The Fountain Issue 31 Summer 2022

Issue 31 | Summer 2022

THE

FOUNTAIN

SPOTLIGHT ON: STORIES

10

IDEAS Novelist Freya Berry on the story gap

14

PEOPLE Three Trinity storytellers from stage and screen share their stories

31 RESEARCH

Cosmologist Dr Alexandra Amon on Dark Matter’s role in the story of the Universe

© DAVID JOHNSON

Trinity Law Association Dinner, 12 March 2022.

CONTENTS Issue 31, Summer 2022 3

Welcome from a Fellow

4

Alumni news

6

College news

10 The story gap

24 Student spot: Uma-Johanna Shah

Produced by the Alumni Relations and Development Office

26 Alumni profile: Gregory Tingay

Photography: Front cover: Cast of Spring Awakening at Almeida Theatre, London. Photograph by Marc Brenner.

28 The global origins of modern science 31 Shedding light on the Dark Universe

12 A day in the life of …

Romane Thomas

34 Last Poems after a century

14 Stage and screen

36 Events

20 A gentleman’s third 22 Trinity treasures

35 Cryptic crossword

Design: H2 Associates, (Cambridge) Limited Editor: alumni-comms@trin.cam.ac.uk www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni

WELCOME

© DAVID JOHNSON

from a Fellow

“

It has been exciting to see regular life returning in the College, and fantastic to see Fellows, staff and students back again, as well as to welcome alumni for real-life events.

Welcome to the 2022 edition of The Fountain.

I was honoured to be elected Trinity’s Vice-Master in February, succeeding Professor Grae Worster (1976).

I have been a Fellow in Law at Trinity for nearly 20 years, and I am delighted to take on this new role. This academic year has been notable for both the return to something nearer normal and the College’s major new commitment to a pilot student support programme – the Trinity Maintenance Grant – a generous package which we hope will help to alleviate the financial pressures so many students are facing (see page 6).

We have also responded to the conflict in Ukraine, and one of my new responsibilities is chairing the committee overseeing the Trinity Ukraine Relief Fund (see page 7), which was established in March. The College community is committed to supporting those affected. We are tremendously grateful to all alumni who have given to the fund and have made a real difference to the support we can offer.

It has been exciting to see regular life returning in the College, and fantastic to see Fellows, staff and students back again, as well as to welcome alumni for real-life events. I was lucky enough to attend the Trinity Law Association Dinner in March (pictured left), along with nearly 100 Law alumni, and it was wonderful to be able to catch up with old friends in person. I hope that my new role will allow for many more opportunities to meet with alumni – you’ll find a list of forthcoming events on the back cover of the magazine.

Stories connect us. During difficult times, they can help us to navigate and make sense of the world and our experiences. With this in mind, this edition has a sharing stories theme.

Freya Berry (2010) writes about the stories we tell ourselves, and how they shape our lives and the lives of others – a theme she explores in her debut novel The Dictator’s Wife. Dr James Poskett (2012) reveals the global origins of modern science, uncovering the hidden contributions of scientists who don’t usually feature in standard histories. We interview three Trinity storytellers on their work on stage and screen – Rupert Goold CBE (1991), Isabel Adomakoh Young (2012) and John Haidar (2009) – and Trinity Senior Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Alexandra Amon (e2022) sheds light on her research mapping the structure and evolution of the Universe.

In our regular features, Library Graduate Trainee Lucy Dodge reveals a hidden treasure from the Wren Library, we spend a day in the life of Romane Thomas, Trinity’s Endowment Investment and Sustainability Officer, and our crossword compiler Encota (Tim King, 1980) has crafted another cryptic crossword for you to wrestle with.

I hope you enjoy the magazine. Please do keep in touch – don’t forget to share your stories with us at alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk Professor Louise Merrett (e2003) Vice-Master WELCOME FROM A FELLOW 3

USA Congratulations to James P. Farwell (1971) on the publication of The Corporate Warrior: Successful Strategies from Military Leaders to Win Your Business Battles, which is based on interviews with officers including General David Petraeus, General Sir Richard Shirreff, and Admiral James Stavridis, and applies military precepts of strategy and leadership to the business world. Order at: amzn.to/3rvVRYt

France On March 11 2022, Dr Jean Khalfa (e1994) gave a special lecture to the Cambridge Society of Paris, ‘Wifredo Lam and 20th century livres d’artiste’, at the Amphithéâtre Marie Curie.

Following the talk, Trinity alumni including Society Secretary Tony Banton (1975) enjoyed dinner with Dr Khalfa and Executive Director of Alumni Relations & Development Bill O’Hearn.

Special thanks to Christian de Juniac (1971) for his support for the dinner. cambridgesocietyofparis.com

GLOBAL

Alumni news UK Sir Laurie Bristow (1983) has been elected tenth President of Hughes Hall and will take up the post in October 2022.

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Congratulations to Helen Morgan (1993), who was elected the Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire in December 2021.

Congratulations to David Nicholson (1983) who competed in the Ironman World Championships in St George, Utah, on 7 May 2022.

He completed the 3.8km swim in an icy lake, 180km bike course in fierce winds, and an extremely hilly marathon in 38°C heat.

Italy Sumita Singha OBE RIBA (1988) has been appointed Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano in 2021–22, delivering a groundbreaking course on ‘Women in Architecture’.

Hungary Péter Juhász (2014) was recently appointed to the Order of Malta, in the junior grade of ‘Donat’, in recognition of his work with the homeless in the UK (Cambridge and Oxford).

China Chris Brown (1984) has been appointed Honorary Professor at the Heilongjiang University of International Trade and Economics. He is focusing on the prospects for regional trade with East Asia, covering north-east China, Japan, the Koreas and the Russian Far East.

Thailand Dr Sakonwan Kuhaudomlarp (2010) of the Department of Biochemistry, Mahidol University, received the 2021 Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists Young Scientist Award (Female), and she will be part of the Squash team representing Thailand in the Asian Games 2022 in September.

New Zealand Dr Chris Moyes (1964) was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to health in the New Year Honours 2022, for research into the epidemiology of Hepatitis B and multiple vaccine trials leading to a very early adoption of universal infant vaccination in New Zealand in the 1980s, and his subsequent role as medical director of the Hepatitis Foundation New Zealand.

GLOBAL ALUMNI NEWS 5

© DAVID JOHNSON

COLLEGE NEWS

Increasing support for students in need

In addition to Cambridge Bursaries and Trinity Maintenance Grants, the College also supports up to 14 International Bursaries per year.

In March, Trinity announced a new pilot programme that will be one of the most uniformly generous student support schemes in the country. This has been made possible, in part, by growing generosity from alumni for student support.

Trinity’s ambition is for students to be able to complete and enjoy their degrees without financial concerns, giving them the security to enjoy the rich cultural, social, and sporting life Cambridge has to offer.

The College recognises that many students are from backgrounds which are under pressure financially, particularly in the wake of the COVID pandemic and increases in the cost of living, and we hope the Trinity Maintenance Grant can alleviate some of that pressure.

“

You can find out more about financial support on our website: trin.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/finance/ financial-support © STEPHEN BOND

In total, students from the lowest income background will receive a financial support package of up to £8,550, covering the cost of accommodation, meals and most other regular maintenance expenses incurred as a Cambridge student. All recipients of Cambridge Bursaries will receive over £4,000.

Students have welcomed the launch of the programme, saying it will help alleviate financial stress and improve applications from groups currently underrepresented at Trinity.

It makes me feel hopeful for the future – hopeful that this will make more students from my background apply to Trinity, that the College’s efforts to increase diversity will be genuine and ongoing, and contribute to a much-needed culture shift for the University.

Harry Devlin, Second-year English student

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© DAVID JOHNSON

© ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/RARRARORRO

The Master with four of Trinity’s new Fellow Benefactors (left to right) Professor Yang Xia, David Manns, Ian Menzies-Gow and Peter Pemberton.

Trinity Relief Fund for Ukrainian Students and Scholars

Commemoration of Benefactors 2022

Trinity has set up a £250,000 relief fund for future Trinity and Cambridge students from Ukraine facing hardship arising from the invasion, and for scholars there seeking refuge at Cambridge and other universities in the UK and EU.

