| Description | Interview with M.G. Hampton recorded by Jennifer Carter on 28 June 2003 .
Transcription: -
JC So, tell me what drew you to Aberdeen University? Were you a local man or did you come from further away to attend as an undergraduate?
MH Both, originally. I was born in Canada, my mother and father both came from the North East of Scotland, from Aberdeen and Banchory. My parents worked in the Hudson Bay Company and I came to this country first of all for school. I went to Banchory Secondary School as it was then, I think its Banchory Academy now, where my uncle was the headmaster. So my mother arranged for me to come back to the school at Banchory. Then luckily I went to the Grammer School then Aberdeen University. So I was already in Aberdeen and with Aberdeen roots and relatives in Aberdeen it was obvious that the University here was the first choice.
JC Staying with the schooling a moment was that an unusual choice for your parents to make, to ship you off relatively young to stay with another family member?
MH It was partly forced by circumstances but they were working in a very lonely place in Canada so I would have had to go a minimum of 400 miles to go to a proper school and I think that my parents actually decided that I should start schooling in the UK and they were going to leave the Hudson Bay Company early at the end of 1939 and come back to this country. So my mother brought me across, started me at school and went back more or less to help Dad with the packing so to speak, well not quite but … and of course the war broke out just at the wrong time.
JC So you were isolated here?
MH And I was here. So first of all I was going to go back to Canada but there was a ship disappeared in the Atlantic and 600 children drowned and were lost on that occasion and my mother had sent a telegram saying stay. So I didn't see my Mum and Dad again until after the war by which time they presented me with a four year old sister whom I knew about but hadn't seen, not until after the war. I meantime was at school here in this country. It was always intended that I be at school here but the separation from the parents was force of circumstances.
JC Of course many people had those sort of broken childhoods during the war.
MH Indeed, yes. And indeed my uncle had the task of billeting children who were from the cities, who were evacuated to the safety of the countryside areas.
JC So Aberdeen University was a natural choice then for someone who had roots here and had been at schools nearby. What about your subject choice? What dictated that?
MH I became very interested in science, in fact chemistry particularly. Apparently my uncle had done a BSc course at London originally but also Mr Gowan, who I think became the next headmaster at Banchory Academy, was my science teacher and I was interested in the subject and I think before I came to University I had already decided I wanted to do chemistry. In subsequent years I moved from chemistry to applied chemistry to chemical engineering and for most of my time I have actually been doing chemical engineering although my BSc was originally in physical chemistry.
JC A straight physical chemistry degree, yes. Who were the notable chemists of those days? I'm afraid I don't know who would have been the people teaching you.
MH Well, my professor was Professor Barrer. And I think that the two other lecturers who I remember most, one was Wolf Moser who I think made one of the most wise statements to me and some of the rest as we were leaving when we had graduated, he said well, boys and girls, what we have done is given you a bag of tools. You will have to go and learn how to use them yourself but we've taught you as many tools as we can. In other words, what he really said to us - you don't know it all. Sometimes people leave thinking they know it all. I think what he said was very wise.
JC Who was the other one?
MH R H Thompson, he taught us our organic chemistry at the time. So I remember RH. There were two Thompsons - JMC. Was it JMC, I've forgotten his initials? But two Thompsons at the time and of course Barrer himself.
JC Well, two out of those three were fairly distinguished chemists.
MH Yes. Well, Barrer of course influenced the course of my life with his next move because I started to do my PhD here at Aberdeen under Prof Barrer and he was appointed to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at Imperial and he took eight of us down with him and we completed our PhDs down at Imperial. So my research degree was actually a London University one. If he hadn't moved down there I would have probably completed my course here in Aberdeen.
JC Well certainly you experienced sharply contrasting universities. I'm a London graduate myself so I can guess how different it must have seemed. But let's stay with your Aberdeen experience for the moment and then perhaps come back at the end to the contrast between the two universities. But staying with your Aberdeen experience, was it an honours chemistry degree you took?
MH Yes.
JC So that was what, 4 years was it?
MH It was a 4-year course. I'm not sure what the exact technique they have these days but you sat the ordinary degree exam first and added on the honours year which at least had the benefit that if you made a hash of the honours year you still had the ordinary degree behind you. Which was not the case in all faculties.
JC So how large a group of you would have been graduating as honours students?
