(4) I knew that I had a large number of people who wished to do research with me and on whom the progress of my work depended; there was simply no room to accommodate them in the Cambridge biochemical laboratories.
So, much to the indignation (but also I suspect to the relief) of the staff of the Cambridge department of biochemistry I refused the chair. When I met the Vice-Chancellor-elect and conveyed my decision to him, he told me he was not really surprised; he told me, however, that in the following year they were hoping to elect a successor to Sir William Pope who had died early in the war and had left the chair of organic chemistry and headship of the chemistry department - or to give it its proper title the University Chemical Laboratory - vacant. He realised that I would be unable to make any kind of commitment, but wanted to know whether this might be of more interest to me. I rather guardedly said that, subject to various conditions, it might be, and returned to Manchester.
This was not indeed the first time that I had heard of this possibility. Pope died in the autumn of 1939 not long after the outbreak of war and, shortly thereafter, Robert Robinson asked me whether I would be prepared to go to Cambridge if I were approached. I said I would not, partly because I considered it would be unfair to Manchester and to its Vice-Chancellor who had given me my chance, and partly because until the war was over I had plenty to do without trying to move to Cambridge. Robinson accepted my view readily enough, but told me not long afterwards that it had been agreed to hold the chair vacant until the war was over when he hoped I would think about it again. By 1943 the tide of war was turning so that a decision by Cambridge to proceed to an election in 1944 was understandable.
I now had to do some hard thinking for it was obvious that having rejected biochemistry I was going to be asked to take organic chemistry. The choice before me - Cambridge or Manchester - was by no means an easy one. I had in Manchester a large and thriving department with about thirty research workers in organic chemistry and the quality of our undergraduate input was at least as good as - and possibly better than - that of any other English provincial university. We were housed in old buildings but I had some reason to believe that the construction of a new chemistry department on an adjacent site figured in the university's development plans, although I did not know how high it stood in the priority list. I also had in Sir John Stopford a Vice-Chancellor whom I admired tremendously and who had helped me at every turn, and, in Michael Polanyi, a colleague whom I liked and with whom I was on the best of terms. Furthermore, my wife and I were very happy with both our social and geographical situation and were in no hurry to move. Against this, of course, we had to weigh the claims of Cambridge, taking a long view of the likely consequences of moving there. The Cambridge laboratories I had only seen rather fleetingly on the occasion of a British Association meeting in 1938, but my recollection was that they were rather old and badly equipped. As a school of organic chemistry Cambridge was virtually non-existent; its research effort was negligible in size, although the capacity of the laboratories (substantially occupied during the war by the chemistry departments of two London colleges - Queen Mary College and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School) was considerably greater than that of Manchester. The amount of actual or potential research accommodation was of importance, for I was quite well aware that the nature and success of our Manchester research would almost certainly lead to my being faced with a large influx of would-be research students both from elsewhere in Britain and from overseas, as soon as the war ended. It was also undeniable that, by long-standing tradition, Oxford and Cambridge had virtually first choice of applicants for university admission. My wife too had been up at Newnham College, Cambridge and both her father and her younger brother Robin were Trinity men; as a result we had many friends in Cambridge, and there was no doubt about the attractiveness of Cambridge as a place in which to live. I had also to consider the future of my lively Manchester group.
Within a month or two of my having turned down the offer of Hopkins' chair I was visited in Wilmslow by J. T. Saunders, Secretary General of the Faculties and the real head of the academic administration in Cambridge. He was sent up to talk to me, in strict confidence, about the general situation of chemistry in Cambridge, and to explore the kind of conditions I might wish to lay down if officially approached to take the organic chemistry chair. Some of the problems which beset chemistry in Cambridge I already knew and others I suspected. W. J. Pope had been head of a department which embraced not only organic but also physical and inorganic chemistry. As far as I knew - and this was broadly confirmed by Saunders - Pope had ruled his colleagues with a rod of iron and, during the last part of his life, had made matters worse by ceasing to take much interest in chemistry and becoming almost a recluse. There was a long history of internecine warfare between R. G. W. Norrish who was Professor of Physical Chemistry and E. K. Rideal who, although also running what was in effect a second school of physical chemistry, did so under the banner of Colloid Science. Furthermore, the chair intended for inorganic chemistry had been diverted into one entitled Theoretical Chemistry which was occupied by J. E. Lennard Jones whose interests were mathematical rather than chemical, and who had no contact at all with inorganic chemistry, important though that subject was (or should have been) in undergraduate teaching. Not surprisingly perhaps, Norrish was determined that he would not be at the beck and call of another Pope, while neither Lennard Jones nor Hamilton McCombie (Reader in Chemistry who was acting as a kind of caretaker of the organic laboratories) would contemplate being subservient to Norrish; I understood from Saunders that the department was being run (not very efficiently) by a committee of these three men, although Lennard Jones was absent as a temporary civil servant with the Ministry of Supply during most of the war. In the main chemical laboratory (physical chemistry was housed in a separate but adjacent building with a connecting passageway) things were at a low ebb. Pope had ceased to take any active interest in his subject, stereochemistry, several years before his death, and command of the laboratory had passed to W. H. Mills, a somewhat narrow stereochemist of a rather sour and, to young men at least, forbidding disposition who discouraged all but his own rather limited field of work. Mills had retired during the war leaving, as senior organic chemist, F. G. Mann, a university lecturer and Fellow of Trinity. Mann had come from London to Cambridge in 1919 to be research assistant to Pope, and had remained in Cambridge ever since. He certainly had a hard life under Pope and Mills and, by the time Mills left, he had more or less shut himself off with a few research students pursuing his own work, which was also stereochemical like that of his mentors; his interests lay largely in the stereochemistry of co-ordination compounds of metals on the one hand, and heterocyclic derivatives of phosphorus and arsenic on the other. Mann was a first-class chemist but much embittered by his experiences in Cambridge, and by the fact that his interests lay in areas that had become unfashionable and in some respects sterile. He did little to hold the department together, and the task of keeping it afloat had passed to the amiable, although chemically rather ineffective, Hamilton McCombie. The latter had at least taken some action about inorganic chemistry by arranging that H. J. Emeleus, then a reader in Imperial College London, should come down each year and deliver a course of lectures to the Cambridge undergraduates.
