous and famous wholesale empire of S and J Watts in Manchester used by royalty and dignitaries of many countries as well as the ordinary people of Manchester. The great wealth generated allowed Samuel (S) and James ( J) Watts to purchase, respectively, Burnage Hall and Abney Hall in Cheadle. The stories of these men, their homes, their descendents and how they all interacted with Victorian and early 20th century society and well-known people in the UK was described. Attendees were interested to hear that Dame Agatha Christie, Yehudi Menuhin, Dame Felicity Peake featured alongside ownership of the Kinder Estate in Derbyshire by James Watts.

The eventual decline of the empire, the demolition of Burnage Hall to create the new Burnage Garden Estate and the sale of the grand Abney Hall and its contents rounded off the lecture.

The History of sp2 Carbon in England The Dalton Lecture was given in late October by Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov FRS who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene. He took as his subject for the lecture the exciting history of carbon-based materials including graphite from Cumbria (Dalton’s birthplace), diamond, fullerenes discovered by one of his boyhood heroes, Sir Harry Kroto, and graphene. The opportunity was taken on this occasion to have a reception before the lecture for invited guests and members in the Chemistry Department of the University of Manchester followed by the lecture in the Physics Department where Kostya is a member of staff. After the lecture the President presented him with the Lit and Phil’s Dalton Medal, only the 15th time this medal has been awarded. The Society was pleased that the great-grandson of the first recipient, Dr Edward Schunck, in 1898 and Lady Kroto, widow of Sir Harry Kroto who was awarded the seventh Dalton Medal, were present on that evening.

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Christmas Carol Service Some members of the Society again joined the St James’s Club for their Christmas Carol Service at the city centre Church of St Ann’s. The service was led by Canon Michael Arundel, a former Rector of St Ann’s and Rev Nigel Ashworth, the current Rector. It was followed by supper at the St James’s Club together with members of St Ann’s choir.

Christmas Event 2016 It is a longstanding tradition and objective of the Society, as an educational charity, to support young people in the region. For the Society’s Christmas Event, Council hosted an evening with Manchester Musical Youth (MMY) at the RNCM. MMY are based in Hulme and are dedicated to promoting excellence and achievement in acting, singing and movement with 8-19 year olds. The evening was a showcase for Manchester’s future aspiring theatrical and musical performers and was introduced by Dave Holden, a Founder and Director of MMY. The Future of the UK’s Digital and Creative Industries The Annual Percival Lecture of the Lit and Phil was hosted in February 2017 by the University of Salford at their Media City campus on Salford Quays. The lecture was given by Professor Robin Bargar, founding Executive Director of the Studio for International Media and Technology at MediaCityUK. He is also Professor in the School of Arts and Media and the School of Computing Sciences and Engineering and leads the University’s Digital and Creative Industry Collaboration Zone, which develops industry collaborations with interdisciplinary teams across the university. He spoke on the future of the UK’s digital and creative industries, their cultural, political and economic impact, and the global role of MediaCityUK. Questions and a lively discussion over supper provided by the University of Salford followed.

Why and How are we Living Longer?

This question was posed and answered in our March lecture by Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE who is a world expert on the subject of ageing and has been a government adviser on population ageing. It was a welcome return to Manchester for Tom who had previously worked at the University of Manchester. Until recently he had been the Director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, one of the foremost units of its kind in the world, and he was able to explain and illustrate the connection between our health and ageing and the social and lifestyle factors that influence our individual trajectories of health in old age. His thought-provoking and fascinating talk was greatly appreciated and left all attendees with much food for thought regarding themselves and their friends and families.

Manchester Airport: An Economic Powerhouse The Society’s Manchester Lecture in June 2017 took as its subject the current and future development of Manchester Airport. Kenneth O’Toole, Divisional Chief Executive of Manchester Airport, was scheduled to give the lecture but had to withdraw at short notice owing to family illness. His colleague, Adam Jupp, Manchester Airport’s Head of External Affairs and a former journalist with

Proceedings

the Manchester Evening News, replaced him and gave an excellent and concise lecture on the airport’s place as an ‘economic powerhouse’ and how it delivers benefits to the region beyond just travel. The lecture was followed by an extended period of lively questions ably handled by Adam and this format was welcomed by those attending.

Prior to the lecture there had been an informal gathering of new and old members over drinks where they had the opportunity to meet members of Council and each other.

Dr Diana Leitch MBE President

Lectures arranged by the Arts Committee

For the first lecture, Architecture is Political, in October, Professor Albena Yaneva explored the intriguing links between architecture and politics. Professor Yaneva explained that her research crossed many boundaries including science studies and political philosophy. Her talk showed how politics has an influence on so many parts of our lives – from mundane objects such as the safety belt in our cars to the arrangement of a classroom; the height of a bridge or iconic skyscrapers, and she illustrated her talk with case studies including the new Birmingham New Street Train Station and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Early Maps of ‘Real’ Lancashire, and Their Makers was the fascinating lecture in November given by Dr Ian Saunders, who has collected and researched antique maps since 1984, and recently helped to discover an unknown 1604 map in a Manchester Library. He traced the story of English county mapmaking and of the people involved, over many centuries, starting with Christopher Saxton in the 1570s; then looking at 18th century improvements as modern methods of mapmaking were being established and taking the audience through a myriad cartographic changes to what he called a perfection “of sorts” in the Victorian era, when the Ordnance Survey began to map the area in the 1840s.

When Edouard Manet’s painting Olympia was first exhibited in 1865 at the Paris Salon, he found himself once again at the centre of controversy. His choice of a prostitute for his subject outraged public and critics alike. But in his lecture 1865: European Painting in Transition to Modernism, in November, art historian Dr Colin Bailey highlighted the significance of Olympia as a pivotal work in the history of art, and how Manet was a key player in the decade that gave the world Impressionism, for he exerted great influence in Paris on other young painters such as Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Pissarro. These developments in France had an influence on British painters and the evolving Pre-Raphaelite school. Dr Bailey’s illustrations included Ford Madox Brown’s oil painting Work, which was later to feature in his murals in Manchester Town Hall.

