Sometimes more and more information comes to light on incidents and people I have written about or drawn attention to previously. One I found recently throws light on an event in 1957 that shocked academics in Britain and Australia (22 June 2019 Frog Hearts and University Politics in 1950s London).
Academic zoological circles in London were much quieter in the 1960s than in the 1950s. Alan John "Jock" Marshall had taken umbrage at his treatment by the University of London and had left to return to Australia and become the first Professor of Zoology at Monash University. A self-confessed larrikin in his younger days, the word most usually used to describe him to me was ‘wild’. I only knew of his reputation because he died in 1967, aged 56.
Jock Marshall was graded Reader in the university; he was head of the very small zoology department at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School. In 1957 Marshall was put forward to the University by his medical school for promotion. But Marshall’s promotion to Professor was blocked by one external member and one internal member of the university committee, as explained in detail by his widow (who edited his autobiographical notes) here. Marshall was incandescent with rage at his treatment and the account of the meeting given to him afterwards by the dean of the medical school who was present. The Cambridge mafia he blamed; the formerly supportive internal member was not only a bosom friend but also reliant on the external member for supporting his candidature for the Royal Society. Marshall before his departure managed a parting shot at the internal member of the committee (elected FRS in 1958) who approached him at a meeting of the Zoological Club in a friendly manner: 'I told him to "Piss off you little bastard". He pissed off.’
Those who blocked Marshall’s promotion were the external Carl Frederick Abel Pantin FRS (1899–1967) of Cambridge and the internal James Eric Smith (1909-1990) of Queen Mary College, the one elected to the Royal Society in 1958. Marshall’s strong supporter on the committee was Alastair Graham (FRS 1979) of Reading who also pointed out that Marshall’s research record was much stronger than that of another head of a zoology department in a London medical school who had already been promoted. It is interesting to note that Pantin, although elected to the Royal Society in 1937 was, like Marshall, a reader until his own elevation to the professoriate in 1959.
Reading about Pantin and Smith it is difficult to reconcile this description of Smith in his biographical memoir for the Royal Society, ‘Like Carl Pantin he was liked by all who came in contact with him for the same reason that both exuded a warm humanity’, with the goings-on at the promotion committee. The former though, it was alleged, did have something of a reputation for damning non-Cambridge candidates for jobs. Marshall’s supporters in London—and he had many of great distinction—considered the whole affair, in the words of J.Z. Young, ‘utterly disgraceful’.
Jock Marshall had already made his name in studying birds in the field and in the lab to examine fundamental biological questions, like, for example, what controls the onset of a breeding season in the tropics. His research and books were very well known and many like his 1954 classic on Bower-birds* which were well received at the time have come to be regarded as classics, linking the breeding behaviour of these remarkable birds to changes in the endocrine system. That some of his books, as on his travels in New Guinea and birds-of-paradise, were popular may though have counted against him in the weird world of academic snobbery prevalent in that era.
Marshall’s life had been spent studying birds and I can only imagine his reaction to what I found in Smith’s biographical memoir:
Eric [Smith] later used to remark that he and Pantin were perhaps the only professors of zoology who would have had difficulty in identifying a blackbird when they went on walks, as both were invertebrate zoologists and had not been bird watchers when young.
We can now only imagine Jock Marshall’s reaction. Incandescent would not get anywhere near it.
Sadly, I think Smith and Pantin were wrong about Jock Marshall and about professors of zoology of the time. I suspect that, with a few notable exceptions, relatively few would have had any knowledge of birds or their natural history—rather like, I am told, modern students of biology in British universities.
*Bower-birds, their displays and breeding cycles. A preliminary statement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.
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