Brotherton Circle Newsletter

Born in the 1920s to a Jewish family in Germany, Geoffrey Eichholz arrived in Britain in March 1939 with little in his pockets except £4 and a Refugee Scholarship for Harvard.

In an interview a decade ago for the Leeds alumni magazine, Dr Eichholz explained how he ended up in Leeds. “Some distant relatives had agreed to care for me before I travelled on to the United States.”

One was David Eichholz, Professor of Classics at the University of Bristol, who helped Geoffrey get some unpaid work in the physics department there: “I was lucky enough to be working with Cecil Powell, who later won the Nobel Prize for his research into cosmic rays.”

But war ended his hopes of a place in the Ivy League – the US Consul refused his visa application and following the Dunkirk evacuation Geoffrey was interned to camps in the Isle of Man, Devon and Shropshire. He spent much of the time in a tent: “Fortunately 1940 was a dry and sunny summer!”

Though he was released that December, Bristol – along with other coastal areas – was now out of bounds to foreign nationals. Geoffrey instead came to Leeds, where he first encountered Edmund Clifton Stoner, the Professor of Theoretical Physics who would one day give his name to a landmark building on the Leeds campus. “He was very kind and supportive, and on the strength of a recommendation from Bristol, accepted me as a second-year student, free of fees.”

By now Geoffrey’s mother and brother had also escaped to England and settled in Bradford, though they learned later that his father had died in Auschwitz.

One of just eight students on his course, Geoffrey enrolled at Leeds in January 1941, using notes borrowed from a classmate to catch up. It was an intensive regime, with degree studies accelerated because of the war: “It was a very concentrated course and I had to study hard. We had classes six days a week and no summer break. I was commuting every day from Bradford, had hardly any money and no social life, apart from occasionally going to the cinema.”

After graduating with a First in May 1942, he was conscripted into the Armed Forces and immediately sent to the Admiralty Signals Establishment in Surrey where he put his physics knowledge to good use working on developments in radar. “It was a very interesting and exciting time. Microwaves had just been discovered and the forces were in the process of switching their radar receivers from echo-sounding to microwaves.”

After the war he returned to Leeds, encouraged by Stoner to begin his postgraduate work in magnetism: “I came to an empty lab. We had nothing. I had to scrounge all our equipment. The Admiralty was selling off surplus electronic gear for ten shillings a pound!”

With this ex-military hardware Geoffrey established the laboratory, living in Headingley on an £80-a-year scholarship for graduate work and the savings he had accrued while working for the war effort.

At the same time he worked towards his own PhD, much of it based on the microwave technology he had developed during the war: “I typed my own thesis, making five carbon copies.”

He received his Doctorate in 1947 and from there, his career really began to take off. “I saw an advert in Nature for an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.” He later moved to the Canadian Bureau of Mines, examining uranium ores and in 1963 joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as Professor of Nuclear Engineering. He retired in 1989 becoming Regents Professor Emeritus.

Yet Professor Eichholz never forgot the kindness shown to him by two British Universities. At Bristol he funded bursaries for Classics students, while at Leeds he established Eichholz Scholarships for undergraduates in the School of Physics and Astronomy.

Both in his lifetime and through his legacy following his death in 2018, he has funded two scholarships a year for the past 12 years for students from less privileged backgrounds, providing them with £1,000-a-year during the course of their studies.

Aleksandra Anisimovaite, who is due to graduate this summer with a BSc in physics, paid tribute to her donor: “Geoffrey’s generosity has led me to explore new opportunities, broaden my horizons, and grow both personally and academically. The impact he has had on my life is truly massive, and it is because of him that I can wholeheartedly pursue my passion for physics.”

Robert Jones, who graduated in 2018 with a MPhys in Theoretical Physics, was another student whose life was touched by Professor Eichholz’s generosity.

The impact of the environment on the human body shaped Alastair Hay’s life from his earliest days. “When I was two, I had severe pneumonia. The doctors didn’t know if I would survive.”

It was the late 1940s, Britain’s clean air act was still some years away, and Glasgow was often enveloped in thick smog. “My parents had already lost one child, so they decided to leave Scotland to find cleaner air.”

They moved to South Africa and later Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – where Alastair’s father worked in mining, maintaining pumps underground, before taking a job on the railways. “We moved around several times, and I went to lots of different schools.”

Just before his O-levels, Alastair was first taught by the teacher whose impact would influence his whole career. “We’d had several different chemistry teachers, some of them not very good. But then we were taught by a Welsh chap called Tony Johns, just for the last term before O-levels. He wasn’t much older than us, but the way he taught, it made so much sense.”

Under Johns’ guidance Alastair thrived, achieving the A-level grades for a place to study chemistry at university. It’s a memory shaded by sadness: “I tried to track him down a few years ago, but learned that he had taken his own life at quite a young age.”

While Alastair could have continued his studies in South Africa, a scholarship from oil giant Shell enabled him to take up a place at London’s Royal Holloway College. “It was previously an all-women college. We were in the second intake of male undergraduates – and were outnumbered six to one. It was quite strict and we weren’t even allowed in the dining hall.”

He remained at Holloway for his PhD in biochemistry, before taking up his first postdoctoral research role at London Zoo. “I had to take blood samples from animals. I used a tiny amount for my own studies with the rest analysed in the animal hospital to get a reference value for comparison if animals ever became ill.”

