Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2009
Summary
The first words of this book are devoted to my friend Dr Steve Pask, who had urged me to undertake its writing in collaboration with him, which I eventually did. His contributions include much of the text and some valuable constructive criticism, and it was to the great regret of both of us that circumstances forced him to withdraw from the project. Without him this book would never have come to be. However, I alone take responsibility for what it is now.
Amongst my hitherto unacknowledged debts is one to H. A. Skinner, my PhD supervisor (under the general direction of Michael Polanyi), who introduced me to, amongst many other things, the arts of glass blowing and vacuum technique when I started at Manchester in 1944. He, in turn, had learnt them from H. W. Thompson at Oxford.
In the context of practical, especially vacuum line, chemistry, it is my pleasure to express a warm appreciation of Fred Fairbrother, a big man in every way. He had a reputation of sequestering scarce apparatus in his laboratory through a ‘non-return valve’, but towards me he always showed the greatest generosity in sharing equipment and his incomparable store of practical experience and theoretical insight.
It would be misleading, when writing about the Manchester University Chemistry Department in the late 1940s, to omit the impact made upon our little community by that human ball-lightning, Michal Szwarc.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989