Renaissance Man?

This week the sad news of the death of physicist and erstwhile colleague Tom McLeish was announced, a soft matter theorist and committed interdisciplinarian – as well as a committed Christian. He is particularly associated with developing theories for the flow of polymer melts, theories he would illustrate with interesting demonstrations (often involving his arm and a sleeve to show how polymer chains of different shapes would move, if I recall correctly) and a fruity vocabulary. Not, I should say, improper language, but involving raspberries, for instance, to describe the associating polymeric structures that formed in certain melts, impacting on their flow; I am sure there were several other foody descriptions that now escape me.

What follows are personal recollections, and they may well be blurred by the passage of time. For instance, when did I I first meet him? Was he still a PhD student or had he progressed to being a postdoc? He spent time working on the flow of polymers at Courtaulds, looking at instabilities in spinning fibres. I wrote a couple of papers with him, the second some time after he had left Cambridge, looking at the motion of polymer chains in the glassy polymers I studied experimentally. I also remember introducing him to my collaborator of the time at the late lamented blue chip company, ICI. Tom subsequently built up a long term and highly successful collaboration of his own with the company, which led to much improved computer visualisation of flows in the complex geometries of a polymer processing factory, work he did as part of a large consortium which he led.

Tom moved from Cambridge first to Sheffield as a lecturer and, when still very early in his career (or as we said at the time, at a young age) moved to Leeds to take up the chair recently vacated by Ian Ward. Ian had been a key early mover in the mechanical properties of solid polymers (and wrote a book of that name; my own copy of this is well-thumbed) but was very much an experimentalist. Tom’s arrival in Leeds necessarily involved something of a reorientation of the work there in the Physics Department, including as part of the IRC (Interdisciplinary Research Centre) in polymers, set up in 1989 before Tom came and which was joint with Durham and Bradford. I think it must have been daunting for Tom to take on such a leadership role when only in his early 30’s, but I don’t think I ever heard him fret about it, although he did talk to me before he formally accepted the job.

Tom spent many successful years in Leeds before he moved to Durham to take up the role of PVC in Research there. Whilst there his enormous range of interests became much clearer. I know how much he enjoyed having an ‘excuse’ to visit departments far removed from his background and to interact with a huge range of colleagues, without ever ceasing to be a physicist. But he took enormous interest in the medieval Bishop Grosseteste (Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253) and his theories of light and, when he moved to his final position at the University of York, once his stint as PVC was over, his title was explicitly not that of your average 21^st century physicist, instead taking the (historic) title of Professor of Natural Philosophy, but holding it in the Physics of Life Research Group (like me, over the years his interests had moved from synthetic polymers to those of living origin).

Looking at the York website, though, it is clear how diverse his interests had become, including being a Member of Management group for the Centre for Medieval Studies and a Member of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. His Christian faith became ever more visible too, including in the 2014 book he wrote using the biblical Book of Job as its basis, Faith and Wisdom in Science. His last book, published in 2019, Poetry and Music in Science, has a wide sweep, as suggested by its subtitle: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art. He, like me, did not believe in a ‘two cultures’ approach to life. He served on the REF2021 Physics sub-panel, and was very exercised by how interdisciplinary research was being treated: he chased me to make sure that I was paying due attention to it in my role as Chair of the Interdisciplinary Advisory Panel for the exercise.

I am sure that his faith was hugely important to him in the months leading up to his death, once pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed last summer. I last saw him at a conference in the spring, when he still seemed to be in fine form. He kept on tweeting during the months after his diagnosis (which he publicly disclosed over Twitter), and it was obvious how much solace he derived from music – he played the French Horn – with frequent comments on the BBC Radio 3 offering. Indeed, my last exchange with him was about something on Radio 3.

He was only 60, cruelly young to die. From the comments I have already seen (for instance over Twitter) it is clear how many people he helped, mentored and developed scientifically. His range of collaborators, within the UK and far beyond, was extensive. At the Royal Society, where he had succeeded me as Chair of their Education Committee, his passion for science, education and outreach was remarked upon to me this week as we all mourned his loss.

RIP Tom. You will be missed by so many.