The Lecture with Recital given by Simon Rees and Luke Starkey in February, provided a feast of fascinating information, delightful music and beautiful paintings, and was greatly enjoyed by the audience. Simon Rees, writer, lecturer on music and art, traced the history of the lute from the roving horsemen of the

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Asian Steppes who created portable instruments with materials to hand, and its further development along the Silk Road and into Europe. The beautiful sound and shape of lutes inspired Western composers and artists through the 14th to 18th centuries. Paintings were shown, such as Caravaggio’s portrait of a lutenist, many of which enabled modern lute-makers to recreate authentic period instruments. Professional lutenist Luke Starkey explained the complex history of stringing and the unique written form of compositions, understandable even today only by lute players. He then played examples of compositions from each period of the paintings The Recording Britain lecture in March by Gill Saunders, from the Victoria and Albert Museum, was an account of the country in the early years of the Second World War as portrayed by artists of the time. Partly a morale-booster, this unique documentary project aimed to capture Britain at a time when lives, landscapes and precious buildings were under threat as change stalked the land. Many of the works sought to freeze the country in time – with nostalgic images where some artists chose to exclude the modern world’s equipment such as electricity pylons and telegraph poles and wires, preferring instead to show a more traditional picture of bucolic country charm – though some presented a somewhat gloomy picture of Manchester, and other towns such as Rochdale and Oldham.

The last Arts event in May was a departure from the usual lecture pattern – a Question Time style discussion panel to debate: Powerhouse or Poorhouse: What is the future for the Arts in Manchester? Chaired by Felicity Goodey, the Panel comprised Wyllie Longmore, Nick Merriman, Dave Moutrey, David Thacker and Eleanor Underhill. This lively debate was held at the newly opened Stoller Hall, at Chetham’s School of Music, with special guest Sir Norman Stoller, who funded the Hall, amongst members of the audience. The event was preceded by a short performance by students from Chetham’s, and afterwards a buffet supper enabled members of the audience to mingle with the guest members of the panel, to continue the discussion. Triggered by the Northern Powerhouse proposal – and an article by a distinguished Art critic who wondered if Manchester really needed any more culture – the stimulating debate looked at issues such as Arts funding being very London-centric – and how Manchester and the regions might stem this flow; how to redress the consequences of Arts education in schools being run down and how to reach out to engage some in the community who often felt that the Arts is a charmed circle which excluded them.

Art Section members for 2016-2017 and contributors to this report were: Edwina Dyson Jim Howell Tony Jackson ( Joint Minute Secretary) Joanna Lavelle ( Joint Minute Secretary) Patricia McWilliam-Fowler (Chair) David Shreeve P McWilliam-Fowler Chair – Arts Committee June 2017

Proceedings

Lectures arranged by the Science and Technology Committee

The year’s programme had a balance of three biological-science-based and four physical-science based lectures: on the pure/applied axis there were two unequivocally technology-based lectures, and three where science and technology could not really be disentangled.

The lecture series started early (8th September) to take advantage of the agronomist Jonathan Gressel’s presence in the UK for an editorial board meeting.

Professor Gressel, of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, spoke to Hammering Two New Nails in Malthus’ Coff in with Genetic Engineering. He explained how modern crops were the result of millennia of selective breeding, and now lacked the genes that could be manipulated for desirable qualities: consequently major strain improvement could come only from transfer of genes from other organisms (“horizontal transfer”). He gave a number of examples where strains were improved for nutrition and pest resistance. He pointed out that the molecular changes involved in conventional plant breeding (e.g. with irradiation of seeds) were bigger than the targeted changes to produce transgenics, and that horizontal transfer took place in Nature anyway. The “precautionary principle” of the EU’s approach to GM crops, whereby any objection, no matter how fatuous or selfserving, had to be met, was contrasted with Canada’s approach, whereby all new crop varieties, no matter how they were produced, were subjected to the same rules. As things stand, it would be legal in the EU to market a high-solanine strain of tomatoes produced by conventional breeding, despite the toxity of “natural” solanine.

Professor Stephen Scott (18th October), the discoverer (as a PhD student) of periodic reactions in the gas phase comparable to the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in solution, spoke about 35 Years of Chaos – Have we learned anything important? He concentrated on his own gas-phase work, and reminded us how powerful paper-and-pencil methods had become just before high-powered desktop computing became generally available.

Professor Joanna Haigh, CBE FRS (Imperial College), talked on Climate Change on 1st December. She gave a masterly treatment of the basic physics involved in the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and other gases, and an objective account of anthropogenic changes. I encountered for the first time a clear comparison of the measured emission spectrum of the earth with the theoretical curve for a black body at 21C. The measured spectrum had a large “bite” around 670 cm-1 corresponding to the bending vibration of CO2, and smaller bites corresponding to methane. Emission did not fall to zero at 670 cm-1, refuting climate sceptic arguments that the earth’s atmosphere is already black at this wavelength, and will not respond to additional CO2. Despite the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, Professor Haigh held her audience until the end of her lecture, after which there was a protracted, interested and cordial question session.