MH Our honours year had 18 pupils. It was quite small in terms of the fact that you had barely 2,000 students in the University as a whole. What have we now 12,000?
JC That's right, yes. Was chemistry considered a difficult or a slightly elite subject?
MH Well, I think, looking at the 4 years, when you started there was probably about 140 in the first year and about 60 in the second year and about 35 in the third year and 18 in the honours year. So it got less as time went on.
JC A fairly sharp pyramid?
MH Yes, I think of course some of the first year students were those who were only going to be taking one year anyway. Like your BSc agriculture degree they would do one year. The course was configured that it absorbed students from other degree courses as well.
JC Were the medics, for example, taught with you or was there a medical chemistry class?
MH No. They used the facilities but they had their own lecturers and subject matter.
JC Was the building a good one? Was it the one that's on Meston Walk now or was it …?
MH We were the first year to christen that building in 1953. My first two years at least were in the old Marischal facilities so I had worked in both the Marischal labs, the old labs there and the brand new ones, as I say we were the first year to occupy the building.
JC That was rather fun though?
MH It was, it was quite exciting.
JC It must have been very posh when you came up to a grand modern building after Marischal.
MH Yes, and of course it was all on its own in the middle of the fields so it speak and it's all boxed in now.
JC Yes, the Physics building came later.
MH The Physics building was the next one, that was being built the last time I was there.
JC Most of your building has been stolen by Engineering now anyway.
MH Well, I believe in the original building without the add-ons, there's no chemistry at all I believe in the original building. The chemistry department was enlarged and I think that the shrinkage has resulted in the chemistry going into the add-on pieces.
JC The original building is now entirely inhabited by engineers.
MH I believe there are electrical engineering and various other things going on there, yes.
JC So your choice of subject was fairly straight forward and you stuck to it and did well in it. What about the non-academic side of things? For instance, did you live in the city or did you commute in from where …?
MH No, I lived at Queen's Cross.
JC In digs?
MH No. My uncle had retired from the school in Banchory and bought a house in Fountainhall Road. This was one of the reasons why I switched to the Grammar School because it was just down the road in Carden Place. Because we were doing quite a lot at Marischal I walked quite often to college and sometimes on the tram car as it was then. So quite often I would walk to college from there.
JC Your uncle was really almost like a second father to you I suppose?
MH He was. My aunt and uncle were very much a second mum and dad particularly during and immediately after the war time years until mum and dad came back.
JC So you were staying with your, as it were, almost adoptive parents. Did you stay in their home all the time you were a student?
MH Yes. No, that's not quite true. I had two other uncles who lived over in another part of Aberdeen, in Braemar Place, they were supporting uncles that liked teaching me golf and taking me out and things like that. So I used to quite often stay weekends with them but my main abode was with my uncle and aunt from Banchory.
JC Did you find that was a good way of going through university. For example, did it in any way inhibit you bringing friends home and that sort of thing or did it on the other hand make it easier than if you had been say in digs on your own.
MH I never felt it made any real difference actually because I could bring friends in. We used to have a small billiard table and we used to have some fun with that. A lot of my activities with friends were external like on the golf course. I played golf for the university. I had quite a few friends who when I was at school we used to go up to Hazelhead after school there anyway so a lot of my activities were outdoor anyway.
JC Were you an all-round sportsman or was it all golf?
MH Here I have a slight regret that I had enjoyed a variety of sports and done quite well in them at school but I got into the County side for golf when I was seventeen and I think that I began to concentrate on golf. Now later on it occurred to me though you could play golf for years and I came to the conclusion that maybe I should have played a bit of football and rugby a bit longer before concentrating on golf. But because I was playing for the County side and playing quite well I'd concentrated on that.
JC Was it a difficult sport to follow in the sense of being a relatively expensive one or was it not expensive to students?
MH It wasn't expensive here in Scotland. It's always been everybody's game.
JC A democratic game in Scotland?
MH Yes. The other day I noticed, I found in a scrap book my junior membership annual fee at Banchory, I think I was about fourteen at the time, and it was eight shillings and sixpence for renewing that for the year. Obviously it's nothing like that now anyway.
JC I was thinking of the equipment as well, as you get good you've got to presumably buy better clubs and so on?