The College’s annual Commemoration of Benefactors Feast took place on 18 March. The evening of celebration began with a Commemoration Service in Chapel, including an address from Sir Gregory Winter (1970), followed by the admittance of four of Trinity’s new Fellow Benefactors – David Manns (1964), Ian Menzies-Gow (1962), Peter Pemberton (1963) and Professor Yang Xia (2003).

The College is very grateful for the £26,480 alumni have given to the fund, which will bolster the support available for current and future Cambridge students in need, and for other academics who have been displaced as a result of the conflict. trin.cam.ac.uk/news/trinity-sets-up-relief-fund-forukrainian-students-and-scholars

In her toast to the College, Director of Climate Zero Professor Emily Shuckburgh (1994) focused on the importance of collaboration, determination, and resolve to tackle global climate-related challenges, followed by a speech on behalf of the College from the Master, Dame Sally Davies. Both speeches will be published in this year’s Annual Record, due out in December 2022.

COLLEGE NEWS 7

© ROW 360

Trinity Responsible Investment Forum 2022 On 28 February, the student-led Trinity Responsible Investment Society held their fourth annual forum in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre and via livestream.

Trinity students, Fellows, staff, and alumni were invited to hear about progress on responsible investment in the College’s endowment and to discuss social sustainability. The Forum speakers were Jeanette Andrews, Senior Global ESG Manager at Legal and General Investment Management, Mark Campanale, Founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, the Master, Dame Sally Davies, Dr Ellen Quigley of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and Trinity Senior Bursar, Richard Turnill.

The Forum coincided with the conclusion of the College’s divestment from all fossil fuel exposure in public equities, in line with its investment policy. In February 2021 Trinity altered its investment policy so that the College’s endowment would have a dual mandate: continuing to deliver sustainable long-run return and committing to improving its environmental footprint and achieving net zero before 2050. trin.cam.ac.uk/news/update-on-responsibleinvestment Romane Thomas, Trinity’s Endowment Investment and Sustainability Officer, shares her ‘Day in the life’ on pages 12–13.

Imogen Grant and Charlie Marcus.

167th Boat Race Trinity is tremendously proud of its two amazing athletes who competed in the 167th Boat Race on Sunday 3 April.

Imogen Grant (2014), Olympic rower and Medical student, stroked the Women’s Blue Boat to victory.

In a masterly performance powering along the course, the crew set a record, winning the race in just 18 minutes 23 seconds. Their win was the fifth successive trophy for Cambridge women.

Charlie Marcus (2018), Engineering student and President of Cambridge University Boat Club, coxed the Men’s Blue Boat. Although the crew made a valiant effort, they were beaten by the Oxford boat, who broke Cambridge men’s winning streak. theboatrace.org/homepage-news/ the-gemini-boat-race-2022-race-report

© STEPHEN BOND

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The acclaimed dramatist Sir Peter Shaffer (1926–2016) described student life as ‘heaven’ and Cambridge ‘an astonishing place for many reasons.’ Trinity is collaborating with the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation to support an aspiring playwright-in-residence in his memory.

The Peter Shaffer Postgraduate Award for Playwrighting will enable a young playwright to craft and stage a new play supported by a twelvemonth playwright-in-residence award, which provides a maintenance grant, research allowance and accommodation.

The opportunity is open to any student who graduated from a UK university within the last five years. The first recipient will take up the post from October 2022, and during their twelve months at

Great Court Circle Luncheon On 10 April, we welcomed back alumni who have informed Trinity of their intention to leave a legacy to the College for the annual Great Court Circle lunch.

Circle members enjoyed catching up over drinks in the Ante-Chapel and lunch in Hall, followed by a special organ recital in Chapel and a visit to the Wren Library.

© SHAFFER FAMILY

The Peter Shaffer Postgraduate Award for Playwriting

Peter Shaffer as an undergraduate.

Trinity they will be mentored by an academic while they develop their play, which must be staged before the year’s end.

Discover more on the website: trin.cam.ac.uk/news/new-playwright-opportunityin-honour-of-sir-peter-shaffer

To discover more about remembering Trinity in your will, please visit the website. trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/supporting-trinity/legacy

Catching up in the Ante-Chapel.

© DAVID JOHNSON

COLLEGE NEWS 9

THE STORY GAP

by Freya Berry (2010)

Humans love stories. We can’t help ourselves: we are suckers for anecdotes, gossip, tales. Studies have shown that if we are told information in the form of narrative, we will retain it better than if just presented with facts and figures. Likewise, if presented with an object for sale, we will ascribe that object a higher value if it comes with a story attached.

People in power know well how to exploit this. It was Imelda Marcos who said, ‘Perception is real, and the truth is not.’ Subjectivity, not objectivity. Stories, not facts. Taking back control. Making a nation great again. We like to think we are objective, rational creatures, making logical decisions based on evidence, and this very belief makes it all the more easy for us to be manipulated.

I wanted to explore this in my novel The Dictator’s Wife, which was published in February. Set in post-Cold War eastern Europe, it follows a captivating tyrant’s wife standing trial for her dead husband’s crimes. I had been a reporter on the 2016 US election and began writing it directly afterwards, with the establishment still reeling in shock at the result. They – we – had been telling the wrong story all along.

To create my dictator’s wife, I drew on real-life figures. It is interesting that many first ladies know first-hand how to shape a story, or at least how to exist in someone

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else’s. Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, was an actress, as was Evita; Rosario Murillo, wife of Daniel Ortega, was a poet.

Carrie Johnson was a press officer; Melania Trump, a model. Women have so long been the walk-on parts in men’s stories; the clever ones are able to weaponize this. My own character, Marija Popa, is in her early sixties, a glamorous shapeshifter and master PR woman. I wanted the reader to be constantly asking – is she innocent, or is she complicit? Has she softened her husband, or has she whitewashed him? Is she, one character asks rhetorically, the kind of woman who launders clothes or the kind that launders money?

Ambiguity clings still to the roles of women and the spaces we leave for them: the gap between tradition and modern progress lingers on. Like Imelda Marcos in her 1990 New York trial, Marija protests that she is only a housewife, a mere woman who knew nothing of her husband’s activities. Yet at the same time, she is known to be the power behind the regime. ‘The Little Mother had the curious double-sidedness of a

“

To create my dictator’s wife, I drew on real-life figures. It is interesting that many first ladies know first-hand how to shape a story, or at least how to exist in someone else’s.

Rubin vase,’ her female defence lawyer says. ‘You could perceive one image, or another, but trying to see both at the same time made your head spin.’

It is the same feeling I have when looking at, say, Melania Trump. How could we seek to #FreeMelania when this very woman wore that notorious Zara jacket? How can we condemn Carrie Johnson for her presence at Downing Street parties and alleged sway over her husband when she has just given birth?

Rightly or wrongly, women are still perceived as being closer to home, in every sense. We are kept inseparable from our bodies and their functions, which is both a strength and a weakness.

I was a journalist at Reuters before I ever thought of writing a novel. Our lives are the tales we tell ourselves, my lawyer character remarks, but they are also the tales we tell to other people; and some of us manage our PR better than others. As a journalist I interviewed dozens of bankers, CEOs and billionaires.

It was an education in dissimulation. The charming mining executive who was busily infringing human rights in east Asia. The bankers who blithely talked of ‘synergies’ their clients could extract from mergers and acquisitions, which I quickly learned meant firing people. And best of all, the women in business, like rare and exotic birds, if birds had immaculate blow-dries, every one of them as tough as their perfect nails.

They had to be. I had the sense that the men just were, whoever they happened to be; the women had to perform characterised versions of themselves. It was from them that I began to gather a sense of the charade that is womanhood, a seed that was planted in sessions with my Cambridge tutors reading Jane Austen. ‘I cannot get out, as the starling said,’ quotes Maria in Mansfield Park, staring through the iron gates.

Women are far more beholden to stories than men, because the roles available are so few, and therefore all the more distinctive. Maiden, mother, crone, goes the old saying. First Lady – a patronising label nonetheless reminiscent of Eve. In The Dictator’s Wife, I sought to create a character who would grab such roles by the neck and shake them until whatever she wanted fell out. It occurred to me during my research that the last time I read about a woman so hellbent on gaining power, the person in question was Lady Macbeth – and we all know how that turned out. ‘Unsex me,’ she wisely asks, when preparing to commit her crimes. To be a woman is to have one’s hands tied.

