PARWICH.ORG

Emeritus Professor Peter Alexander Young
An appreciation by Michael Radcliffe

I first met Peter Young when I moved to Parwich just over twelve years ago. We were both Cambridge Natural Science graduates, we had both worked in the nuclear power industry, we both loved sacred music, so we had much in common and we became firm friends. We dined together in each other’s houses, we went to concerts together and we went to church together. We talked a great deal about science and music and many other things. With my father dying when I was a youngster and Peter having no family, the relationship became more like father and son, though in reality it was like teacher and student. He took a keen interest in me and my studies with the Open University. He enriched my life in many ways.

Peter was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, on Dec 23, 1924, an only child of Scottish parents. They realised that they had a very bright boy so they moved home to make sure he went to the right primary school to get him into Boston Grammar School. At the age of 4 his parents recognised his musical talent and took him to the choirmaster at their local church to see whether he might join the choir. Looking at this young 4 year old in disbelief, the choirmaster thrust a bible into his hand, and opening it at random with his finger pointing to verse 9 from Psalm 108, asked Peter if he could read. Peter read “Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; over Philis’ti-a will I triumph.” Whether Peter understood what he was reading did not matter, he proved to the choirmaster he could read and duly joined in the choir; and so began a passion for music and singing which he kept up throughout his life. While studying at Cambridge he sang in the Chapel Choir at St Catherine’s and was President of the Music Society. While he was living in Harrogate he was a long-standing member of the Harrogate Chamber Singers. Until quite recently he was still having singing lessons and singing in the choir to keep his voice in practice at choral evensong each Sunday at St Mary’s Church in Wirksworth.

He was intrigued by all things mechanical. ‘Boston was a little seaport and I used to wander around the docks and was fascinated by all the boats, pulleys and equipment that was stored there.’ During the holidays he used to take the boat from Boston to Holland and then bicycle around the country staying in youth hostels while he sought out and examined all sorts of contraptions. He excelled at Boston Grammar School and won a scholarship to read Natural Sciences at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. However, at this time, 1942, with the second world war dominating everything, it was inevitable he be called up for war service and he enrolled as a midshipman at the Royal Naval Engineering College, starting as an engineer cadet and moving up the ranks to sub-Lieutenant, delaying his entry to Cambridge by 4 years.

In 1946 he went up to Cambridge for the two year shortened degree course for his BA followed by research to read for his PhD in Metallurgy and then continuing further with a Research Fellowship in Extractive Metallurgy in which he excelled, becoming the Elmore Research Fellow and winning the Ablett Prize.

He left Cambridge in 1954 to join the Imperial Smelting Corporation at Avonmouth as a Development Metallurgist. While in this role he travelled on company business to Spain and Iran to visit the ore deposits being mined by the parent company RTZ.

In 1955 he moved to Head Wrightson on Teesside as General Manager of Research and Development and he was later promoted to Director of Research, a lightning career advance at the age of 31. Head Wrightson were one of the constructors of Britain’s first nuclear power stations, and the directors’ sent him to America to meet Eugene Wigner, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who first understood the physics of stored energy in nuclear piles, later called ‘Wigner Energy’, the uncontrolled release of which caused the Windscale disaster in 1957, the first major incident with a nuclear pile out of control. Peter once described to me how on this occasion he saw Albert Einstein walking across the lawns on a cold snowy day in his slippers at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.

Leeds University have provided the following details on his period in academia:-

“In 1965 he was appointed Director of the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories (AMDEL) in Adelaide, set up 5 years previously to serve the mining and metallurgical industries of Australia. His term as Director was significant in establishing the scientific credentials of AMDEL as a leading independent consulting organisation with a world-wide reputation.

He returned to the UK in 1968 to take up his chair at Leeds University as Professor of Applied Mineral Sciences. While he was there he strengthened the mining activities by changing the name of the Department to Mining and Mineral Engineering and by vigorously pursuing new avenues of research and reinforcing existing ones. Peter was a scientist in all the best senses of that word. There can have been few scientists of any description who have been able to initiate and conduct outstanding research in so many diverse fields. During his time at Leeds he was responsible for introducing, fostering or reinforcing research in fields which included blast vibration monitoring, column flotation, gamma-ray on-stream analysis of coal ash content, geostatics, high grade sand extraction, hydrometallurgy, iron-ore agglomeration, underground mine environment and the production of activated carbon from coconut shells. He took a keen interest in all research activities in the Department and was able to enter into detailed discussions and debates on all of them – a remarkable feat in a department which embraced a spectrum of activities from mining, mineral processing, chemical engineering, metallurgy, civil engineering, geology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. With such a polymath approach and an encyclopaedic knowledge of his large array of publications, it was rare indeed for him not to be able to suggest a reference for a point in question, even to the extent of citing comments from conference discussions. The same total recall extended to people and he was a veritable living Who’s Who.