MH Yes, but I think we tended to keep our clubs a lot longer than people do these days. I think they try, as there's more money about, and it has to be, because some of the clubs are jolly expensive. We kept our clubs longer I think. I don't think we ever found that … possibly I was lucky in having a couple of enthusiastic uncles who passed on things.
JC Apart from golf, which I imagine is a fairly time consuming sport to follow, isn't it, I mean it's not like say a game of tennis which is … you've got to travel to somewhere to do it and so on. So you played how often, eight times a week, or?
MH It varied a bit. It has some advantages in that with most team games you have to fit in with the times that everybody else is available. You can if you like sneak away and play a game by yourself if you're playing golf although normally I was playing with other people. But it's easier to find gaps to play a game of golf than say the likes of football if the other members of the team are not available. So in that sense it was useful but on the other hand if you are going to have a game of golf when you include a bit of travelling time and all the rest of it you're looking at four or five hours. So it's a longer … it knocks out an afternoon. So that's a disadvantage of it.
JC Apart from golf what other things did you do with your time outside academic stuff?
MH Well, I was very interested in listening to classical music, mainly orchestral. But this I think came to a climax when I went down to London because obviously with the concert halls in London available and also the calibre of the performers as well it gave me the opportunity down there when I was at Imperial to listen to a high class of performer. It was interesting too that I was doing research in a corridor of rooms where there must have been about fifteen to twenty students doing research. And practically every single one was an avid collector of classical long playing records. And I've thought that this may again reflect a certain attitude at Imperial of starvation of the arts, if I could put it that way.
JC A hunger for classical music.
MH Yes. Because I think on one occasion at Imperial we actually had a musical quiz and beat the local academy of music at it and we probably never let them forget it. This was because we had an enthusiasm for music, which was reflected in the popularity of the extra curricular lectures in music arranged by the student's union where the students were sitting on the steps and on the window ledges and everything listening to it.
JC This was at Imperial?
MH This was at Imperial. Whereas at Aberdeen you had an all round university to live with while I went to concerts in the Music Hall here and what not there wasn't a feeling that you were starved of the arts because you were with people doing a whole series of different courses and it rubbed off on you.
JC What was the standard of the musical offerings available in Aberdeen at that time? I mean nowadays it's fairly good, you get very good visiting Scottish Opera, Scottish National Opera etc. Was that true in the 50s?
MH I would say it probably wasn't quite as good as it is now. I think that both in terms of the number of options and also the calibre of the musicians - every now and then we would have a real top notcher come up but not all that often whereas I think as time's gone on travel has speeded up and people generally, not just musicians, people generally can move around a lot more and faster so there is probably a higher frequency of visits now by the top musicians.
JC We're having some very un-top notch music in the background somewhere.
MH Well yes, you've got to practice.
JC I don't know whether shutting the window will make any difference but I'll try. So apart from classical music and golf did you have other outside interests.
MH I think those are my chief ones actually. I think particularly in my honours year I found that one was really tied to continuity of a work pattern that didn't give you too much time off. I think it would probably be fair to say that when I went down to London for the two years that I worked down there as PhD I probably had a little more time and a slightly easier pressure on work. Partly because I had had a very good first year. There's a lot of luck in doing research. If you get some useful results in the first year it takes the pressure off the third year whereas some people who hadn't been lucky enough to get useful results in the first couple of years are under a certain amount of pressure in the final year and I was lucky enough to have a relatively easy start which made it easier for me later on.
JC Yes, that's interesting. I can imagine you would be thrashing about a bit if you hadn't had a good start.
MH Yes because I know of one student at Imperial, he was trying to get a particular photograph done at atomic scale, atomic size. One photograph was all he was really going to need to actually get there but the difficulty of his technique and the equipment to get it was quite a worry to him. He did make it in the end but it took a long time.
JC Thinking back to Aberdeen in the 50s and your own interests and so forth, how did one meet other students? You'd obviously got friends from school I suppose, from the Grammar and you had the people you met in class and you had your golfing companions. But what were the kind of typical student/social gatherings you attended?
MH Well, the Students Union of course fulfilled a function as I dare say it does now as a centre point. I would think that was probably the principle one.
JC And you went to the Union to do what? Just to chat to people or to dances or to drink beer?
MH Or play a game of snooker. I think we only had two tables that I can remember. There's a huge room full now. Of course you've a lot more students. The Union seems to be set up to cope with a lot more than we did. Yes, I think the Union fulfilled several functions then which helped a lot.