There are currently only 14 countries led by women, and last year perhaps the most famous female leader, Angela Merkel, stepped down after sixteen years.

‘Mutti’, the Germans called her. Mother. Would we pigeonhole a man so neatly, no matter how warmly the label is intended? To return to Imelda Marcos for a moment: ‘The problem with First Ladies is that you have to set the standard. My role is to be both star and slave.’ I hope that we are gaining the imagination to create other roles for women – or, better still, to allow them to create them for themselves.

The Dictator’s Wife is out now with Headline Review.

Available here bit.ly/3KHstWp or in all good bookstores. @freyabbooks @freyabbooks

THE STORY GAP 11

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

Romane Thomas Trinity Endowment Investment and Sustainability Officer

Q Tell us about your role and how you came to be at Trinity.

Q What are the goals you are working towards, and the challenges you are facing?

I am the Investment and Sustainability Officer for the endowment of the College, where I oversee our investments in securities and all sustainability initiatives. I work in the Senior Bursar’s Office, and we are a small and dynamic team, passionate about the College and helping to fund its charitable objectives.

You’ll know that early in 2021 the College announced changes to its investment policy, committing to divesting from all fossil fuel investments in public equities by the end of that year, which we achieved.

Trinity’s endowment also committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions before 2050. This is a real challenge, not only for Trinity but for all organisations.

I came to be at Trinity through a secondment from my previous work in management consulting in Switzerland, and first worked with the Master, Dame Sally Davies, before moving across Great Court to focus on our investments and sustainability initiatives. I have found it incredibly fulfilling ever since.

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What does achieving net zero mean and how do we get there? This is the problem I am helping to solve for Trinity’s endowment. One unique aspect is that 50% of the investments are in property. For example, the College owns Felixstowe Docks, the Cambridge Science Park, and the O2 Arena. How do we decarbonise these

assets? It presents significant challenges, but also exciting opportunities to have tangible real-world impact. Nothing can be achieved without close coordination with our tenants, which is why we are very focused on engagement at the moment.

Q What does a typical day look like for you?

Part of the reason I enjoy my work is because of its significant variety. My days can go from organising a tenant engagement event on the Cambridge Science Park, to meeting with the Reservicing team at Buckingham Palace to share learnings, to writing a set of recommendations for the Trinity Subcommittee on Sustainable Investment. It can involve working with our consultants on the baseline carbon emissions of the endowment, speaking with students about the upcoming annual general meetings they will be attending, and engaging with banks along with a coalition of investors to move them to change their fossil fuel financing policies.

Of course, I work closely with the Senior Bursar, Richard Turnill, and his office team, Trinity students, and with Fellows who lend their time to work on sustainability topics. For example, I recently organised a field visit to the Trimley Nature Reserve with members of Trinity’s Investment Committee and Subcommittee on Sustainable Investment (comprising Fellows, staff, advisors, and alumni). We spoke about biodiversity and rewilding with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust who manage the site for the College and discussed potential opportunities for expansion and further environmental outcomes.

Q What do you most like about working at Trinity?

What is so energising is that I am always working with others on these topics. Climate change matters to the College, and the Trinity community wants to be involved. Fellows and students are a great source of problem-solving inspiration for the College and its environmental goals. They bring very different perspectives to the table depending on their personal expertise and experience, from economics to mathematics, to engineering and beyond. It helps us get to a better answer. We’re fortunate that our students are engaged with our work and passionate about making positive change. The Trinity Responsible Investment Society for example, leads an annual Forum every year on responsible investment (see College news page 8). This is open to alumni, and I would encourage all who can to attend!

Q What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

One of the advantages of working at Trinity is having access to the broader University community, and its societies and clubs. When I arrived in Cambridge, I became a member of the Cambridge University Gliding Club and have been flying gliders for a little over a year now. It is a great group and there are regular trial flights for any interested alumni. What’s more, gliders are the greenest way to fly! cugc.org.uk/join.

The wildlife rich Trimley Marshes Nature Reserve began as a blank canvas in 1990 and was designed to mitigate the loss of the Fagbury Mudflats with the expansion of Felixstowe port.

Gliding at the Gransden Lodge Airfield.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF… ROMANE THOMAS 13

Stage and screen Three Trinity storytellers talk about finding inspiration, next chapters, and the future of the arts in a post-pandemic world.

Rupert Goold CBE (1991) Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity.

I started out as an assistant director to Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse, then went to Salisbury Playhouse, freelanced for a few years, became Artistic Director at Northampton theatres, then Associate Director at the RSC, founded Headlong Theatre Company and since 2013 have been Artistic Director at the Almeida. I’ve squeezed in a few movies and musicals along the way.

Q Did anyone in particular inspire you? How did you get started?

My mentor was Jonathan Church who was Artistic Director at Salisbury Playhouse when I arrived as a trainee and believed in me enough to let me direct. I owe him everything.

Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about?

I’m working on a new play about post-Soviet Russia and the rise of the oligarchs that is chilling, and a new musical with Elton John that is warming.

© CHRIS MCANDREW

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of?

In terms of legacy, it’s probably a production of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart that went to the West End and Broadway. The film we made of it in 2010 is still the one studied in most schools, which I’m very proud of. I also made a Turandot for ENO that was absolutely murdered by the press which I adored!

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like?

I think audiences are desperate to come back. The pandemic reminded us how much we miss live performance and the communal humanism of theatre.

It also accelerated the gold-rush of streamer-led film and TV being made in the UK. There has never been a better time to be a writer, technician, or performer in this country in terms of opportunity. I hope the Government continues to offer incentivising tax breaks for work made here because the arts are of incalculable financial and reputational value to the nation, particularly in this post-pandemic, postBrexit landscape. Above all though, I want to see the desperate and self-defeating cuts to arts provision in schools ended. Every child deserves and needs access to culture as they grow up, it should be the first line of the curriculum.

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almeida.co.uk @AlmeidaTheatre @Almeida_Theatre

STAGE AND SCREEN 15

© MARC BRENNER

Spring Awakening – dir. Rupert Goold – Almeida (Dec 2021 – Jan 2022).

Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors?

There are too many directors, far too many actors and nowhere near enough writers. By which I mean face up to the odds and the precedents at each step of the way as honestly as you can and look for the gaps and opportunities. You may have to take the long way round but as long as you keep moving that’s ok, there’s no point arriving before you are ready. Also, if you can use even a tenth of the time you spend worrying about how to get on doing something creative instead, you’ll get there in the end.

Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why?

Jean-Luc Godard or Paul Thomas Anderson, to understand how they balance what is pre-planned with what is discovered. That equilibrium is the intuitive mystery of directing.

Isabel Adomakoh Young (2012)

more to learn, I joined the National Youth Theatre Rep company, a nine-month programme incorporating training and three productions with professional directors. I got to play Lady Macbeth in a West End theatre, which was an unbelievable thrill.

Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity.

I read English at Trinity. I knew I loved stories, and live art, and working with people, but I was by no means one of the determined young actors inviting agents to university shows!

Just a week after Rep ended, I was catapulted into the Royal Shakespeare Company; ensemble and understudy roles (I fulfilled the spear-carrier cliché with pride!) allowed me to learn fast. The pandemic spurred me on to develop my audio career – as the only thing that can be done remotely – then lately Foundation, an Apple TV adaptation of the sci-fi books by Isaac Asimov, has taken me to Limerick, Tenerife and Prague.

Justina Kehinde cast me in For Colored Girls at Queens’, and my love of performing was rekindled. I fitted plays in as best I could around academic work, then did an internship at a literary agency in London. I signed with an acting agent when that ended, but with

© LILY BERTRAND-WEBB

Q Did anyone in particular inspire you?

Cush Jumbo’s versatility in her one-woman play Josephine & I always sticks with me. I was mesmerised by her capacity to bring a story alive and keep the whole room transfixed, alone. I grew up loving Josephine Baker too, so I felt this lineage of women of colour performers.

Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about?