Dr. Eamonn Kerins ( Jodrell Bank) displayed some of the most beautiful slides of the year. In his talk on 13th February about An Astrophysicist’s Guide to Curtain Twitching – the hunt for exoplanets and our interstellar neighbours he described

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

the four methods used, all of which depended on very precise measurements of a star’s luminosity. The most powerful method (gravitational lensing, involving the simultaneous observation of 108 pairs of stars, required major advances in IT before it became practical. The work could only be carried out at the Southern Observatory in the Andes, where there was no light pollution and the air was very dry. It turns out that many exoplanets can be detected, some orbiting two stars rather than one: there are even planets not attached to a particular star. The idea that the Earth is uniquely fitted for the evolution of Life is wrong. Enrico Fermi’s question about extra-terrestrial conscious life – “Where are they?” now requires an answer, since Fermi estimated that it would take only a few million years for an advanced civilisation to traverse the Milky Way. After the talk, Dr. Kerins had to be rescued from a crowd of enthusiastic members and guests who seemed able to ask unlimited numbers of friendly questions.

Mr. Robert Harris, the acoustic designer of Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, talked on 30th March on The Art and Science of Concert Hall and Opera House Design. Surprisingly, the dominant phenomenon in the experience of sound in a concert setting is reflection, rather than diffraction (middle C has a wavelength of ~1.3m). Consequently it is possible to build a model of a concert hall with reflective surfaces and use light to see how sound gets to the listener; the listener’s orientation is also, of course, important. It is also now possible for the dimensions and surface reflectivity of a hall to be fed into modelling program: sound modified by this program, when played back in an acoustically-dead, cork-lined room reproduced the sound heard in the modelled hall. The acoustics of the Leipzig Gewandthaus, destroyed in WWII, were confirmed to be nearly perfect for orchestral music in this way. The various uses to which a hall was put imposed conflicting requirements: to get clarity and intelligibility of speech you needed a dead acoustic, but to get the “immersion in sound” effect from an orchestra reverberance is needed. These conflicting requirements were summarised in the aphorism “an art is a science with more than seven variables”, and removable acoustic panels were one solution to complex demands. The speaker then went on to describe how the “shoebox” shape was best for opera, the “vineyard” shape for orchestral music, but the vogue for seating audiences behind the orchestra gave them a poor acoustic experience.

Professor Harry Brumer (University of British Columbia) was the speaker on 27th April, with a profusely illustrated talk on Getting by with a Little Help from my Friends: the key role of symbiotic human gut microbes in health. The human genome contains relatively few genes encoding carbohydrate-degrading enzymes: those that we do possess are largely concerned with degrading starch. Many of the complex structural polysaccharides in fruits and vegetables do in fact contribute to nutrition, thanks to symbiotic microbes in the lower gut. These microbes are anaerobes, and are consequently difficult to culture, which is why they have only recently been recognised. The general importance of a healthy microbial ecosystem in the gut has long been recognised, but exaggerated claims, even for increased serotonin (hence the title), have not until now been supported by mechanisms. The chemical structures of plant polysaccharides can be very diverse

Proceedings

and complex, and it is thought that gut bacteria are very highly specialised. The speaker described his work, as part of a consortium, on a single locus in Bacteroides ovatus. The locus, XyGUL, was essential for hydrolysing a particular xyloglucan found in Solanaceae (tomatoes, peppers, etc), and coded for eight glycohydrolases, including a membrane-bound enzyme facing extracellularly, which made the initial cut in the macromolecule, and a couple of transport/binding proteins. The individual sugars are disproportionated to short-chain fatty acids by the microbes, and then absorbed by the host. Xyloglucan can contribute 10% of calories.

DNA and the Settlement of Europe was the title of the talk given by Professor Martin Richards (University of Huddersfield) on May 16. Archaeogenetics is the application of molecular genetics to the study of the human past, and has had three phases. The first used classical markers such as blood groups, and gave the first indications of a poor correlation between language and genetic origin, when the Icelanders were shown to have blood group frequencies typical of the NW British Isles, rather than Norway. The second used modern DNA techniques with non-recombining markers in living populations, the Y chromosome in the male line and mitochondrial DNA in the female. The mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of the cell, and whereas an egg will contain hundreds, a spermatozoon contains only a handful: any that do get incorporated into the fertilised egg are recognised and destroyed. For the last decade the automation of DNA sequencing, which had made it possible to re sequence human genomes in a few days, and the development of techniques for extracting ancient DNA, have made it possible to sequence archaeological specimens. mtDNA sequences had shown that all non-African humans derived from a single African lineage L3, 70,000 years ago (the “mitochondrial Eve� from who all humans derived was 200,000 years ago). L3 first moved out of Africa to the Gulf coast and Mesopotamia, where it remained for 15,000 years before sending descendants into South Asia, Near East and Europe, and back into Egypt. The L3 line interbred with Neanderthals before the split between South/East and West Eurasians. Genome-wide analysis suggests there were indigenous Europeans before the Neolithic migrations, and that the Saami (Lapps) and Basques are significantly derived from them. When Y chromosomes are examined, a group appears north of the Black Sea which migrates north and west, and then south and east, and has been correlated with male-dominated Indo-Europeans.

We had a successful year, attributable in part to our setting ourselves three criteria for a potential speaker: 1. Is the science right/does the technology work? 2. Is it important? 3. Can the speaker address an audience containing both specialists and non-specialists? The first two criteria were easily met by all speakers, and, whilst there were a couple of sub-prime performances under criterion 3, one such speaker had been on travel, had been up the previous night with an infection, had a bad cough, and yet was nonetheless rated acceptable by some non-specialists.

Michael Sinnott Chair – Science and technology Committee June 2017

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Lectures arranged by the Social Philosophy Committee

The first lecture arranged by the Social Philosophy committee was given in September by Professor Will Kaufman who has the chair in American Literature and Culture at the University of Central Lancashire and is recognised as the world’s leading authority on Woody Guthrie. He spoke with great clarity under the title The Dirty Thirties: Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression illustrating one of the most turbulent times in American history by singing the songs of Woody Guthrie while accompanying himself on guitar. In November Richard Morris, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Huddersfield and biographer of both Guy Gibson and Leonard Cheshire, addressed members on Manchester, Air Power and the Great War. He provided a most interesting account of the distinctive part Manchester played in the development of the Royal Air Force, compared the city with other early centres of aeronautical engineering and discussed the key factors that shaped the city’s contribution to the emergence of air power.