JC Did you go there regularly yourself then?
MH I wasn't a very frequent visitor personally. Probably I was there for short times on several occasions. I think when we moved out to King's College from Marischal that made a difference because you could often pop over to the Union for a twenty minutes/half an hour when you were working in Marischal. When you were at King's it was a different thing. I think that probably affected it a bit. There does seem to be a lot more opportunities for doing different things now in the student unions. I've noticed both here and in the one at Imperial which I went back to recently to have a look, there's a greater width of activity and facility than there used to be.
JC So where did students congregate in Old Aberdeen in your day? Was it Jack's Café?
MH Jack's Café was a popular one?
JC The Pavilion or was that not then offering food?
MH I never used that one myself actually. Jack's Café I'd been in periodically, but I used to come back to take the bus up the road to the Students Union for lunchtime or indeed sometimes later doing a PhD we had stuff we brought in and ate that in the lab.
JC You didn't ever eat in the Elphinstone Hall for lunch, because at one time it was run as a sort of student refectory?
MH I did, yes. I did use that yes, it was there. I think half the time I probably had something with me. But yes, the lunch, I think I probably got a bite to eat in the Union as much as anyone when we were at Marischal.
JC What about studying places? Where would you mainly work other than in the lab? Did you use the library?
MH I used the library quite a lot, yes. Not so much the one at King's but it was the one at Marischal I tended to use. Yes, I used that a lot.
JC That would be the Science Library would it, the one at Marischal?
MH Yes it was.
JC When the departments were moved up here did the Science Library stay at Marischal or did it migrate up here? I mean I know eventually they built this building but that was a long time later.
MH I think there was a time lag between it moving so I was probably still using, my memory of it is that I was still using the Marischal one.
JC Yes, that's interesting because the Science Library came a long time later.
MH But it might have only been just the one year that this happened. I can't remember exactly when the move took place but I don't remember that the library moved as far as I was concerned and I think we had to continue using Marischal.
JC Yes, I hadn't thought about that before but it was more than 10 years before a science library was built on this site.
MH Yes, well that could well be true.
JC That's interesting, yes. So you did do quite a lot of hopping between Marischal and King's even when the department was up here.
MH Yes.
JC Was Marischal used for other things? Was it a place you went to apart from graduation? Was there any other use made of Marischal, the Debater for example, did you use that much?
MH I didn't use the Debater, no I wasn't debating. I had done various other topics there, like the Geology department was there and I did a years Geology. And Physics, like many of the students I have very happy memories of Prof Jones and the fun and games he got up to. You've probably heard some of that.
JC He seemed to have been a terribly popular teacher.
MH He was. He had the ability to, well he would demonstrate what his subject meant by some demonstration or practical experiment. He also had all his lectures printed out. You picked up a copy as you went in.
JC As you went in or as you come out?
MH As you went in, they were there waiting for you.
JC It must have been a temptation not to listen to him though?
MH I think his actual style of lecturing guaranteed that. He took the view that you were there to listen to me and not spend all your time writing. I will obviously sometimes say some things which aren't in the written notes and by all means scribble those down, but I'm going to be showing you things and I want you to watch what we're doing and I'm showing you things so that you realise that these formula mean something and are not just numbers and letters on a piece of paper. He was great for showing what this meant in every day life, in reality. He was very good. I can remember a lot of things. I only did one year's Physics with him but I can remember most of the things that he taught, because of the demonstrations, the methodology.
JC Did you do Maths as well?
MH I did two years Maths, yes.
JC Would that have been with Sir Edward Wright?
MH It was with Wright, yes. He was our Maths prof.
JC Before he became Principal of course.
MH Yes.
JC He I gather was a very able mathematician?
MH Yes, he was very good. Maths wasn't my strongest subject. I was alright in the first year of Maths and I struggled a little bit in the second year, but got through. But I was quite pleased when that was out of the way.
JC Did any of these people who taught you, either in Chemistry or in other subjects, did any of them get on to social terms with you? Did you go to their houses ever for example?
MH No. I didn't. It was generally formal.
JC Outside the classroom did you have in your day regents, or advisers of studies, people who talked to you about the course?