Having heard what Saunders had to say I told him that I did not think a chemistry department could be run by a committee and that I could not accept such a proposition, but I agreed to his request that I should come to Cambridge, meet with the resident electors to the chair, and give them my considered views after looking over the laboratories.
In due course I was formally invited to go to Cambridge for this purpose, but meanwhile Alison and I debated again and again the question of moving, and my correspondence on the matter with Robert Robinson on chemical matters, and Alison's father on Cambridge and on diplomatic aspects, grew apace. Throughout all our discussion on Cambridge Sir Henry was a great help, for he was an immensely wise as well as a ki
ndly man. The academic grapevine is, of course, very efficient, and by now the possibility that I might move to Cambridge was being widely, if not openly, discussed in Manchester and particularly, of course, in the chemistry department. I gathered that quite a few members of my research school were minded to accompany me to Cambridge if I went, and Ralph Gilson told me quite openly that if I moved to Cambridge without him he would leave university work altogether and take up some other career. While all this was flattering, it was also just a little alarming, since it looked as if there might be a mass exodus in the event of my deciding to move.
When I went to see the Cambridge electors I first had a good look at the University Chemical Laboratory in Pembroke Street with McCombie (whom I had come to know through his association with Chemical Defence) as my guide. When I saw it my heart sank; it was quite dreadful. To begin with, the main part of the building dated from 1886 and, unlike the Manchester laboratory, it had been poorly maintained; one block had been added after the First World War on the strength of a substantial endowment from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company; but the new building was built on the cheap according to ideas of design already out of date, while the university, in effect, channelled the rest of the endowment into general university funds. Even in this newest block, the laboratories were lit by gas although obviously gas brackets on the laboratory benches represented an appalling fire hazard. On enquiring how this had come about, I was given a fantastic explanation the gist of which was that determination of the end-point in volumetric analysis by titration was more accurate by gaslight than electric light! I could not help wondering whether greater significance might not have been attached to the fact that, according to my informants, since the Cambridge Gas Company had come into existence successive professors of chemistry in Cambridge had been members of its board of directors. The level of equipment was very low and what there was was mostly antiquated. There appeared to be no coherent organisation at all, administration being in the hands of a well-meaning and, within his limitations, able enough senior laboratory assistant, Charles Lister, who had joined the laboratory staff at the age of fourteen and was now coming towards retirement. The academic staff rode roughshod over Charlie and, as a result, the whole place consisted of small virtually autonomous units, each run for his own benefit by a member of staff. I suppose they had little choice, but it was clear enough that this system of operation led to gross waste and inefficiency; as a result of it, no-one had the faintest idea of the total amount, or even the whereabouts, of chemicals and apparatus in stock. At the time of my inspection only a small amount of space was occupied by F. G. Mann's stereochemical work and an equally small part by B. C. Saunders, who had temporarily given up his work on the mechanism of peroxidase action and was doing some first-class research on organophosphorus compounds for the Chemical Defence section of the Ministry of Supply. The remainder was occupied by (a) Queen Mary College, (b) St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, and (c) a small group carrying out work on the separation of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb project.
I really was appalled by what I saw and at first felt I should withdraw at once. A little reflection indicated, however, that if I could get rid of the three groups of squatters mentioned above, have some money to change lighting and equip the laboratories to modern standards, and set up a proper administrative organisation, the place had great potential. Moreover, the school was so run down that I was unlikely to meet with any serious opposition when I started to put it in order. Having come to this conclusion I then confronted the Cambridge electors and the Secretary General of the Faculties. I had to begin by telling them there wasn't a great deal to attract a newcomer, the Cambridge school being currently one of the weakest in Britain and the University Chemical Laboratory a disgrace to any university. Indeed, I seem to remember suggesting to the chairman that given a stuffed crocodile to hang from the roof, the professor's private laboratory could be more appropriately located in the Museum of the History of Science, which was one of the projects being discussed in the university at that time. I must confess that the electors took it very calmly, and did not appear to disagree with me; they asked me under what conditions I would consider appointment and I gave them the following:
(1) I must have complete authority as head of department to reorganise and develop the University Chemical Laboratory. Whether physical chemistry remained with the rest of chemistry or hived off as a separate department was of no great importance to me at the moment. (I was almost certain, of course, that if Norrish were given the chance he would go for a separate department - as indeed he did. Whether this separation was wise is arguable, but, in practice, it dealt reasonably satisfactorily with the situation as it was in 1944.)