February brought Mrs Angela Shackleton Bebb, great-niece of Sir Ernest Shackleton, who spoke about Shackleton, Endurance and the Remarkable Voyage of the James Caird. She told her audience of her ancestor’s family life, the individual characters of some members of the expedition and of the remarkable seamanship which enabled Shackleton to navigate the ship’s boat, the James Caird, across hundreds of miles of ocean to save his men. Mrs Bebb brought with her a number of original artefacts, pictures and notebooks, and told her story with wit and charm.

A change of direction in April brought Michael Powell, the Librarian of Chetham’s Library, who talked under the title In the Labyrinth: John Dee in Manchester. This was very well received with just the right balance of concentration on John Dee’s years in Manchester while not omitting more general information on his earlier life in the court of Queen Elizabeth.

Early May saw Professor Julian Thomas and Halls of the Dead: Discoveries from an Archaeological Dig which is on-going at Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire. Professor Thomas spoke eloquently and in detail about this University of Manchester dig.

He explained its place within Neolithic Europe as well as the significance of ‘halls of the living’ being transformed into ‘halls of the dead’. Late May saw a lastminute change of lecturer when Dr Elizabeth Yardley was unable to make her planned visit but we were delighted to welcome instead her colleague Emma Kelly who talked about A Tale of Two Districts’: Criminological Ethnography Then and Now. Looking at the history of criminology as an academic enterprise the talk showed how criminological research is undertaken moving from Chicago to England and then Dublin. She described her own doctoral work in an immersed sociological study where she worked with youth gangs in the Republic of Ireland.

N P Barnes Acting Chairman - Social Philosophy Committee June 2017

Proceedings

Lectures arranged by the Young People’s Committee

The Young People’s Section has been a little hampered this year because of the small number of members of the Committee. We are in process of rectifying this situation.

As usual the programme consisted of three events, and the speakers had been selected and invited by last year’s Committee, headed by Dr Stuart Thompson.

There were two innovations this year: one was to start the proceedings earlier with the customary pizza before the lecture rather than afterwards, and the other was to offer supper after the lecture for members. We made these changes for the second and third events this year, by way of an experiment, and we believe both to have been well received and successful, and we shall continue with them.

The first lecture was by Professor Tony Freemont of the University of Manchester on 7 November and his title was Medicine for Tomorrow: Biomarkers and Biomarker Discovery. He spoke largely about the targeting of particular molecules in diseased tissue, which are known as biomarkers. His enthusiasm for this new technique was conveyed well to our young audience, and he encouraged them to take up Medicine as a career. The lecture was held in University Place (University of Manchester), a new venue for us, which proved very satisfactory.

This move was necessary because of the non-availability of our usual sites on the date chosen.

On 6 February Professor Matthew Cobb, of the University of Manchester, gave a lecture on James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, and his theme was the race to understand the structure of DNA. He analysed the attitudes and behaviour of these scientists on Cambridge and at Kings College, London. It has been alleged that Watson and Crick either stole Rosalind Franklin’s data, or ‘forgot’ to credit her. Neither suggestion is correct.

Professor Cobb explained that possibly because of a dramatic clash of personalities (particularly with Maurice Wilkins) Rosalind Franklin, an X-ray crystallographer of note, had not received the fame she undoubtedly deserved, although also she died very young.

The last event of our programme was a lecture on Espionage and Intrigue in the World of Nuclear Physics by Frank Close, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. This took place on 6 March and was essentially the story of Bruno Pontecorvo, a world renowned nuclear physicist who did much to establish the existence of the neutrino. He was born in Italy, but moved to France, Canada, the United States (the Manhattan Project) and Britain (Harwell) during his career. He became a communist 1939 and later became a spy working for the Russians. Eventually he fled to Russia in 1950 after he had been alerted to a threat of exposure by Kim Philby.

The Section Chairman is grateful to those who helped greatly during the year, particularly with the second lecture, while he was ill, and, for a time, in hospital.

Dr A McDougall Chairman – Young People’s Committee July 201

Treasurer’s Report The Statutory Accounts presented overleaf comply with the Charity SORP (FRS102) which was first implemented last year. To aid members understanding of these accounts set out below, there is a detailed Income and Expenditure Statement for the year ended 30 June 2017, which is in a more familiar format.

Income and Investment Portfolio

Overall the Society has performed well, reporting a deficit significantly lower than in 2016. Subscriptions and investment income have both increased, reflecting an increased membership and a strong investment performance. Whilst pleasing to note, there is more still to be done to increase our membership base and achieve a truly sustainable organisation.

In the lead up to the UK vote on Brexit last year, our investment managers, Brewin Dolphin, made some significant changes to our portfolio holdings. At 30 June 2016, gains on these newly acquired investments were small. However, the overall strong performance of many of these investments during 2017 has resulted in a significant increase in the value of our portfolio, reflected by a large net gain in our holdings of £156,264. Overall during 2017, taking account of dividends / interest received on investments, capital growth in the portfolio and after deducting investment management fees, our fund made a return of 14.5%.

Expenditure

We have now been resident in Church House, Deansgate, for our first full financial year. Expenditure for both 2016 and 2017 very much reflects this position.

In 2016 we incurred a number of “one-off ” costs associated with the move to the current premises last year – most notably are the removal costs and website/database design and implementation.

During 2017 we undertook major works to remove an adjoining wall between two small offices to create a large meeting room/small seminar space, which was also redecorated. It is hoped that we can use this space in the future to host small Society events.

The Society has also benefitted this year from a formal arrangement with Royal Northern College of Music for the use of their premises for the majority of the Society’s events. This has seen much better control of our costs over this year with a resultant drop compared to last year.

