{"id":4774,"date":"2015-11-01T09:43:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T08:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=4774"},"modified":"2015-11-01T09:43:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T08:43:16","slug":"lisa-jardine-health-and-sickness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2015\/11\/01\/lisa-jardine-health-and-sickness\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Jardine, Health and Sickness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like so many others, I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Lisa Jardine last week. She seems to have been able to cross many disciplinary boundaries and make an impact on so many individuals and spheres, her loss will leave a huge hole in the cultural and intellectual landscape of the UK. I only met her a handful of times but felt as if we had instantly connected and that she had something very special to offer the world as well as her friends. If you want to know more about her, try listening to her Desert Island Discs <\/a>(recorded this summer).<\/p>\n

She and I met for the first time, appropriately enough, at the Royal Society in 2013 at one of the Summer Exhibition Soirees. By then I had read some of her books – notably Hooke\u2019s biography (The Curious Life of Robert Hooke<\/a>) – and knew she had worked with the Royal Society over the acquisition of some of Hooke\u2019s papers (as Sir Martin Rees mentions in his own remembrances<\/a>). At the dinner for the soiree I sat down randomly at an empty place and introduced myself to the woman next to me. \u2018You\u2019re one of my heroes\u2019 she said, to my embarrassment, but I certainly wanted to return the compliment as soon as I found out who my dinner companion was. Within minutes I found myself signed up for a small contribution to her BBC Radio 4 series \u2018The Seven Ages of Science\u2019 being put together at the time. This series is a wonderful listen, and still available to download from the BBC<\/a>. During that conversation I felt as if I had found a new friend, and we kept in touch loosely thereafter, including via Twitter.<\/p>\n

I last saw her when she came as a College Guest to our Scholars\u2019 Feast last autumn and last was in touch with her to congratulate her on her election to the Royal Society this summer as an Honorary Fellow. It was clear how much this honour meant to her. Her death is a massive loss. Perhaps what convinces me personally more than anything of her impact was how much she meant to my elderly mother (and always had). Neither a scientist nor a historian, there was no obvious reason for my mother to hold Lisa in such high esteem, but from hearing her repeatedly on the radio it was clear that Lisa was an intellectual voice who struck a chord with my mother and who therefore meant a lot to her in a non-specialist way.<\/p>\n

This week health and sickness has anyhow been much in my mind following an accident befalling my husband leading to his patellar tendon being ruptured. This, it turns out, is a big deal. Basically the loss of the tendon means the total decoupling of the kneecap and hence the total inability to do anything with the relevant leg. Nevertheless, if you have to have an accident like this, having it in a Cambridge College is an excellent place to choose: from the porter who sat with my husband during the time it took for an ambulance to arrive for a non-emergency case (a couple of hours I believe: I was in London on BSA Presidential business and so not fulfilling an appropriate wifely role of picking up the pieces), to the staff who had transformed the Master\u2019s Lodge with a downstairs hospital bed by the time Matthew came home from the hospital, to the cleaning staff who work around the chaos an invalid causes in a home, to the academics who have borne with my distraction and absences (both physical and medical) \u2013 my profound thanks! Matthew was home within 24 hours of the surgery to repair the tendon but is now lumbered with a rigid brace for the next period (currently of indeterminate length) until he is allowed to start bending his knee through small angles. If you think about how you live and move you will realise such limb rigidity is more than a little constraining.<\/p>\n

My remarks above about my wifely role are said with feeling. There are times when being Master and\/or a professor of physics is all-consuming. But, as my husband pointed out (and as I relayed as I returned to a formal dinner for one of our donors after a quick exit to pick up the painkillers my husband had dropped), there are times when family comes first by a very long way. To the Chinese guests attending that particular dinner \u2013 held only a tiny distance from the Master\u2019s Lodge, albeit in the main College building \u2013 this clearly made a lot of sense. It is important to retain a sense of proportion. For the time being I am more wife than anything else: academic life in all its shifting shapes can wait a little (blogging may be more erratic too) and I\u2019m not (I hope) going to feel guilty about that.<\/p>\n

Of course, in the weeks ahead, finding the balance between my different roles is going to be a major challenge. In the critical period, when a patient cannot be left to fend for themselves, what one has to do is obvious: be there to soothe, to tuck up, to be leant on and to provide plenteous fluids. As the healing progresses (and goodness, it is also worth thinking about the wondrous world of materials science that has given us appropriate sutures, strong and light enough crutches, a curious and ingenious device called a leg lift and plastics for the sharps\u2019 bin) the decisions about how long my husband can be left to fend for himself as I attempt to fulfil my different duties is less clear-cut.<\/p>\n

Anyone whose emails have been left unread \u2013 apologies; to those whose appointments have been deferred at short notice, I will reschedule; to guests at various functions at which I have been distracted or completely absent, bear with me. To those who worked so hard to make my husband as comfortable as possible in the hospital and who mucked in within the College to keep us afloat \u2013 my gratitude. I hope, for both my husband and my own sakes, this period of discombobulation will be brief.<\/p>\n

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Help\u00a0us do science!<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve teamed up with researcher\u00a0Paige Brown Jarreau<\/a>\u00a0to create a\u00a0survey of Athene Donald\u2019s Blog readers (as well as 49 other blogs) during October and now running till Nov 20th<\/strong>.<\/strong> By participating, you\u2019ll be helping me improve my own blog and contributing to SCIENCE on blog readership. For completing the survey, readers will be entered into a draw for a $50.00 Amazon gift card (100 available, or guaranteed 2 per specific blog included in this survey), plus FREE science art from Paige\u2019s Photography<\/a> for participating, as well as a chance to win a t-shirt and other perks! It should only take 10-15 minutes to complete.\u00a0You can find the survey here:\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/mysciblogreaders<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Like so many others, I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Lisa Jardine last week. She seems to have been able to cross many disciplinary boundaries and make an impact on so many individuals and spheres, her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[985],"tags":[986,987,988],"class_list":["post-4774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-hospital","tag-injury","tag-lisa-jardine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}