His teaching to undergraduates included control systems, and an enthusiastically contrived and delivered first-year computing course. He was a natural teacher, able to communicate and interact with students, a gift which he never lost and which enabled him to engage with people of any age.”

One of my most endearing memories of Peter is his response to the asking of a question. He never replied promptly with a quick response. There would be a silence, a furrowed brow, a shrug of the shoulder, you could sense his brain turning over in his mind the ideas you expressed in the question and then he would reply in a well reasoned manner with supporting references and suggestions for further study.

On retirement from academia around 1990, he was asked to appear as an expert witness in a legal case being brought by a local council against a quarry company for polluting the water supply with calcium sulphate. Peter explained that calcium sulphate is not a polluting agent, in fact it is added to water by breweries to improve the quality of beer in a process known as ‘Burtonisation’! The breweries in Burton on Trent have no need to do this because they obtain their water from the underground gypsum beds where the water is saturated with calcium sulphate. The case was thrown out to the great relief of the quarry company, who subsequently recruited Peter as their technical consultant and that is how he came to live in Parwich.

He continued to work for the quarry company up to the time he had his first fall just over a year ago, advising them on their processes for the purification of high grade calcium carbonate. He also advised the owners on setting up and optimising a plant for making compost. He could turn his fertile mind to any engineering process, including advising his brother in law on the design of road sweepers.

On moving to Parwich, Peter’s first wife, Margaret, took on the Parish Magazine. Margaret established a network of contributors from the 5 parishes and cajoled them to send in their copy on time each month. Peter helped with the editing and publication, using his computing skills to advantage to send the copy to the printers each month. When Margaret died, Peter took on the whole job, maintaining the amazing range of contributors throughout the five parishes. Under Peter’s editorship the magazine was eagerly expected each month by readers who found his editorials stimulating, thought provoking and entertaining. This landed him in trouble at one stage when he was sacked as editor for being too secular. The uproar of protest that followed this decision resulted in commonsense prevailing, and he was reinstated as editor.

He edited the parish magazine until 2008, by which time, at the age of 84, it was beginning to become too much of a burden. At a service in St Leonard’s Church,Thorpe, the week after Easter, a presentation was made to him by the vicar, Rev Christopher Harrison as a mark of thanks for all his work on the parish magazine since he and Margaret had taken it on. Christopher asked Peter if he would like to say a few words in response. For the next 40 minutes, Peter astonished the congregation by sharing with them his innermost thoughts and doubts about his faith which he had lost. We all go through such periods of doubt, but it was a measure of Peter’s intellect and honesty that he was able to express and share these thoughts in a public dissertation off the cuff without prior preparation and notes. It was the second Margaret who brought him safely back to his faith, as evidenced by the remarkable celebration of their union in Lincoln Cathedral in July 2009.

Peter had an amazing capacity to make friends. He could relate to anyone regardless of age. He gave two fascinating talks, off the cuff and without notes, to the Women’s Institute, one about himself and his career, and another on the poet and artist William Blake, who wrote the words for ‘Jerusalem’ sung at the beginning of each meeting of the WI. At the other extreme of the age group he gave a spell-binding talk to the children of the local primary school. He took a great interest in the creative arts, music, painting and poetry.

Peter was always proud of his origins in Lincolnshire. Quite recently he joined a delegation of dignitaries from his home town of Boston to Boston, Massachusetts to participate in celebrating an historical anniversary, travelling in style on the new Queen Mary 2.

Peter was very proud of his old college, St Catharine’s in Cambridge of which he was a Fellow. He enjoyed renewing contact with the college through the periodical ‘feasts’ to which he was invited. He was asked by the Chancellor, the Duke of Edinburgh to join a committee comprising senior Cambridge graduates to advise the development and direction of the University, for which he attended meetings at Buckingham Palace.

He was a very generous man. His grand piano, he gave to the church where he used to worship in Harrogate. He set up a trust to fund the education of a gifted violinist, the grand daughter of friends. He was a generous benefactor to his old Cambridge College.

Two years ago I was overjoyed for Peter when he told my wife and me about Dr Margaret Spurr. They had met at a luncheon party of mutual friends. They were both very much taken by each other and a relationship soon developed. Peter was like a new man, she adored him and he adored her and they were very clearly intellectual equals. Plans for a ceremony of union, recognised in a religious service, with an exchange of sacred vows and the placing of a ring on Margaret’s finger were duly made, and this took place in Lincoln Cathedral on July 31st 2009, witnessed by two hundred of their friends. This was a joyous and moving occasion. It is one of the ironies of life that this union was cut short by his illness.

Peter will be missed by Margaret and the many people whose lives he enriched.

Michael Radcliffe 27/4/11
(This appreciation contains extracts from two sources Appreciations on Retirement Review 33 1990/91 published by the Leeds University and a Resolution adopted by the Senate 1 November 1990 (Leeds University))