Treasurer’s Report

Overall I am satisfied with our financial performance for 2017. There are many challenges the Society faces in the future to achieve a sustainable financial position – the main one being to increase membership base. This will reduce our reliance on investments performing strongly or at least give us some additional resources to consider undertaking broader charitable works in furtherance of the Society’s objectives.

T. M. E. Rees Honorary Treasurer July 2017

The Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society Income and expenditure account for the year ended 30 June 2017

INCOME

Subscriptions and Gift Aid

2017 ÂŁ 36,360

2016 ÂŁ 32,333

Investment income

50,201

48,736

TOTAL INCOMING RESOURCES

86,768

83,168

Sundry Income and Donations

EXPENDITURE Rent

Legal & professional fees

207

12,022 1,330

2,099

6,040

2,350

Website & IT charges

1,653

14,260

Promotional expenses

-

731

Removal costs Bank charges

Heat & light

Maintenance expenses Staff costs

Functions and meeting costs

Library

Printing of memoirs & programmes

Stationery and photocopying

Postage, telephone and equipment hire

Insurance

Depreciation

Independent examination fee (2016: Audit fee)

Investment management fee

Sundries

Net operating (deficit)/surplus

Net investment Profits

Net Movement in Funds

-

895

15,900 333

4,638

31,859

6,271 885

30,537 60

50

33,866

14,782

22,128

3,678

1,756

1,250

2,096

1,474

1,494 573

1,888

-

1,372

2,261

1,703 536

3,000

12,406

11,432

93,214

109,489

843

788

(6,446)

(26,321)

149,818

(22,280)

156,264

4,041

The Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society Balance Sheet for the year ended 30 June 2017 2017 ÂŁ

2016 ÂŁ

Fixed Assets Tangible assets Investments Investment in Subsidiary

1,098

1,300

1,459,485

1,305,703

100

100

1,460,683

1,307,103

1,082

3,133

13,800

6,875

280

70

27,387

46,125

42,549

56,203

14,841

24,733

Current Assets Debtors Tax repayment due Prepayments and accrued income Cash at bank and in hand Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year Net Current Assets (Liabilities) Net Assets

27,708

31,470

1,488,391

1,338,573

Funds of the Charity Unrestricted funds Expendable endowment fund

1,488,391

1,338,573

Total Funds

1,488,391

1,338,573

These financial statements were approved and authorised for issue by the Trustees at a Council meeting held on 21st August 2017 and signed on its behalf by: P HILTON

Secretary

T REES Treasurer Company Registration Number 9330 Registered Charity Number 235313

Officers and Council 2016-2017

President Diana Leitch Immediate Past President Netar Mallick Vice-Presidents Chris Baker John Buckley† Tony Jackson Honorary Secretary Peter Hilton Honorary Treasurers Trevor Rees Greg Mauchline Honorary Memoirs Editor (Ex-Officio) Graham Booth Honorary Librarian Christine Chappelle Members of Council Peter Barnes, Chris Boyes, David Brailsford, Ronald Catlow Brendan Hegarty, Joanna Lavelle, Kenneth Letherman, Angus McDougall Patricia McWilliam-Fowler, David Shreeve, Michael Sinnott Stuart Thompson*, Judith Ross*, Constance Holland*, David Brown* David Astbury* SECTION OFFICERS Arts Chair: Patricia McWilliam-Fowler Minutes Secretaries: Tony Jackson, Joanna Lavelle Science and Technology Chair: Michael Sinnott Secretary: Bryan Tyler Social Philosophy Chairs: Brendan Hegarty, Peter Barnes Secretary: Philip Hulme Young People Chair: Angus McDougall Secretary: Vacant Administrators Julie Brockenshaw Kathryn Slater († to 24/01/17) (* to 21.09.16)

Presidents of the Society Date of Election 1781 Peter Mainwaring, MD; James Massey 1782-1786 James Massey, Thomas Percival, MD FRS 1787-1789 James Massey 1789-1804 Thomas Percival, MD, FRS 1805-1806 Rev George Waler, FRS 1807-1809 Thomas Henry, FRS 1809 *John Hull, MD, FRS 1809-1816 Thomas Henry, FRS 1816-1844 John Dalton, DCL, FRS 1844-1847 Edward Holme, MD, FLS 1848-1850 Eaton Hodgkinson, FRS, FGS 1851-1854 John Moore, FLS 1855-1859 Sir William Fairbairne, Bart, LLD, FRS 1860-1861 James Prescott Joule, DCL, FRS 1870-1871 Edward William Binney, FRS, FGS 1872-1873 James Prescott Joule, DCL, FRS 1874-1875 Edward Schunck, PhD, FRS 1876-1877 Edward William Binney, FRS, FGS 1882-1883 Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, DCL, FRS 1884-1885 William Crawford Williamson, LLD, FRS 1886 Robert Dunkinfield Dabishire, BA, FGS 1887 Balfour Stewart, LLD, FRS 1888-1889 Osbourne Reynolds, LLD, FRS 1890-1891 Edward Schunck, PhD, FRS 1892-1893 Arthur Schuster, PhD, FRS 1894-1896 Henry Wilde, DCL, FRS 1896 Edward Schunck, PhD, FRS 1897-1899 James Cosmo Melvill, MA, FLS 1899-1901 Horace Lamb, MA, FRS 1901-1903 Charles Bailey, MSc, FLS 1903-1905 W. Boyd Dawkins, MA, DSc, FRS 1905-1907 Sir William H. Bailey, MIMechE 1907-1909 Harold Bailey Dixon, MA, FRS 1909-1911 Francis Jones, MSc, FRS 1911-1913 F.E. Weiss, DSc, FRS