(2) Queen Mary College and St Bartholomew's must go back to London and the uranium work must be transferred to some other department or, better, to a government laboratory where it should have been in the first place.
(3) A post must be provided for A. R. Gilson to act as Laboratory Superintendent in charge of all non-academic affairs.
(4) Gas lighting should be abolished and replaced by electricity, benches provided with adequate power facilities, and money provided to equip the laboratories as quickly as possible to modern standards.
(5) I would need an undertaking that the university would give the highest priority to building a new University Chemical Laboratory on a fresh site as soon as possible after the war. I knew that similar priority had been asked for an extension to the University Engineering Laboratory, and I had to insist that a new chemical laboratory be regarded as of similar urgency.
(6) I would require a minimum of one academic staff position forthwith for my colleague Dr B. Lythgoe, who was then a Lecturer in Manchester and a key figure in my nucleotide coenzyme group.
Thereupon I returned to Manchester and awaited results.
There was naturally a little delay before the Board of Electors could meet and the university's attitude to my demands could be ascertained. But within a few weeks, after a further check by the Secretary General to be sure I had been properly understood, I was informed that all my conditions would be met and I was invited to take the chair. I accepted, although I remember wondering very much whether I had done the right thing. But the die was now cast, and things began to move quite quickly. I soon found myself in receipt of letters from heads of several colleges in Cambridge inviting me to accept a Professorial Fellowship. As I knew literally nothing about any of the colleges, except that they varied in size and I wanted, on the whole, to be attached to a medium-sized one I consulted my father-in-law. As a result I finally chose to go to Christ's because it was recommended to me as a smallish college with a decent reputation and one which had, in Charles Raven, a notable figure as Master. It is only fair to add that the presence of J. T. Saunders, the Secretary General, as a Fellow was an added attraction. Not only did I like Saunders - he and I became very good friends - but it seemed to me that, in battles which I might well have with the university authorities, the presence of the Secretary General as a Fellow of my own college could hardly be disadvantageous!
Since I had agreed to take up the Cambridge appointment on 1 October 1944, which was little more than six months ahead, we had to get busy at once in Manchester to prepare for the move. Ralph Gilson examined the Cambridge laboratories in some detail and, when he had recovered from the initial shock, set on foot their re-equipment and got under way the plans for removing the gas lighting and doing some minor structural alterations which were necessary. It was, of course, very difficult to get anything done in those days, since virtually everything was directed to the war effort and everyday civilian needs had to go largely unsatisfied even when, as in our case, the necessary money was available. But we were lucky, partly because of the private arrangements we had made with equipment manufacturers in Manchester, but, more particularly, because we were involved in the research effort on penicillin. The word penicillin was a real talisman at that time, and we used it to the full to g
et both government grants and - much more important - permits and priority for alterations to the laboratory. I then discovered that almost all the members of my personal research group in Manchester (other than those who had completed their course of research and had accepted positions in industry) wished to accompany me to Cambridge. This I found very touching because in some cases such a move would mean prolonging their Ph.D. course by a year, and for all of them it would be a great upheaval; I don't think I had really appreciated until then the loyalty and enthusiasm of the group and their attachment (however undeserved) to me personally. The research students concerned were: F. R. Atherton, J. Baddiley, A. Holland, G. A. Howard, H. T. Howard, R. Hull, G. W. Kenner, L. E. Lyons, D. H. Marrian, P. B. Russell, P. Sykes, A. Topham, W. S. Waring and N. Whittaker. In addition there were, of course, Dr B. Lythgoe and A. R. Gilson moving with me and Barbara Thornber. Barbara had taken her degree in 1943 and asked me then what she should do as she didn't think research would suit her - indeed, she confessed that her main reason for electing to do chemistry at Manchester had been simply that her school record in chemistry was rather better than in other subjects. She helped me out by taking some training in analytical work for some months and then doing micro-analysis during a period when our professional micro-analyst had gone down with tuberculosis. When she heard I was going to Cambridge she said she wished to go too - which was not surprising as she was a popular member of the department and much identified with the group of research students named above, several of whom were her contemporaries. The problem was - what kind of opening was there for her in Cambridge? I said I would need a secretary, and she said that, if I gave her three months to learn something at a secretarial school, she would take the job. I said 'Done!' and she not only got the essentials of the job in three months, but then came to Cambridge and became for seven years the best personal assistant and secretary I have ever had. H. T. Openshaw, whom I had appointed to a staff position in Manchester a few years before, also wished to come to Cambridge but, as there was no suitable staff position available there, he finally decided, to our mutual regret, to remain in Manchester.
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