I’m essentially a year into retirement and, being the age I am, it is not surprising that I get invited to attend other people’s retirement celebrations. Of course, not all academics want such an event in their honour, and for some it is hard to know when retirement actually happens, now few universities in this country still have a formal retiring age: some professors may want just to work more flexibly or part-time, rather than hang up their boots completely.
Last week it was the turn of Sir Richard Friend to be the subject of such an event, although he is most certainly not stopping doing his research. Under Cambridge’s then rules, he had to give up holding the Cavendish Chair (the senior chair in my department, the Cavendish Laboratory) in 2020, but he continues to hold grants and supervise students as a Director of Research. Richard and I are exact contemporaries, meeting for the first time just before our undergraduate lectures began and subsequently (after we each spent a few years abroad) long-term colleagues and sometimes collaborators. We co-authored a handful of papers together, although none recently.
A day long symposium was held in his honour. It was extremely well attended, with ex-group members coming from around the world. He has trained up many PhD students who have gone on to have fantastic careers in Europe and the USA in particular, as well as in this country.
But how do you give a talk to honour a man of such stature? At my own retirement conference, much was said about impostor syndrome, which Richard (if I recall correctly) admitted to suffering from himself when he spoke there. The topic did not arise at this recent event. The talks ranged from the purely scientific, with just a nod towards how Richard had influenced or supported them, to much more personal talks. There were frequent references, at least shown photographically, about the winter schools his group went on in places where skiing fitted into the agenda too. So, we had multiple photos of Richard looking suitably tanned, relaxed and begoggled, with snow in the background.
Of course, much was also said about the science underlying generations of the novel materials – their chemistry and their microstructure – of devices and potential devices developed in the group. No doubt Richard, like every other scientist, might have wanted more papers, more citations and more funding. Perhaps in his case he would also have preferred to have more patents and more companies to his name – surprisingly little was said about the companies he set up during the symposium. For many years he was a rare example, certainly in the Cavendish, of a scientist who was also entrepreneurial and set up spin-outs from his work which thrived for many years before being bought up by industrial giants, or the technology licensed to such companies. He was proof that you could do cutting-edge science and get stuck in what at the time (early 1990’s) was still being seen as the dirty world of patents and entrepreneurship. He was publicly lauded, although I’m sure many of my colleagues continued to wonder secretly about the legitimacy of doing this as an academic physicist.
I recall, before his first company CDT became a reality, how he quietly mentioned to me over a cup of tea in the Cavendish canteen, that he and Jeremy Burroughes had seen photoluminescence in a test tube from a solution of one of the new conducting polymers they were studying. He had to say this very quietly, and swear me to secrecy, because this would have been before the first patent was filed in 1989. But the lighting up of the test-tube was obviously matched by the lighting up of his eyes as he grasped the significance of this observation. Jeremy went on to become CDTs Chief Technology Officer, a role he has held for many years.
Richard’s science has been massively significant – and quantifiable. He knows how many prizes and other honours he has received. So, I wonder if actually he got more pleasure on the day, because less usually voiced, from the plaudits describing his humanity: his mentoring and nurturing of generations of students and postdocs (as an example see the text in this photo, alongside generations of Cavendish professors).
Five Cavendish Professors: a younger Richard (top left, 1995-2020), probably at his election to the Chair, standing alongside Sir Sam Edwards (1984-1995); sitting, Sir Nevill Mott (1954-71) and Sir Brian Pippard ((1971-84). The painting behind is of the first Cavendish Professor, James Clerk Maxwell and his wife, although the reflection makes it hard to see them.
Every researcher is impacted by those around them for good or ill. Sadly, it is too often for ill, when a student meets a bully or an unsupportive supervisor who never encourages their first faltering steps. Too often in that case, those steps may also be the last academic steps that that researcher takes. However, multiple times during the day speakers highlighted the help they had received in order to progress, and the kindness and generosity they had benefitted from. It isn’t that Richard couldn’t lose his temper, and he certainly had feuds with senior scientists who he felt had got the wrong end of the stick or who had otherwise stepped out of line, but there is a difference in tearing a strip off a research student and your peers. The latter should be able to defend themselves, the former much less so, as I have frequently voiced here.
The tributes to Richard were many and heartfelt, and I heard more stories in the margins of the meetings to add to those formally expressed. In the past, during my time championing women in the sciences in the university, I heard similar stories from women comparing their time working in the Cavendish’s Optoelectronics group spearheaded by Richard, with other places they had gone on to work. In one case they found this comparison with their then department (where they held a fellowship) in another university, so upsetting they burst into tears.
We need leaders who are humane, as well as brilliant and entrepreneurial, and Richard has shone on all fronts. I hope he enjoyed this symposium in his honour.