My first TV role was in Heartstopper, a Netflix adaptation of these lovely comics about two boys who fall in love at school, and that’s being released now, so I’m excited for the responses to that, especially from young LGBTQ people seeing some of their stories told with real heart and authenticity. Also, our drag company Pecs Drag Kings, formed with other Cambridge alumnae, turns 10 next year, so there’ll be some great anniversary shows and parties around that.

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of?

In summer 2021 I played Juliet at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which had been rescheduled from the year before. I was nervous when I got the role, then even more nervous finally going into rehearsals 18

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@Isabel_ay @bellefrog

Curtain call for the cast of Romeo and Juliet (2021).

months later. Post-lockdowns, safety was a distant dream – both in terms of confidence in my capacity, and literal safety from the dreaded bug. Thanks to a brave and gracious team, we eventually opened a great show under the evening sky, with the much-missed exhilaration of a live audience… and I won a Black British Theatre Award for Best Lead Actress!

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like?

The lockdowns reminded people how important film and TV are culturally, and the recent years’ boom seems to be continuing in those sectors, but unfortunately theatre has taken some huge hits, live audiences being a complex prospect these days.

So, venues and companies are struggling to rebuild.

A lot of the all too scarce financial aid has gone to big institutions, so I fear theatre’s losing freelancers rapidly, especially ones without family privileges to fall back on. That said, grassroots is lighter on its feet and more responsive – people will keep making art. We have to, now more than ever. I do hope that that time for self-reflection will spur necessary change across the arts, too.

Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors?

Keep notes! Document what you notice, what you read, people with unusual habits, good stories from the pub, what you made of a film you just saw. My Mum calls it ‘the compost heap’. Actors, the best thing you can do is know who you are and what you’re about, to prepare for an industry that will try to define you. Because so much – what job you get, where you work, when you work – is out of your hands, knowing yourself will serve you well. That and how to do your accounts.

Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why?

Lately I’ve been really sad never to have worked with Helen McCrory. There are so many amazing artists through history, but we really could have crossed paths, and the more I revisit her Medea at the National, or her Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders, the more I realise I could have learned from her. Thankfully she leaves those wonderful performances behind for us to treasure.

STAGE AND SCREEN 17

© DAVID JENSEN

isabeladomakohyoung.com

John Haidar (2009) Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity.

After graduating with a BA in English from Trinity, then an MA in Theatre Directing from RADA, I worked as an assistant and associate director at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Court, the National Theatre and in the West End with directors including Howard Davies, Michael Grandage and James Macdonald. I also trained on the National Theatre Directors’ Course. I then started to direct my own productions in theatres including Bristol Old Vic, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Trafalgar Studios and the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York. Since the onset of the pandemic, I’ve been writing too, developing

Richard III – dir. John Haidar – Bristol Old Vic (2019).

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projects for theatre and television. This year, I’ve been reading for the MSt in English (1900–Present) at Merton College, Oxford, but will return to directing in September with a new production of Hamlet.

Q Did anyone in particular inspire you? How did you get started?

I had a brilliant English teacher at school who took us on a trip to the RSC – the first time I’d been there – which was especially influential, I think. It was to see a production of Henry V, which formed part of the Histories Cycle directed by Michael Boyd. Having initially found Shakespeare a bit difficult to engage with, it completely drew me in. That was a lightbulb moment, for sure.

© MARC BRENNER

I didn’t live in London until I moved there to go to drama school, though. So, on an even more fundamental level, it’s about identifying creative outlets wherever you can, especially if theatre isn’t easily accessible to you, as it hadn’t been for me. That meant immersing myself in storytelling in different forms, whether art, books, film or TV, which I know have been the foundations for other theatremakers too.

Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about?

Rehearsals for Hamlet begin in September and the production will be at Bristol Old Vic in October and November. I love working there – it’s the oldest continually-operating theatre in the English-speaking world and it truly is a beautiful space, replete with its own theatrical ghosts. To know that generations of iconic performers since David Garrick have played on that stage – including one of my favourite actors, Peter O’Toole, with his first Hamlet – is really special.

Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why?

Someone I’ve revisited recently, because of the Masters I’m working on, is Samuel Beckett – in my opinion, one of the most significant practitioners in post-war theatre. While I’m inspired every day by different figures from history, I’m also excited to continue discovering meaningful collaborations in the here and now, whether that’s with those I’ve never worked with before or by developing existing creative partnerships further.

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of?

One of the pieces I’m still most proud of is the first I directed – The Alchemist by Ben Jonson – which was produced by the Marlowe Society at the ADC Theatre when I was an undergraduate. I was meant to act in it, but the production had to be cancelled due to cast illness. Since many of the cast and crew then graduated, I, along with the producer, fundraised to cover our losses and restaged it the following year, but with me directing rather than acting. It was great to be able to welcome some of Cambridge’s illustrious performing arts alumni to see it. Almost a decade later, I was invited back to Cambridge to direct Othello, again for the Marlowe Society, which has an annual tradition of performing at the Arts Theatre stretching back to 1938. In terms of shows performed elsewhere, to see our production of Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh transfer from London to New York was, of course, another highlight.

michaelgrandagecompany.com/ biographies/creative-agency/ john-haidar @JohnHaidar @john.haidar

© MARC BRENNER

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like?

I think, as an industry, we’re still not out of the woods, to be honest. So many colleagues are struggling to keep their shows going due to illness, isolation and the consequent unpredictability of scheduling, which has meant audience confidence has taken a hit. While theatre continues to recover from the greatest challenge to our cultural life in recent memory, it is in need of a commitment to emerging artists to ensure its future. As part of this process, the direction that new writing takes – incorporating previously underrepresented voices – is essential to its ecology, especially in the current climate, as we seek to understand the series of international crises we’re living through.

bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/hamlet

Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors?

I suppose I can only speak about my own experience and say that, for me, it was (and is) helpful to see as much theatre as possible. It is one of the reasons why this pandemic has been so destructive for the performing arts – because of the necessary distance it puts between us and the in-person experience.

STAGE AND SCREEN 19

IN PRAISE OF A GENTLEMAN’S THIRD

by Professor Cleveland Stewart-Patterson (1952)

Looking back 70 years, Trinity was a different place than it is now. I thought readers might be interested in a perspective from that time, which may be shocking to more recent graduates!

It has been observed by one graduate that ‘Cambridge is not primarily a place of learning or a place of examination. It is a place where you live for three years.’* My three years of Cambridge life were formally acknowledged by the granting, with great ceremony, of a ‘Gentleman’s Third’. My tutor was sadly disappointed in me. I was not disappointed, for the outcome was not, I assured myself, the just reward for stupidity or sloth; it was the result of choice.

I arrived at Trinity from Canada in 1952 with outstanding school marks and a Dominion and Colonial Exhibition. After graduation, I pursued a successful business life, obtained an MBA and a PhD in Management from McGill University and retired as an Emeritus Professor of Finance at a respectable

The Cambridge University ski team (likely 1955) included O’Donnell Redfern (1952, 2nd from left), Chris Gladstone (1952, 3rd from right), and me (2nd from right).

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university. I like to think that my tutor would have softened his disapproval had he been alive.

However, in my three years at Trinity, I was a miserable failure if assessed by the formal criteria of the Natural Sciences Tripos. All I managed to salvage from my unfocused studies was a joyous, mind-expanding, life-changing, educational experience. It has also been observed that ‘a man learns his job after he has got it, and not before; what is required of him is not knowledge, but the capacity to learn’. At Trinity, I may not have acquired enough knowledge of the kind required to excel in exams, but I did acquire a lifelong joy in learning about the wonders of the world in which I worked and lived. I retained little scientific fact but owe much to the rigorous scientific way of thought that I absorbed from my tutors and fellow students.

It would be tedious to expand on my Trinity experiences at any length except to highlight a few that led me to the deliberate pursuit of my inglorious Third.

I came up to Trinity full of carefully prescribed book learning from school and a year as an undergraduate at McGill but woefully ignorant of the wider world.