MH The lecturers were available to, you could approach them and have a chat with them. Prof Jones once or twice I had raised a point with him and he spent an extra half hour, a busy man actually, would take the time to do that. It wasn't an organised routine but it was as and when the need arose. I always found somebody would take time to do that. Whether it's the same these days, they've probably got other aspects of their work that have changed I don't know. I didn't at the time feel that there was a need for an organised pattern but I'm sure that others found the same as I did that if you needed help and asked for it you got it.
JC Did you find that most of your friends were people doing chemistry or did you know people across the board? Or perhaps I should say chemistry or playing golf?
MH My principle friends were in the class that you were in or in teams that you were playing for but you were bound to meet others if you went to a hop as they called it at the Union or something like that you would meet people from across the way.
JC Because the total size of University was what about 1500/2000?
MH It was about 1800/2000 something like that. But again you had other people you had known say at school who were doing other subjects. I used to meet quite a few of the medical people who did medicine. Two of my best friends were doing medicine so occasionally I would meet quite a few of them and also one or two who were keen on music etc and there attitudes rubbed off on you a little bit. You didn't get stuck in the one …
JC Chemistry ghetto?
MH Yes, not exactly that, in one ultra narrow view point.
JC Were there many women in the sciences, and chemistry in particular, in your honours class of 18 for example, were any of them women?
Start of second side of tape
JC We were talking about the presence or absence of women in the science classes in the university and I was hearing that in the chemistry honours class of 18 there was perhaps only one you were thinking?
MH I think it was only one by my recollection. I think in the third year there had probably been about four or five maybe half a dozen out of about thirty.
JC That's a tiny proportion, isn't it?
MH I think the proportion may have grown over the years, I don't know what it is now but it's quite possible that during the war time years there was a higher proportion of women because there was more a shortage of the male rather than anything else. I think the science and engineering subjects had probably less girls in them than perhaps nowadays.
JC Those girls that there were doing science subjects, was your impression that they were treated with complete equality by this time or was there any degree of prejudice against them, either by the older teachers or by their fellow students?
MH I don't think there was any prejudice that I noticed. In fact they are the best people to ask rather than me.
JC Sure, I just wondered what you …
MH I didn't notice any but that could have been my lack of observance. I think their difficulty generally was perhaps going to happen when they went out into the industrial world or to get a job later. That might have been a bigger hurdle for them than getting through the course in the first place.
JC Which reminds me to ask incidentally, did you get any formal careers advice or were you so set on the academic route that the question never arose that you might do something different? I don't even know if there was a careers service in the university as early as this.
MH We tended to get firms coming round selling the advantages of working for them but I can't remember any formalised assistance. In my particular case, after taking my BSc, because I was embarking on a PhD course, I wasn't really looking for that sort of help at that point so it would have probably been of more importance to someone who was immediately looking for employment after leaving. Generally speaking firms came round and tried to sell their wares and advantages of going there. I did visit several but it was later on, I think this was probably when I was nearing the end of my PhD course.
JC Do you remember, looking back on student life more generally, do you remember what the sort of, if one can generalise in this way, what the sort of concerns were among the young? I mean, what sort of topics did you discuss when you were together? Music obviously, sport, query art, query literature, query politics, query religion?
MH Funny enough, religion was quite often a subject and other religions, not just our own. And have they got a better idea than we have, this sort of thing. Religion was, politics periodically although I think most of the people I talked about were a bit wary about getting involved in politics, it can get a bit heated if you're not careful.
JC What about University politics, SRC and that sort of thing?
MH Yes, some of my friends did. I didn't take much part in it, no I didn't actually. One could sometimes identify certain ones that were going to perhaps make a career of politics rather than use the degree that they were just about to get. No, I didn't take part in that.
JC Would you characterise yourself and your contemporaries at that time as being slightly complacent, slightly a-political? I don't want to put words into your mouth but I'm trying to grasp what it felt like.
MH I think behind the scenes there was the feeling that the war's over now and I think that looking back over the shoulder at the fact that there had been some bad times, now things were better. I think that probably affected the way we were. Perhaps it led into a situation where you were a little bit too willing to sacrifice discipline. I don't know if that's the right way of putting it but I think that over the next ten years or so there was too much in society generally, in my view, of relaxing.
JC Was your generation into drink and drugs then or not? It was too early for that I would guess?