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1913-1915 Francis Nicholson, FZS 1915-1917 Sydney J. Hickson, DSc, FRS 1917-1919 William Thomson, FRSE, FCS, FIC 1919 G. Elliot Smith, MD, FRS 1919-1921 Sir Henry A. Miers, DSc, FRS 1921-1923 T.A. Coward, MSc, FZS, FES 1923-1925 H.B. Dixon, CBE, PhD, FRS, FCS 1925 †Rev A.L. Cortie, SJ, DSc, FRAS, FInstP 1925-1927 H. Levinstein, DSc, MSc, FIC 1927-1929 W.L. Bragg, OBE, MA, FRS 1929-1931 C.E. Stromeyer, OBE, MInstCE 1931-1933 B. Mouat Jones, DSO, MA 1933-1935 John Allan, FCS 1935-1937 R.W. James, MA, BSc 1937-1939 R.H. Clayton, MSc 1939-1940 D.R. Hartree, PhD, MSc, FRS 1940-1944 H.J. Fleure, DSc, FRS 1944-1946 M. Polanyi, PhD, DSc, MD, FRS 1946-1948 T.B.L. Webster, MA 1948-1950 E.J.F. James, DPhil 1950-1952 H. Hayhurst, FRIC, AMIChemE, FRES 1952-1954 Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, CBE, LLD, FRCS, FRS 1954-1956 P.F.R. Venables, PhD, FRIC 1956-1958 F.C. Toy, CBE, DSc, FInstP 1958-1960 C.E. Young, MSc 1960-1962 H. Lipson, DSc, FInstP, FRS 1936-1964 L.Cohen, BCom, FBIM 1964-1966 Margaret Pilkington, OBE, MA, FMA, JP 1966-1967 H. Hayhurst, MSc, CEng, FRIC, AMIChemE, FRES 1967-1969 Brian Rodgers, BSc(Econ) 1969-1971 G.N Burkhardt, PhD, FRIC 1971-1973 G.J. Kynch, PhD, MScTech, ARCS, DIC, FIMA 1973-1975 E.N. Abrahart, PhD, FRIC, FSDC 1975-1977 A.E.R. Goulty, MA 1977-1979 H. Lipson, CBE, DSc, FInstP, FRS 1979-1981 H.M. Fairhurst, MA, FRIBA 1981-1983 D.G. Wilson, OBE, DL, FIB, FBIM 1983-1985 L.J. Postle, PhD, FInstP, FInstMC

Proceedings

1985-1987 Sir Netar Mallick, MB, ChB, FRCP 1987-1989 B.S.H. Rarity, PhD, FRAS 1989-1991 P.G.Livesey, FCA 1991-1993 D.S.L. Cardwell, PhD 1993-1995 E.F. Cass, MA, ACIB 1995-1997 A. Donnachie, PhD, CPhys, FInstP 1997-1999 Dianne Wilson 1999-2001 I.E. Gillespie, MD, MSc, FRCS 2001-2002 A.G.D. Yeaman, JP, CEng, MIMechE 2003-2005 K.D. Buckley 2005-2007 Vivienne Blackburn, BSc 2007-2009 Mary, Lady Mallick, JP, BA 2009-2011 David J Higginson, LLB 2011-2014 Kenneth M Letherman, BSc, MSc, PhD, DSc, CEng, FIEE 2014-2016 Sir Netar P Mallick, BSc, MB, ChB, FRCP 2016 - Diana M.Leitch BSc, PhD, FRSC, MBE * Elected 28 April, resigned office 5 May 1809 †Died 16 May 1925

Honorary Members As at 30 June 2017 1990 1989 1992 1968 2013 1999 1990 2013 1994 2004

Professor Sir J M Ashworth Mr M N G Evans Professor S Hawking †Reverend Dr R L Hills Professor L Merrick Professor Sir Ghillean Prance Sir M Richmond Professor Dame N Rothwell FRS Sir R Scott Dame J Smith

†Deceased

Elected Corresponding Members As at 30 June 2016 1972 1946

Professor A Thackray Mrs R Williams

The Dalton Medal The Dalton Medal is the Society’s highest award and a distinction only rarely bestowed. It is given to those who have made a distinguished contribution to science.

The Medal has been awarded to: 1898 1900 1903 1919 1931 1942 1948 1966 1981 1997 2002 2005 2009 2012 2016

Edward Schunk, FRS Sir Henry E Roscoe FRS Professor Osborne Reynolds FRS Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, OM, FRS Sir Joseph J Thomson, OM, FRS Sir Lawrence Bragg, CH, MC, FRS Professor P M S Blackett, OM, FRS Professor Sir Cyril Hinshelwood, OM, FRS Professor Dorothy Hodgkin, OM, FRS Professor Sir Harold Kroto, FRS Sir Walter Bodmer, MA, PhD, FRCPath, FRS Professor Sir Roger Penrose, OM, FRS Professor Sir Bernard Lovell, OBE, FRS Professor Lord Martin Rees, OM, Kt, FRS Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov, FRS, FRSC, FInstP

Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov FRS is presented with the Dalton Medal

by Dr Diana Leitch MBE, October 2016

Ordinary and Corresponding Members as at 30 June 2017 * Denotes corresponding members † Deceased

We are not including Members’ addresses due to the requirements of the Data Protection Act, but these are being published in a separate booklet for Members.