The freedom that Cambridge offered to allocate one’s own time, to attend or not attend lectures in one’s subject, to attend any lecture one wished in unrelated subjects, to roam the stacks of the University Library, and to ’rub brains’ with outstanding tutors one-onone, was extraordinary. I attended labs and dutifully carried out my tutors’ assignments but spent the bulk of my academic energies wandering through the unexplored territories which beckoned me from outside my official field of study. I remember attending exhilarating lectures by Pevsner on architecture, Needham on Chinese civilisation, Joan Robinson on economics, Kitson-Clark on British history, and many

At Versailles in August 1955, with our trusty 1927 Rolls Royce.

Left to right: Michael Whitehead (Christ’s 1953), John Buxton (1952), Fred Warwick (Christ’s 1953) and me, taken by the fifth member of our expedition, Richard Oliver (1952).

others. To the extent that I remained interested in science, I was more fascinated by the deep questions raised in lectures by Dirac, Hoyle, and Bragg than I was in the nuts and bolts of doing physics. I spent many happy hours in the Library and in bookstores, and with friends more knowledgeable than I, exploring the ideas that emanated from these luminaries.

Graduation day.

Much of my most valuable Trinity experience was non-academic and was enjoyed away from Great Court. The three long vacations allowed me to travel with good friends the length and breadth of Europe, from Trondheim to Istanbul, generally hitchhiking and camping or hostelling, but on one occasion driving around Spain for six weeks in a 1927 Rolls Royce (see us above!). Travelling in the early 1950s was quite different from touring today, and I have many fading slides of my companions standing in the middle of an empty Parthenon, sleeping on the ground in the shadow of the Lion Gate at Mycenae or the pillars of Paestum. We did the Grand Tour but we also met many people in all walks of life and from many cultures.

Winter also took me away to Europe. I won a half Blue in skiing and was a member of the British Universities’ team for three years. This required me to spend six weeks each Christmas break training and racing against teams from France, Italy, Austria, and other countries, as well as against Oxford. I also gained valuable management experience as a member of the committee which organised the transportation and housing of some 400 Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates and hangers-on at a resort each year.

Finally, of course, were the many friends that I made at Trinity and in other Colleges. These too took up much of the time that I should have been spending on my Tripos, but perhaps I learned as much from

Hitchhiking through Europe; with Michael Whitehead in the empty theatre at Epidaurus, Greece, in 1954.

them as I did in any activity. They, like my other wonderful College experiences, have had a lasting influence. I can sum up Trinity as a wondrous place, where even a so-called third-class degree gives you a first-class education. *E. C. Pearce, Master of Corpus Christi 1914–1927.

Dr Cleveland Stewart-Patterson is Emeritus Professor of Finance, Concordia University, Montreal.

IN PRAISE OF A GENTLEMAN’S THIRD 21

Trinity treasures TRINITY’S TRACHTENBUCH: A COLOURFUL COSTUME BOOK FROM 16TH CENTURY NUREMBURG. Library Graduate Trainee Lucy Dodge reveals her treasure from the collections.

Every year, the College recruits a Library Graduate Trainee who assists the permanent staff in the day-today running of the Library, all the while benefiting from valuable work experience and teaching opportunities.

The traineeship is undertaken prior to seeking a formal qualification in librarianship.

Since the start of my traineeship in September 2021, I have had contact with the Library’s special collections by assisting readers at the Wren Desk, supervising undergraduate and postgraduate classes, and helping with bibliographical checking. It is a pleasure and privilege to be able to work with these collections on a daily basis; the fetching and shelving of materials never feels like a laborious task when you are handling such wonderful manuscripts and printed books.

YOUR HISTORY

One such book is a German Trachtenbuch (or ‘costume book’), printed in Nuremburg in 1577. The introduction is signed by the German publisher and printer Hans

Weigel, and most of the illustrations are by Jost Amman, a Swiss-German artist.

The book initially caught my eye as a result of its rich pictorial contents. Inside there are 219 single page woodcuts, all hand-coloured, depicting a wide variety of men and women from around the world in national and regional dress. Though other copies of the book exist, not all of them contain woodcuts that have been hand-coloured in such a striking fashion.

Along with the depiction of gender and geography, the illustrations are also specific in showing people from different social classes. The full-length figures range from a Turkish high priest to a maid from Gdańsk, and from a Persian lord to a Moorish woman of Granada.

One of my favourite plates shows a noblewoman from Naples. Her dress is particularly vivid, combining the complementary colours of blue and orange, and she carries a bright fixed feather fan as an accessory.

The College Archivists preserve and collect records documenting and illustrating the history of Trinity and the lives of its members.

We are keen to hear from alumni who have records which they would be happy to donate to the College for permanent preservation.

We are interested in a wide range of material, particularly items which help to illustrate the everyday life of Fellows and students: photographs of rooms, sports, performances, and social occasions; club and society records;

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letters, diaries, reminiscences, and posters, films, and recordings.

If you have items you think might be of interest, please email us at archives@trin.cam.ac.uk or call us on +44 (0)1223 338488.

Above: ‘A Neapolitan noblewoman– one of my favourite illustrations.

Clockwise from top middle: The vibrant title page, and three more examples of the colourful costumes and scenes contained between the covers.

Bound in tanned leather, the cover is decorated with blind and gold tooling, along with two gold-leaf engravings. The book’s title page is particularly vibrant. The title itself is printed in red and black ink, surrounded by a colourful and ornate border, which includes a panel with allegorical figures from the four then-known continents. Written half in Latin and half in German, the title notes that the costumes within the book are ‘very entertaining’ to look at.

Costume books of this kind began to be produced in the second half of the sixteenth century, and can be seen as attempts at achieving a global mapping of dress.

They are contemporaneous with efforts in cartography to publish an atlas of the whole world – indeed, Trinity’s costume book was printed just seven years after the publication of the first world atlas (1570).

Related to both this mapping trend, as well as the prevalence in the 16th century of organising knowledge in an encyclopaedic manner, costume books also tried to assign social status and behavioural traits to the figures they depicted. In Trinity’s copy, this endeavour was strengthened by the addition of small verses in German underneath each woodcut, which refer to the supposed conduct and morality of the individual.

This intriguing item from Trinity’s collections has recently been digitised, and can be viewed online via the Wren Digital Library – search L.11.33. Digitisation allows a wider audience to access the treasures held within Trinity’s special collections, and I encourage you to look at our colourful costume book, along with the other beautiful materials available to view virtually: trin.cam.ac.uk/library/wren-digital-library TRINITY TREASURES 23

STUDENT SPOT

Uma-Johanna Shah (2019, Spanish & German)

Meet Uma-Johanna, a linguist with designs on the art world.

Diptych, Trinity Lane, Collages.

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I am a third year at Trinity, studying Spanish and German.

My Cambridge experience certainly has been a strange one so far, spending more of my time away from College than in it! However, even in the time I have spent away, during lockdowns and on my year abroad, I have been able to join a number of student-led projects which demonstrate and amplify the incredible talent of the students here.

Over the first lockdown, I joined Untangling the Knot, a University-wide project documenting the experiences – good, bad, and ugly – of students of colour at Cambridge and other UK universities. Not only did this project allow me to reflect on my own experiences, but also to feel a sense of community that the University cannot necessarily create. Through others’ stories, I became conscious of the tension between my wish

to stay true to my heritage and my desire to assimilate into, and even to thrive, in a white majority space. I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Mixedracefaces (a global platform dedicated to sharing the experiences of mixed-race people) on a project centred on navigating mixed identity at the University of Cambridge.

Over the second lockdown, I began working as a designer for the inaugural issue of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art, created by a fellow Trinity student Alexander (Sami) Kardos-Nyheim (2018). I was drawn to the project because it addresses the intersections of areas which have always interested me, reconciling my passion for art, literature, philosophy, and politics, and introducing me to legal debate which coincides with these themes.

However, I had not imagined the potential that this publication would have within the academic and professional worlds; its impressive scope and varied contributions from students and experts alike led to the instant success of the first issue. I am now Head of Design and Online Strategy and I look forward to the release of the second issue this summer!

I have always had a strong interest in art, both as viewer and as artist, and I have tried to pursue this throughout my university career. On my year abroad, I have so far had the opportunity to study History of Art at the University of Málaga (and to make some art-world connections I hope will be very helpful in the future!). My ambition is to work in the creative industries, perhaps pursuing more design-related jobs or curatorial positions. As well as this, creating art, particularly collages, is one of my favourite ways to spend my time, and Cambridge has recently been a great source of inspiration, as you’ll see in my work Diptych, Trinity Lane.