It threw up some interesting moments – wrestling with a penguin reluctant to let them find its vein, and a trip on a North Sea trawler to find fish samples. “Once we were taking blood from a mynah bird. It was quite disconcerting with it saying ‘hello, how are you’ the whole time.”

This work led to Alastair’s move to Leeds, where he joined the animal physiology department exploring calcium regulation in sheep. Shortly afterwards, his focus switched from animals to humans as he moved into chemical pathology in the University medical school: “It was a steep learning curve.”

Beyond his research, Alastair had long been politically active, and during the sixties and seventies joined numerous demonstrations against apartheid and the Vietnam War, and was once arrested. “I promised my wife Wendy that I wouldn’t go on any more demonstrations, but I still did.” His secret was blown after an altercation with a drunk during a protest outside the South African embassy left him with a busted lip. “I got a proper dressing down,” he says.

But it became the moment that would change Alastair’s life: “She said ‘Instead of going on demos, why don’t you use your scientific training in some way?'” He began looking at Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the Americans to strip away forest cover in Vietnam. “It got me exploring toxicology, and how these things affect people. I’d completed research in chemistry, zoology, physiology; I had all the components necessary to work as a toxicologist.”

The impact of chemical weapons was brought into sharp focus by the Iran- Iraq war, when Iraq used mustard gas and other agents to devastating effect. Alastair became a powerful advocate for a weapons treaty, writing articles for the Independent and Guardian and appearing on radio and TV. It brought the campaign to national attention, but came at some cost to his own career.

“For several years I was turned down for promotion at Leeds, and eventually a colleague confided that some members of the promotion committee were unhappy with my public work. They said I should be writing for the scientific journals – which I actually was, as well. It’s ironic really, because nowadays you get research grants for that kind of campaigning work, but I guess I was ahead of that particular curve.”

Though his appeal to the committee, backed by two Nobel laureates, failed, his promotion was eventually secured. And in 1993, now Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, he helped realise the Chemical Weapons Convention which is enshrined in international law, with only four states having so far failed to sign up

When a special event on campus in 2008 voted this the University’s greatest contribution to society, it was both recognition for his research and vindication for his decades of campaigning. “It was wonderful to have the recognition of my peers at the University, and to know that they valued my research. I was bowled over by it.”

Though Alastair retired from the University in 2016, as an Emeritus Professor he remains a powerful voice against chemical weapons. His recent appearance at a chemical weapons conference in Brazil afforded the opportunity to return to the rain forest where he had once worked mapping caimans, this time to join a research team estimating numbers of howler monkeys, which have experienced a population collapse.

Alastair’s love of animals runs deep – he’s been a vegetarian for forty years, and has a wormery which turns domestic waste into a liquid compost for the garden. “Part of me is uncomfortable with the work that I did at London Zoo, all those years ago. I’m happy to say that most of the primates I worked on were later moved to Whipsnade, which is a much bigger and more natural environment.”

A long-time supporter of students – both at Leeds and at Royal Holloway – Alastair has now chosen to leave a legacy to continue that work. “My scholarship ultimately enabled everything I have done. For three years, my fees and accommodation were paid, and I had money to live off. My parents couldn’t have afforded it.

“Obviously I will give bequests to my family, but I won’t need the money and hopefully a group of students will benefit from it, and will go on to make such a difference. I know the University will use the money well.

“I see it as both paying it back, and paying it forwards, acknowledging that someone gave me the money to have a career that I have loved. Hopefully some of these scholars will feel the same.”

This year the University of Leeds is marking a very special anniversary.

In 1874, The Clothworkers’ Company, one of London’s ancient livery companies, made a gift to establish a Department of Textile Industries at the embryonic Yorkshire College of Science in Leeds. At a time when Yorkshire’s traditional textile business faced growing competition from overseas, the investment was designed to ensure that local industry could harness emerging technologies and develop skilled workers. But without this gift, the University might never have come into being.

150 years later, textiles remain an important and distinctive feature of our work.

Last summer, our Brotherton Circle event gave members an exclusive insight into today’s Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC). Created with the Clothworkers’ biggest ever gift to the University, LITAC is a world-leading research institute bringing together academic expertise in design, technology, science and engineering.

Those who joint us learnt how a department once focused on wool and early man-made fibres evolved to become one exploring new materials, tackling important research challenges across textiles, colour, and fashion and responding to issues of waste, climate change and our planet’s dwindling resources.
Even so, it remains true to its founding principles – enabling businesses to tackle their challenges and remain competitive, while developing future leaders for a multi-billion-pound global industry.

The Brotherton Circle event took guests on a behind-the-scenes tour of some of our key textiles facilities, where they met the academics leading this important research:

• Nonwovens Laboratory – LITAC Director Professor Steve Russell explained research focused on the production, structure and properties of nonwoven fabrics;
• Knit and Weave Laboratory – Professor Muhammed Tausif introduced the University’s spinning and fibre extrusion facilities;
• Colour Imaging and Colour Measurement Laboratories – Professor Steve Westland explained the laboratories’ focus on the imaging, measurement and appearance of colour for design and manufacturing;
• Materials Testing Laboratory – Professor Ningtao Mao demonstrated the equipment used to measure the quality, fitness-for-purpose and durability of textile materials.

The event concluded with a convivial afternoon tea in the spectacular setting of the Grass Room in the University’s School of Design. View highlights from the day below.

Open to all members of the Brotherton Circle and their guests, and we do hope that you will be able to join us in the future.