2011 2014 2016 1955 2016 1989 2016 2017 2017 2017 1981 2016 2017 2000 2009 2008 2008 2011 2017 2016 2002 2016 1991 1986 2012 2017 2011 2017 2016 2008 2009 1991 2016 2010 1999 2008

Mr G P Abraham Mr J W Adams Mrs B Adams Mrs M E Ainsworth Miss E Aird Professor S T S Al-Hassani Mr A Alexander Mr S D Ali Mr D Alvarado Dr S Andi OBE Mr V J Andrews † Miss R Anwar-Wright Mrs M Ardern Mrs J E Argust and Mr J P Argust Mr D Astbury Mr G Baker and Mrs C Baker Mr C E J Baker and Mrs J Baker Dr R Baldwin and Mrs C Baldwin Dr D Bamber Mr E Barnes Mr N P Barnes Mr C Belshaw Dr B Benster* Mr P K Berry Mr C Bezer Ms G Biglin Dr A Bingham Mr P Birch Dr B Bodner Professor J G Booth and Mrs M C Booth Mr E Bor Mrs A Boulton Mr M Bowdler Professor Sir R Boyd Mr C J Boyes Mr I Bradford

2004 2003 2009 2016 2005 2011 2016 1990 2009 1985 2003 2006 2006 2010 2015 2009 1981 2015 2012 2017 1981 2016 2012 1997 2011 2004 2016 2012 2015 2010 2016 1999 2013 1993 2016 2010 1968 2012 2009 2016 2016 2017 1959 2004 2013

Proceedings

Mrs H Bradshaw Mr D Brailsford Mr J Brandrick Mr R Brice Mr D Brooks Mr M R Brown Mr M Brzozowski Mr K D Buckley and Mrs N Buckley Dr C Burke Dame Sandra A V Burslem Dr R Butler Mr D Caldwell †Mrs J Caldwell Mr I C Cameron Mrs S Cameron Mr N O Campbell Mr J L Carroll Mrs H Carter Dr M Carter Mr G Casoliva Dr R E Catlow Mr L Cavanaugh Mr J Cave Professor M Chiswick and Mrs C Chiswick Mr R Chiverton Mr J Clegg Dr L Cook Professor C Cooper Mrs S Crawford and Dr A Crawford Mr B C Crebbin Mr B Cresswell* Professor D Crowther and Mrs M Crowther Dr M Cunningham Mr R A da-Costa Mr H Daniels Dr W Darlington Mr J H W Davidson Mrs J Davies and Mr W Davies Professor J K Davies Dr S Davies Miss E Davis Dr T Daya-Winterbottom Mr D H de Maine Dr A Deiraniya Professor M Desai

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

2008 1986 2006 2013 1978 2016 2014 2017 2010 1984 2016 1994 2013 1988 1989 1983 2015 2013 2012 2010 2004 2017 2015 2017 1990 2011 2009 2013 2016 2017 2016 2012 2014 2017 2015 2011 2011 2007 2016 1994 2017 2010 1971 1971 2016

Dr J Dewey Professor A Donnachie and Mrs D Donnachie Dr P Donnelly and Mrs A Donnelly Mrs E Dyson Mr J C Eagle and Mrs Eagle Mr J Earnshaw Mrs E J Eastwood Mr N Edler Ms B Eliot Mr T A Elliot Dr M Ellis Professor M Elstein and Mrs C Elstein Dr N Emekwuru Mr P Emerson Jones Mrs J Evans Professor P G Farrell* Ms S Faulkner Miss A Fazackerley Dr P Fenn Mr F L Fernley Mrs A Fitzpatrick Mr M Fox Professor J Frame Mr M France Mr R Frost Professor C Galasko Ms C Gandey Briggs Mr D Gane Mr C Garwood Dr M R and Ms F G Ghalib Miss G Gledhill Mr S Glover Mr P Good Mr J Gould Mr M Gourley Mr I W Grant and Mrs A M Grant Professor J O Gray Professor J Green Mr S and Mrs E Haddock Mr S H Halsall and Mrs M Halsall Miss E Hamilton Mr M Hancocks Dr M G Hartley †Mrs C Hartley Dr J Hassall

Proceedings

2003 2009 1989 2008 2009 2016 1989 2011 1986 2003 2009 2014 2016 2017 2009 2015 2006 2012 2016 2017 2009 1985 2010 2016 2001 2009 2013 2016 1991 2017 2010 2003 2017 2007 2016 2016 2016 2008 1997 2017 2016 2016 2016 2017 2017

Mr G Hayes and Mrs A Hayes Judge T B Hegarty and Ms I L Hegarty Professor J R Helliwell Mr P Hewitt Miss G Heyworth Miss K Higgins Mr D J Higginson Mrs E B Hill Mr P G Hilton and Dr S R Hilton Mrs C L Holland Mr B Hooley Mr J Horner Miss E Horvat Mr Md. A H Hossain Mr J Howell Mrs J Howells Mr P E Hulme Mr M Hunt Mrs H Hůlová-Sharpe Mr M and Mrs S Iqbal Mrs G Irvine Professor I Isherwood and Mrs J Isherwood Professor A R Jackson Mr D Jackson Mr J S Jackson and Mrs M Jackson Professor J D Jackson and Mrs L A Jackson Mr T Jackson-Baker Miss R James Professor M I V Jayson Dr S K Jena Mr D W Jenkins Dr G Jessup Professor N Jones Mr L Jowsey and Mrs D Jowsey Ms D Kazounis Ms M Keane Mr J Kelly Mr J Kennedy CBE, KSG, DL Mr M P Kershaw and Mrs E Kershaw Dr Y Khan Mr E King Mr D Kingsley Mr N Kirkby Miss F Knight Mrs D Korneli-Dreier*

2016 2010 2017 2008 2010 2007 1988 2008 2016 2003 2010 2016 2012 2011 2015 1962 2016 1990 2008 1981 1999 2010 2016 1975 2013 2017 2008 1994 2016 2016 2009 2016 2013 2017 2006 1983 2010 2016 2016 2013 1988 2017 2016 2004 2012