Visit the Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art website: cjlpa.org Thank you to Uma-Johanna for allowing us to reproduce her collages. You can see more of her design projects and artworks on her website: ujs23.myportfolio.com

STUDENT SPOT 25

ALUMNI PROFILE

Gregory Tingay (1985 English and Art History)

Artistic Director of Studio Pottery London, Gregory Tingay shares his passion for clay, community, and connection.

My career has been unusual – pottery a constant thread. Born in Zimbabwe, I first threw on the wheel aged fifteen. Sixth Form at an English monastic school was where I discovered the pull of monastic life. I wanted to join immediately; the monks sent me off to take my place at Trinity. I read English and Art History and established lifelong friends, one of them being Anthony Wilson (1985), who would later marry my sister. I worked with another, Edmund de Waal (Trinity Hall 1983), on the Students’ Committee of Kettle’s Yard. We made performance art with food: a Marinetti Luncheon and a Dining Triptych. Pineapple chunks in coffee. A pudding-themed panel with a rose of cake and Blakean inscription ‘Oh Rose thou art sick’ in whipped cream. We were young.

After graduation, I taught Art History in Harare and tutored child stars on a film. Film-set friends spoke of Buckfast Abbey, Devon, and its stained-glass tradition.

This appealed and I joined as a novice in 1990. I was soon drawn to the pottery run by Mary Boys-Adams.

Deaf from birth, she lip-read and instructed me with the rigour of her own training as an apprentice of Bernard Leach in 1940s St Ives. Leach pioneered Studio Pottery, fusing Japanese Mingei aesthetics with dying English artisanal traditions.

Mary’s stories birthed me into this lineage. She took me to drink ‘Stone Sentinels’ 2019.

tea with his son, David, from his fluted celadon cups.

His son John gave me a masterclass in pulling handles.

Mary encouraged me as I first explored sgraffito: scratched decoration through polychromatic slips.

A perennial obsession with pattern.

At the millennium I moved to Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight, where I was mentored by Molly Attrill with Arts Council funding. Molly encouraged me to throw bigger and bolder forms to match my decoration. In 2008 I made the momentous decision to leave monastic life after nearly twenty years.

I came to London to live with my family. My brotherin-law chanced across a quiet pottery in Dartmouth Park with space. Ten happy years ensued. I started to teach and to exhibit. When it closed in 2018, a pupil – Lucy Attwood – suggested we collaborate on a larger membership and teaching studio. As this took shape, I had three exhilarating and productive months as Artist in Residence at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset.

Studio Pottery London, Belgravia, was designed by another pupil echoing Bauhaus and Japanese minimalism. Edmund de Waal opened it in 2019, describing it as a place of beauty. We offer our members use of our facilities and strive to build community. People come to learn how to throw individually and in groups. Working with clay can be a therapeutic experience. To centre the clay on the wheel as it spins is to centre the person. It connects us with our humanity: useful vessels have been shaped of clay for millennia. Rooted in function, pottery aspires also to beauty. Mentoring members, teaching newcomers to make their first cylinder – the pleasure this gives is always fresh. It is a good path.

© @BENTAYLORPORTRAITS

‘Voyage to the Moon’ 2019.

@gregorytingay @studiopotterylondon

ALUMNI PROFILE 27

© DUSAN TODOROVIC

studio-pottery-london.com

THE GLOBAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE

by Dr James Poskett (2012)

For well over a century, historians have been searching for the origins of modern science.

You’re probably familiar with the traditional story of the ‘scientific revolution’, the period between 1500 and 1700 when leading European figures challenged ancient wisdom and proposed radical new scientific theories. This was the period in which the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus put the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the centre of the universe. It was the period in which the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei first observed the moons of Jupiter. And it was the period in which Newton himself set out the laws of motion in his Principia (1687).

Where did modern science come from? As a reader of The Fountain, you may be thinking that the answer is obvious. Surely modern science was invented at Trinity College? From the mathematician Isaac Newton to the physicist Ernest Rutherford, Trinity has long been home to some of the world’s most influential scientists.

That’s true, but what about the world outside of Great Court? In my new book, I push the history of science, not just beyond Trinity College, but beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific fit into the story. Despite what we’re often told, modern science was not invented in Europe.

Rather, new research has started to reveal the global origins of modern science. © MPIWG LIBRARY / STAATSBIBLIOTHEK BERLIN.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s ‘Tusi couple’, which enabled Copernicus to solve a major problem with his model of the universe.

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Historians of science certainly disagreed on some things, such as the causes and timing of the scientific revolution. But very few stopped to ask whether they were looking in the right place to begin with. Was modern science really a product of Europe alone? As it turns out, European science was not quite as unique as historians had often assumed. What’s more, many of the great breakthroughs made by famous European figures were in fact reliant on their connections to the wider world.

Copernicus is a good example. In On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), he cites five Islamic authors, including the Iberian astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji and the Mesopotamian mathematician Al-Battani. For much of his astronomical data, Copernicus relied on the Alfonsine Tables, an updated compilation of a set of earlier tables produced by astronomers in Muslim Spain. Copernicus also borrowed a very important geometrical technique from the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.

Known as the ‘Tusi couple’, this combination of two circles – a smaller one rotating inside a larger one – allowed Copernicus to solve a major problem with his

© PORTRAITS OF MODERN JAPANESE HISTORICAL FIGURES (HTTPS://WWW.NDL.GO.JP/PORTRAIT/). © AIP EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL ARCHIVES, GIFT OF SUBRAHMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR.

Above: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, published 1543. Top right: Japanese physicist Nagaoka Hantaro (1865–1950).

Bottom right: Portrait of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Fellow of Trinity College, 1934

model of the universe. The Tusi couple helped account for the characteristic ‘wobble’ of the planets as they move around the Sun, something that was especially important prior to the development of more complex models of planetary motion. On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres even features an exact copy of al-Tusi’s diagram. Without it, Copernicus would not have been able to put the Sun at the centre of the universe.

There’s a bigger story here. It isn’t just that Copernicus happened to be drawing on a range of Islamic authors.

Rather, he was writing at a time when new ideas and manuscripts were reaching Europe. Following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453, many Byzantine Greeks fled west, often to Italy. They brought with

them translations of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, as well as earlier original works by ancient Greek and Roman authors. At the same time, there was constant traffic across the Mediterranean between Italian city states and the Ottoman Empire. Vatican envoys and Venetian traders would return from Istanbul with new scientific manuscripts, many of which are now housed in the Vatican Library.

Copernicus himself most likely learned about al-Tusi’s ideas during his time studying in Rome and Bologna.

It was ultimately the wider world of cultural exchange which fuelled the scientific revolution.

This idea – that global cultural exchange is at the heart of modern science – runs throughout my

THE GLOBAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SCIENCE 29

“

Trinity has also been home to scientists from many different countries and cultures, whether that was the Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa or the Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Still, there is much more work to be done to diversify science, particularly at Cambridge. My hope is that a more representative history of science will inspire a new generation of global scientists, both at Trinity and beyond.

book, which covers the period from the fifteenth century right up to the present. And once we think in these terms, we can also uncover the many hidden contributions of scientists who don’t normally feature in standard histories.

Take Hantaro Nagaoka, a Japanese physicist who is largely unknown outside of his home country.

Nagaoka was born into a samurai family in the middle of the nineteenth century, just before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. He realised that the samurai needed to modernise in order to survive, and so decided to study physics at the recently established University of Tokyo. Nagaoka went on to have a brilliant career, travelling the world, attending scientific conferences, and working with many of the most famous physicists of the day. And in 1903, he made his first big breakthrough.

At a meeting of the Tokyo Mathematico-Physical Society, Nagaoka presented his theory of the ‘Saturnian atom’. The atom, Nagaoka argued, had to be made up of a large positively-charged centre surrounded by orbiting negatively-charged particles.

It was rather like the planet Saturn, with its rings, hence the name. Over the next few years, Nagaoka went on to develop his theory further, explaining how electromagnetic waves would interact, and be dispersed, when they interacted with an atom.

