Martin Cowley 13 June 1933–20 October 2014 Fellow of Trinity 1964–2014 Tutor for Advanced Students 1983–92 Chris Morley’s address at Martin Cowley’s memorial service is followed by the comments of his sons Peter and Steven made on the same occasion.
Martin had been undergraduate, graduate student, and Research Fellow at St John’s, and moved to Trinity in 1964 on being appointed University and College Lecturer in Engineering. When I first encountered him, on myself joining Trinity in 1968, he was already ensconced as the clear leader of the teaching staff in Engineering. He had most impressive speed and deftness in organizing – at the meetings of Directors of Studies at the start of each term – the complicated timetable of supervision in the various topics, taking into account lots of constraints on timing. When recently the teaching staff turned to computers for this task, it was very difficult to devise a programme anything like as efficient as Martin’s method based on his own brain power. As a lecturer and supervisor – he taught thermodynamics and fluid mechanics – Martin was notably stimulating, always very conscientious, and took great care to present things in a clear and logical way. One of his former supervisees told me: ‘he was completely on top of the material, to the extent that he not only invariably had an answer to your question at his fingertips, but almost seemed to have anticipated it in advance’. This person said that once he discovered an error in some lectures – not Martin’s own – just a few days before the exam. Encountering Martin by chance outside the Hall, he accosted him about this – which Martin took in excellent part, and within twenty-four hours had sent a note confirming the error and what to do
T R I N I T Y A N N UA L R ECOR D 2015 171
FELLOWS, STAFF, AN D ST U DEN TS
Chris Morley Martin Cowley was a superb engineering educator and academic administrator, and Fellow of this College for fifty years. His sons Steven and Peter have spoken about Martin as a person and family man, and about his research, in which Steven in part followed in his father’s footsteps. Suffice it for me to say that I was once stopped in a corridor of the Engineering Department by a prominent Professor, who told me how clever he thought Martin was, how very much he admired his research, and how sorry he was that Martin had turned to administration.