memoir
Reflections on Mansfield Janet Dyson Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics
M
y 36 years at Mansfield have been an exciting time, as the College has gradually achieved its aims: self governance, full collegiate status and a much more secure financial future (though that still needs work), all within a growing, vibrant academic community. Most importantly I think we now have the confidence to go our own distinctive way, and build the college we want, without forever looking over our collective shoulder at what is done in other colleges. In 1977 Mansfield was a Permanent Private Hall, governed by an external Council. It had no University funded posts, and minimal endowment. We survived on student fees (and, even then, conferences), and the chief method of budgeting certainly appeared to be to spend as little as possible. Indeed, when I first arrived I asked for a blackboard. What did I get? A tiny square of hardboard (maybe two-foot square), painted black. The paint had caused it to warp and the first time I tried to write on it, it fell off the wall. Yet there was confidence. The College was expanding and, within its policy of taking reasonable numbers of undergraduates in a small number of disciplines, was moving into new subjects. Maths was to be the first science. The autonomy I was granted when I first arrived was both exciting and terrifying. There I was, a mere non-stipendiary lecturer, setting up the teaching of maths within the College: teaching the first four students, arranging other teaching, admitting the next year’s students, stocking the library, etc, etc. The following year I became a stipendiary lecturer and then after a decade (and having produced two daughters) I was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow (a device to give me a fellowship and thus a seat on the newly created Governing Body). Then, in preparation for full collegiate status, in 1993, I was one of five Mansfield Fellows to be appointed to Special (non CUF) Lecturerships (I loved the convoluted title).
10
Research
One reason I do maths is because it gives me such a buzz. Nothing produces quite the buzz that one gets from successful original research. (The downside is the frustration when things don’t come out, but let’s not go there.) For 35 years, until she retired in 2009, I collaborated with Professor Rosanna VillellaBressan from the University of Padua. Another collaborator has been Professor Glenn Webb from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and I continue to work with him (our latest paper on cell-cell adhesion has just been accepted). A collaboration that has given me particular satisfaction has been with Stephen Gourley, who is now a professor at the University of Surrey, but who was my student at Mansfield. Modern communications have made collaboration across continents far simpler. When Rosanna and I met in 1974 it was really only feasible to work by meeting face to face, and even telephone calls between Britain and Italy were difficult and expensive. The advent of fax, emails and now scanners have made it all so much easier. We tend to work with paper and pencil, so to be able to scan what I have just done and send it off is great. When this system is at its best, I work on a problem during the day, send it to Glenn in the afternoon, he does some more, returning it for me to start again next morning. Easyjet also has its uses.
Colleagues
For the first 10 years of my appointment I did everything on my own, finding tutors each year to carry out the teaching I couldn’t do. Conducting admissions on my own was particularly stressful. In 1986, the late Dr Bob Coates, whose full-time job was with the Open University, looked after the Mansfield mathematicians while I was on maternity leave, and then stayed on, becoming a stipendiary lecturer in 1989. He was magnificent. In admissions I was soft cop to his hard cop. He was a fabulous teacher, and a wise colleague. When he retired in 2003, his good work was carried on by Derek Goldrei, whom I had known since we were undergraduates, and who was also a colleague of Bob’s from the OU. Derek doesn’t do hard cop, so I had to learn a new role!