Hang on a minute, I hear you say. Didn’t Ernest Rutherford discover the structure of the atom? That’s certainly what I was told at school. But the real story is more complex, and is another example of global cultural exchange in action. After all, Rutherford’s famous paper on the structure of the atom was not published until 1911, nearly a decade after Nagaoka.

So what was happening? Well, Rutherford was certainly a brilliant scientist, but he was no lone genius.

Like all scientists, he built on the work of others.

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Debates about the structure of the atom were already commonplace by the early 1900s. Rutherford was aware of Nagaoka’s model, which seemed plausible based on mathematical calculations.

However, there was as yet no experimental proof. And so, when Rutherford began his experiments in 1909, he invited Nagaoka to his laboratory in Manchester and showed him around. The two continued to correspond, and in 1911, when Rutherford published his results, he cited Nagaoka’s original 1903 paper.

The discovery of the structure of the atom was ultimately a product of this encounter between British and Japanese science.

These are just some of the many examples that point towards a more global history of science. Which brings us back to Trinity. Because of course, Trinity has also been home to scientists from many different countries and cultures, whether that was the Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa or the Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Still, there is much more work to be done to diversify science, particularly at Cambridge. My hope is that a more representative history of science will inspire a new generation of global scientists, both at Trinity and beyond.

Dr James Poskett is Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Warwick.

He completed his PhD in the History of Science at Trinity College, where he held the Tarner Studentship between 2012 and 2015. His new book Horizons: A Global History of Science, is out now with Penguin (UK) and HarperCollins (USA).

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE DARK UNIVERSE

by Dr Alexandra Amon (e2022), Trinity Senior Postdoctoral Researcher

Our planet is an almost infinitesimal speck in the cosmos. It orbits the Sun, one of billions of ordinary stars, which hurtles through our galaxy at about half a million miles per hour. Beyond this, there are billions of galaxies in our Universe, each boasting their own hoard of stars and planets.

In humans’ insignificant snippet in the grand story of the Universe, we have honed a standard cosmological model. It serves as an undeniable success story: with just six parameters, we can describe the evolution of our Universe over cosmic time, from a soup of primordial particles to the web of galaxies in our night sky today. Remarkably, this model has survived rigorous testing by a plethora of cosmological observations – exploding stars as cosmic candles; the distribution of galaxies; and temperature fluctuations mapped in the first light of the Universe. It may sound like we cosmologists have the Universe sussed, but

the elephant in the room is that the cornerstone to this theory is a Universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. Indeed, just five percent of our Universe is made up of particles whose physics we understand.

Dark matter neither emits nor interacts with light.

Despite being invisible, and capable of evading particle physicists’ giant underground detectors, it plays a crucial role in the story of our Universe. More than three quarters of the mass in galaxies, including our Milky Way, is dark matter, rather than stars or planets.

It exerts a large gravitational effect that glues the stars of galaxies together – dark matter is the invisible scaffolding of our cosmos.

Dark energy is even more mysterious. It drives the accelerated expansion of our Universe. That is, our observations reveal that while stars stay tightly bound in galaxies, as cosmic time marches on the galaxies themselves are moving further away from each other at a rate which is getting faster and faster. Our current understanding holds dark energy responsible, but the prediction of its nature by quantum physics is starkly wrong.

© REIDAR HAHN, FERMILAB/DARK ENERGY SURVEY

Blanco Telescope, Cerro Tololo, Chile, for the Dark Energy Survey, under the Milky Way.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE DARK UNIVERSE 31

One of the most powerful tools to do so is weak gravitational lensing. When we observe a distant galaxy, we collect its light in our telescopes after it has journeyed for billions of years across the Universe.

According to our theory of gravity, General Relativity, dark matter, like any massive structure, warps the space-time fabric of the Universe. As such, the path that the light travels along is altered and the image of the galaxy that we capture appears slightly distorted.

The gravity due to any dark matter along the line of sight has the effect of lensing the galaxy – making it appear more stretched in our images and inducing a coherent alignment among nearby galaxies. The

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As a student on the summer programme at the Perimeter Institute, Canada.

stronger the average galaxy ellipticity in a patch of sky, the more dark matter there is in that region of the Universe, assuming those galaxies are, in reality, randomly oriented. Therefore, the induced distortion of the galaxies is a faint signature of dark matter inscribed throughout the Universe. We measure this alignment to extreme precision and map the matter lying between us and the distant galaxies. As part of the Dark Energy Survey, over three years we imaged 1/8th of our night sky and catalogued the positions, shapes and distances to more than 100 million galaxies. With this, we conducted the most rigorous statistical analysis of its kind, testing against the predictions from standard model2.

This is no easy feat – while gravitational lensing is a powerful cosmological technique, it is extremely technologically challenging. The typical distortion

© N. JEFFREY; DARK ENERGY SURVEY COLLABORATION

The largest dark matter map of our Universe

© PERIMETER INSTITUTE

My job, therefore, is to study the invisible. While we cannot see these entities directly, we infer their existence from their influence on things we can see. It is my immense privilege to play a leading role in the Dark Energy Survey (DES)1, an international team of over 400 scientists. We use the Blanco telescope, nestled on a mountain top in Chile, to scan our night sky and harness data from the cosmos. With these spectacular images, we make measurements, and use them to address the Big Questions – What is our Universe made of? How did it evolve to the way we observe today? We are not the first to ask these questions – we know that even ancient civilisations looked up at the night sky and pondered these grand ideas. We have come a long way with our understanding, pillared by landmark moments that drastically altered the way we view our place in the Universe – from Copernicus, Einstein, Trinity’s own Eddington and Newton – but it’s clear we still have a long way to go. As the standard model has held up to whatever cosmological measurements have been thrown at it, the game is to keep throwing: to find new tests and conduct more precise measurements, with ever-better instruments, to finally reveal the true nature of these unknowns.

induced by dark matter is less than a 1% alteration to the observed shape. As the lensing effect is weak, in order to detect it we need very large samples of galaxies. This data challenge necessitates rapid processing of petabytes of data. A scientific hurdle arises as the weak lensing distortions are significantly smaller than the distortions that arise in the last moments of the light’s journey. Due to the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere, even in the exquisite conditions of the Coquimbo mountains, and our imperfect telescopes and detectors, our galaxies aren’t the picturesque spirals you’d imagine, instead fuzzy blobs spanning only a few pixels. In order to isolate the dark matter signature, these nuisance distortions are mathematically modelled to high precision, allowing an accurate recovery of the cosmological signal. With a new machine-learning technique, we infer galaxy distances – an effort that I led with my colleagues at Stanford University. Further complications arise due to the intrinsic properties of galaxies and their effect on the surrounding matter that needs to be modelled.

To minimise our human bias, we do all this ‘blindly’ – using intentionally tampered data throughout three years of testing, until we are convinced of our calibration and model choices and are ready to reveal what the Universe is really like.

It is a particularly exciting time for cosmology. Let me set the scene: there are several competing teams performing weak lensing measurements independently. We use much larger datasets than ever before, desperate to see if what we find is consistent with our model or, perhaps, if we find new cracks in the grand picture. Finally, we see hints of them. Like our ESO Kilo-Degree Survey and Japanese Hyper Supreme Camera colleagues, DES found that weak lensing predicts a slightly less clumpy Universe than would be expected based on the prevailing model of cosmology. This suggests a need for either new physics, a new problem in the analysis to be solved, or perhaps just more data. It is exciting to think that it is time again for a new landmark moment – a call for some modification to our peculiar dark matter/ dark energy-dominated model. With my fingers crossed for new physics, I co-coordinate the weak lensing science team and we are in the heat of analysing the latter three years of DES data.

entire Southern sky every few nights, building the deepest and largest map of our cosmos, and the Euclid satellite will survey the sky from a vantage point in space, eradicating the worry of Earth’s atmosphere.

There is an exceedingly bright future ahead, bringing us closer to fathoming our Dark Universe.

