A tribute to W. L. Bragg by his younger daughter

Autor: Patience Thomson
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: Acta Crystallographica Section A Foundations of Crystallography. 69:5-7
ISSN: 1600-5724
0108-7673
DOI: 10.1107/s0108767312047514
Popis: How can I condense my father’s vibrant personality, his multifaceted skills and boundless enthusiasm into less than 2000 words? And indeed, since WLB is claimed to have been the first Australian to win the Nobel Prize, I also need briefly to explore how strongly Dad was influenced by his Australian background. Did he think of himself as Australian? I am going to turn that question round and ask whether other people thought of him as Australian. Before the First World War, when my father came to England, society was very stratified. You were classified according to your background. People were very conscious of class, social standing and education. They belonged to very distinct social circles which did not often mix. When WLB went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, he would have found that the vast majority of students fell into two categories. They had either gone to ‘public’ schools, (which, just to confuse, are the private ones in England) and were the sons of the gentry and the relatively wealthy, or they were the clever grammar-school boys, often on scholarships. You chose your friends and spent your free time with others of like background, often those who had been to the same school. Dad did not quite fit into either category. He was a ‘colonial’ and therefore did not have easy reference to a particular group. Having said this, my father had certain advantages and skills which fostered close friendships. The first lay in his sporting prowess. He was proficient across a wide spectrum of disciplines including tennis, hill walking, sailing, skiing, athletics and horse-riding. WLB’s physical fitness and love of the outdoors always seemed to me to be an integral part of his Australian heritage. He often said how striking it was that the Australian soldiers in the First World War were so much fitter than their British counterparts, although many came of the same stock. Dad was an excellent horseman. He was enrolled in the cavalry at the start of hostilities, but he was not the man to enjoy regimental formalities and convivial drinking in the Officers’ Mess. He was much happier when he was transferred to a job which involved sound-ranging the enemy guns. His two colleagues in this enterprise were Canadian and French, and not from the British establishment at all. They were to become good and loyal friends. His second advantage was his wide range of intellectual strengths, which won him the respect of the academic community in Cambridge. St Peter’s College, Adelaide University and his close proximity to his father and his physics laboratory had laid some firm foundations. Science was not his only interest. He had had an excellent and broad education in Australia which included the classics. Dad was a thoroughly cultured man. As an ‘outsider’ from the other side of the world, he viewed the English social scene with objectivity and humour. He was a splendid conversationalist and a great teller of jokes. He did not naturally bow to the English social hierarchy. My father told us many tales of his childhood and teenage years in Australia. He had obviously loved the wide open spaces, riding on the beach, picnicking in the hills, the family excursions. Dad enjoyed cooking on an open fire, building a log cabin or carving a boomerang that really worked. He had inherited a measure of the pioneering spirit from his grandfather, Sir Charles Todd, with whom he spent a lot of time. Dad was endlessly creative with a very visual imagination. He made shadow plays for us, with a Noah’s Ark that really rocked and a dinosaur that roared. He made fantastic train layouts for the boys. He was very good with his hands, making me perfect miniature furniture for the dolls’ house. He once told me he would have been a toymaker if he hadn’t been a scientist. Dad brought with him to England some lifelong hobbies from Australia. His interest in natural history was one
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