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Mr M Kraiz Professor P M Kumar Dr J Langrish Dr J Latchford Mrs J Lavelle Mr M J Lees Mr W R Lees-Jones Dr D Leitch and Dr D M Leitch Mr I Leslie Professor K M Letherman and Mrs R Letherman Mr R Lewis Dr D Lindsay Mr G Lloyd and Mrs J Lloyd Dr E S Long Mrs M Lord and Mr P Lord Miss S J Lowe Mr B Lund Mr N M MacPhail Mrs P Mainprize Mr C E Makepeace and Mrs H Makepeace Dr P J Makin Mr C Malkin and Ms C Brice Miss S Malkin Professor Sir N Mallick and Lady M Mallick Dr H Mamtora Ms G Mann Professor J Marsden †Mrs R Marsh Mr G Marshall Mr D Martin Dr M A Martin Mr L Massey Mr G Mauchline Mr R G Maund Mr D McAuley* Mrs M McCauley Dr A McDougall Dr C McNall Ms S McNerney Mrs P McWilliam-Fowler Dr J P Miller Miss A Miriello* Mr M A Mirza Mrs G Mitchell Mr D Morris

2016 1988 2002 1979 2001 2009 1997 2007 2017 2016 2008 2016 2016 2016 2013 2016 2001 1981 1998 2014 1986 2013 1985 2008 2016 2011 2014 2016 1982 2017 2005 1981 2016 2002 1981 2004 2014 2016 1981 1966 2006 2007 1983 1992 2004

Proceedings

Mr A and Mrs H Morris Dr J J Moscrop and Ms C Orgell-Rosen Dr J G Mosley and Mrs J Mosley Professor I H Munro Mr J D Naylor Mrs Y Neild Dr P Newton and Mrs K Newton Mr J O’Neill Mr N Ogechukwu* Miss T Ogiliev Mr M Oglesby and Mrs J Oglesby Mr E Panter Miss J Pardo Dr J and Dr J Patterson Mr D Peat OBE Mr B Pilkington Mrs B Piper Dr J E B Ponsonby Miss H M Poole Dr R Poole Dr T Porter and Mrs MR Porter Mr A Postill Reverend Dr W P Povey Mr D Poyner and Mrs J Poyner Mr D Preston Mr S Procter and Miss C Rigg Mr R S Pryor Mr T Pshititzky Mr F R Purslow Miss S Rafiq Mr A Rahman Mr R C Rees Mr T Rees Professor B Richards Mr R W Richards † Mr W N B Richardson Mr J A Riley Mr S Riley Professor T E Roberts Professor A C Rose-Innes and Mrs B Rose-Innes Mr I A Ross Mrs E M Ross Mr R K Ross Dr P Rowlands Mr P Rubery

2016 2017 2005 2008 2013 1971 2008 1992 2016 2004 2017 2016 2003 2016 2015 2016 1995 2011 2016 2010 2015 2016 2013 2009 2016 2016 2015 1989 2016 2016 1986 2016 2001 2016 2011 1975 2016 2000 2012 2000 2009 1981 2011 2016 2016

MANCHESTER MEMOIRS VOLUME 155

Mr J Rudd Mr L San Antonio Mr M R Sanderson Dr R Sandler and Mrs L Sandler Mr J B Sangster Mr M H J Sargent Dr C Saunders Mr P G Schaefer Mr W Schnurr and Mrs L Westrup Mr R Schofield Mr R Schofield Mr R Sharma Mrs S M Sharp Mr M Sharpe Professor P Shenton Dr R and Mrs C Shields Mr G A Shindler Dr D R Shreeve Ms H Siddiqui Professor M L Sinnott Dr A Siriwardena Mr J Skuse Dr A Smith Mr T Smurthwaite Mr T Soares Mullen Dr B and Mrs P Soper Ms J Speller Mr J Spencer Mr R Stanton Mr P and Mrs S Steele Miss D J Stenson Dr R W and Mrs P Stoddart Mr R N J Sutton Mr I Taschimowitz Ms M Taylor Mrs M A Taylor Ms J Taylor Ms W Taylor Mrs C Taylor-Bruce Mrs N E G Tennant Professor D G Thompson and Dr H F Thompson Dr J S Thompson and Mrs H Thompson Dr J Tipping Dr M Tither Dr J Tomlinson

2016 2016 2010 2015 2010 2016 2004 2005 2016 2009 2008 2014 2016 1964 2014 2016 1999 2015 2017 2016 2015 2015 2010 2012 2008 2017 2008 2013 2016 2017 1994 2014 2013 2016 2009 2016 1981 1983 2013 2010

Proceedings

Mr A Treece Mr J Tucker Mrs H M Turner Mr M F Turner and Mrs J Turner Dr B J Tyler Miss K Veitch Mrs P Verdin Mrs J M Wainwright Mr Q Wang Professor T W Warnes Professor J C Waterton Mr N P Webb Mr T Webster Professor G Wedell Dr C Weinkove Ms J Whalen Mrs S A Whitaker and Mr P N Whitaker Mr T Whitehead Mr A and Mrs A M Whitfield Miss H Whitley Mr C Whittall Mr N Wilkins †Mr B D Williams and Mrs E M Williams Dr P C Williams Mr P Willson Dr W and Mrs E Wilson Mrs B Wingard Professor D Winterbone Miss A Wisten Ms J Wolff Mr A J Wood* Ms B Woodyatt Mrs C F Wright Mrs W Wright Mr B Yates Miss E Yates Mr A G D Yeaman Mr R O Yeo and Mrs C M Yeo Mr R F H Young and Mrs B Young Mr L Zastawny

The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society was founded in 1781 for the advancement of literature and science and the widening of interest in public affairs.

The Main Society meetings are open to the public as guests of the Society, as are the Society’s Young People’s Lectures.

The Memoirs have been published since 1785.

A combined author and subject index up to 1999 is available.

Cover illustration: a pamphlet on prison reform, written by Kathleen Lonsdale (LSE Library, via Wikimedia Commons).

Taken from Georgina Ferry's article: 'From Diamonds to DNA: three women who uncovered the hidden structures of nature'.