1: darkenergysurvey.org 2: nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01466-1

Trinidadian cosmologist Dr Alexandra Amon is Senior Kavli Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge, and she is passionate about science outreach and making STEM fields more accessible and welcoming to everyone. After her undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Alexandra was a Fellow at Stanford’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

In addition to her role at Trinity, she is Paczynski Visiting Fellow at Princeton. amonalexandra.com @astroalexamon @astroalexamon The Blanco telescope, with me for scale!

It is a humbling field to be working in that asks what the Universe is made of and how its structure evolved with the formation of galaxies and our own existence.

Our ongoing experiments act as training grounds for an epic decade for cosmology. We are at the dawn of several major international projects that will survey the sky to greater depths and resolution than ever before. The Vera Rubin Observatory will image the

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE DARK UNIVERSE 33

Last Poems AFTER A CENTURY

Trinity Librarian, Nicolas Bell (e2015) considers a new edition of A. E. Housman’s second poetry collection.

2022 is a year of literary centenaries: on 2 February 1922 Joyce’s Ulysses first went on sale at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and the October issue of the magazine Criterion included another modernist masterpiece, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Even more press attention was paid at the time, though, to a slender anthology of 41 poems by A. E. Housman issued by the publisher Grant Richards on 19 October 1922 under the stark title of Last Poems. Its author had been elected a Fellow of Trinity eleven years earlier, and by his own admission had written very few poems over

the subsequent decade, devoting his energies instead to classical scholarship.

Housman’s earlier collection, A Shropshire Lad, enjoyed some success when first published in 1896 but had gained a vastly wider readership during the First World War. There was an eager appetite for a sequel, but he refused to indulge his public for many years. In the end Housman was motivated to publish a second collection by hearing the news that his dear friend Moses Jackson was in hospital in Canada with terminal cancer. He brought together several poems he had written before the War, and composed around ten more in April 1922 to complete what he felt would be his final poetic offering. Though Housman was only in his early sixties and in good health, he issued them with the morbid title of ‘Last Poems’ and a declaration that ‘it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more’.

On the morning of its publication Housman sent a copy of Last Poems to Moses Jackson, who replied with a very warm letter of thanks, but died a few weeks later.

Jackson’s grandson recently discovered a collection of press cuttings with reviews of Last Poems which Moses Jackson had collected in his final weeks, which he has kindly presented to the Wren Library. The reviews are universally positive, and show that Jackson retained a keen interest in his friend’s public standing as a poet.

To celebrate the centenary of Last Poems the Housman Society has issued a new edition of the poems with introductions by Andrew Motion and Edgar Vincent, illustrations by Mark Ansell and an extensive commentary on each of the poems by John Cartwright (available for £15 + p&p from www.housman-society. co.uk). A special afternoon of lectures and readings will be held in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre at Trinity on Saturday 22 October, 2–5 pm. Full details will be published on the website: trin.cam.ac.uk/events Pencil portrait of A. E. Housman by William Rothenstein, dated 1906.

34 THE FOUNTAIN ISSUE 31

TRINITY CRYPTIC CROSSWORD NO. 8 ACROSS 1 A man briefly seen with God in this depiction of musical genius (7) 5 One of two introducing value around Home Office initially (2-4) 8 Encota will get out of sorts (3) 9 Some predict a Tory ruler with total power over a country (8) 10 About the Eye, it’s funny but not at first (6) 11 Jogger welcoming a rest (9) 12 Sort of TV shows when streetcars reverse (5) 14 Talk about extra bottles for end of the Boat Race? (8) 16 Knight in clear ground’s a fighter (that’s one of 26 in 22) (6) 17 Container ship in canal (6) 19 If black writing fluid’s inside there’s a possibility of being knocked in pocket (8) 21 Leaders of convoy identified diving ships after deploying a technique of reflection (5) 22 6’s 1922 publication involved Moses, aptly detailed (4,5) 25 Place knee centrally on Yankee bridge at the start (6) 26 Start with an initial one, then add numbered 22 by 6 - that’s The Answer (5-3) 27 Respect for Aldermaston (3) 28 Every so often unwary savage torments two-legged dragon (6) 29 Deer ran off and hit the back of a car (4-3)

Please email your entry to alumni-comms@trin.cam. ac.uk or send it to us: The Editor, Alumni Relations & Development Office Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ Entries are due by 30 September 2022.

The first correct entry drawn will win a copy of Trinity Poets, and the winner will be announced in the next issue of The Fountain.

For the solution to Cryptic Crossword No.7 visit The Fountain web page listed above, or email us at alumnicomms@trin.cam.ac.uk

1 Assistant protecting Stokes delivers quiet word to the crowd? (5) 2 Pull of that tractor after twice cutting edges (7) 3 Possible to stretch Everton’s lead by setting target in table (10) 4 Playwright prefers this fare scrambled (3,5,7) 5 Firstly carve piece of wood into shoe (4) 6 The letters of this poet are somehow so human (7) 7 After hearing watch spring it takes flight (9) 13 You might also see stars here during performance of e.g. Earth Song (10) 15 Try learning too much in closed office (9) 18 Breaking confidences - may become this fond of knowledge of the physical world? (7) 20 Helper in service worried about company liability after vacation (7) 23 Cut lawn in a short time on Wednesday (5) 24 “Light Blue crew yards ahead now” – according to the starters (4)

Visit The Fountain web page for a word version of the crossword: trin.cam.ac.uk/ alumni/publications/the-fountain

WINNING ENTRIES

DOWN Alumni competition Congratulations to Dr Natalie Behague (2012), who successfully completed Trinity Cryptic Crossword No.7, winning a copy of Trinity Poets.

Student competition Congratulations to Lycka Drakengren (2020) and Xiang Wei (2019), winners of the fourth student crossword competition in memory of avid crossword fan John Grenfell-Shaw (2011). The prize of a generous Trinity catering credit is kindly supported by John’s parents.

Tim King (1980) is the Ipswich-based professional crossword compiler Encota. Tim also sets personalised puzzles as unique and thoughtful gifts. If you’d like to know more, contact him at: specialisedcrosswords@gmail.com and visit his website: specialisedcrosswords.co.uk

TRINITY CRYPTIC CROSSWORD 35

ARE YOU LINKEDIN TO TRINITY? Did you know that you can now add Trinity College Cambridge as your place of education on LinkedIn rather than having only the option of ‘University of Cambridge’?

It’s quick and easy for alumni and current Trinity students – simply add a new education line to your profile so that you have both University of Cambridge AND Trinity College Cambridge listed.

Add Trinity to your LinkedIn profile today and keep connected with the global Trinity network!

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

linkedin.com/school/trinity-college-cambridge

July 2022

STAYING IN TOUCH

Saturday 16 July Annual Gathering for 1996, 1997 & 1998.

Please make sure that the Alumni Office has your up-to-date contact details and let us know your communication preferences. We take the protection of your data very seriously. We use it to keep in touch with you, and to keep you informed of College news and activities.

Wednesday 20 July Annual Gathering for 1968, 1969, 1970 & 1971.

Sunday 31 July Trinity on the Backs – A picnic for alumni and their families.

August 2022 Sunday 28 August Wine Tasting and Lunch, Piedmont, Italy. Alumni and guests are invited to Dr Francesca Massone Incisa’s (1993) winery – Marchesi Incisa della Rocchetta.

Wednesday 31 August Trinity on the Backs – A picnic for alumni and their families.

Full details of how your data is held and used are set out in our Data Protection Statement at trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/information/ dataprotectionstatement You are welcome to request a hard copy from us.

Some sensitive personal information may be held in the database. You have the right to contact us at any time to change how your data is used, or to tell us that you do not wish to receive a specific communication.

Please contact us using the details below.

TRINITY ONLINE

September 2022

trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni

Saturday 3 September Annual Gathering for 1999, 2000 & 2001.

Trinity Connect – trincam.aluminate.net

Saturday 24 September First and Third Trinity Boat Club Biennial Dinner.

@Trinity1546

© IAN OLSSON

For a full event listing and to book, please visit: trin.cam.ac.uk/events

facebook.com/TrinityCollegeCambridge linkedin.com/school/trinity-college-cambridge TrinCollCam If you would prefer to read The Fountain and/or the Annual Record online, please let us know by email: alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk Don’t miss out on our regular email communications – make sure we have your email address.

Alumni Relations & Development Office Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ E alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk T +44(0)1223 761527