MH I think certainly some people did drink too much etc. but I think there was probably an economic reason as well. As more money became available then some of these other aspects came about but I felt that perhaps this might refer more to when I was down in London. London was quite a safe place to walk around in then. I don't think the drug scene had really hit. It was probably there in a smaller scale but it wasn't there on a big scale.
JC Let alone in Aberdeen then?
MH Well Aberdeen would have been lesser.
JC I was always surprised myself when I came to Aberdeen that given that it's a sea port town, that there wasn't a bigger drugs problem. There doesn't seem to have been.
MH No, I think it worked its way up from the big cities.
JC What about the nuclear threat? Was that something you worried out?
MH There was quite a lot of discussion on morality of the nuclear threat but I think it was discussions which as we would usually end up by saying well we haven't solved the problems but we've had a discussion about it. It was one of these things where there was no real immediate obvious answer otherwise society would have found it anyway.
JC Indeed. Do you remember among your contemporaries as students, do you remember any whose subsequent careers have either surprised or impressed you? You know, people who you thought, gosh how on earth did he get there, or alternatively somebody who at university level already seemed destined for great things?
MH I think it was difficult to identify while you're still going through. For instance Alastair North, Prof North, has done very well over the years. We were at school together.
JC He was a contemporary of yours?
MH Yes, played rugby at school.
JC He came to university here?
MH He was one year different from us at university I think. Yes, he did very well.
JC You felt he was a golden boy then did you?
MH No, I felt he was very good, but it's difficult to guess who the very good ones were going to be. I could tell some that were going to go into the scientific civil service, those who were going into teaching and those who were going into industry with slightly different attitudes. But to be able to say he will make a brilliant job in the civil service or he will make a brilliant job in teaching at that stage it's more a question of the type of job they'll go to rather than how well they will do in it. Because I think one doesn't really oneself know exactly enough about it until you experience it yourself.
JC But sometimes one is struck by contemporaries either at school or university as being excessively bright. I can still look back on a school friend who was I think one of the cleverest people I've every met, you know. But there were no real stars in that sense in your firament. Any aspects of your student life that you think, oh I know one which we haven't covered, I haven't asked you at all about money. How did you manage financially? Did you have a bursary or were your parents paying for everything?
MH No, my parents and I think my uncles helped as well. They helped on the sports equipment for instance. They had enough to get me through. I didn't have a bursary.
JC Did you get an allowance from your parents or your stepparents as it were?
MH Yes, I had an allowance but things like the fees and what not were paid straight by them to get me through. When I went to Imperial I had a grant for that. Professor Barrer was very good at picking up grants. It was just enough to see us through but we were able to survive alright on it. I was fortunate in that sense. And of course by staying at home I didn't have a major outlay of rental accommodation and things like that. I was living at home and eating at home.
JC But you didn't feel poor as a student? I suppose that's really what I'm getting at.
MH I never felt hard done by, no. I could always get a lift in a car from somebody to the golf course or always had just enough. Never more than just enough but it was always there.
JC Were you at all conscious of differences of economic status among your contemporaries? Some of them must have been very poor. Were you conscious of that?
MH Yes. Equally there were one or two at the other end of the scale but it didn't seem to lead to social difficulties.
JC It was just that you were conscious that so and so couldn't buy a round of drinks or couldn't do this or that?
MH I would go easy on the round of drinks or it would always ever be a half pint, you would never ask them to … but there wasn't too much of that actually. It was just something that people seemed to be able to fit in together and cope with that sort of thing.
JC Did you have to work at all in vacations for paid work or did you not do that?
MH I only did it in one year but I didn't in the other three years because in my research year one tended to work through the vacations and only take two or three weeks off anyway. But on the undergraduate year I didn't actually. Just the once.
JC Did you travel instead or what did you do?
MH I tended to play quite a bit of golf. That was when I tended to do my practicing and I played quite a few of the weekend competitions around here. I had to use the buses quite a bit. Of course there was a train service at that time, up Deeside. I could go to Banchory or Aboyne and this sort of thing.
JC Have a day,s golf and come back to Aberdeen.
MH Yes. Just carry a few clubs this sort of thing, travel light.
JC OK, we've discussed lots of different things, is there any other aspect of your Aberdeen life that we haven't touched on that you'd like to?
MH I think the general feeling I've had looking back on it was I was pleased that I'd been to Aberdeen University. It's a sort of all round university. OK there are other bigger and more prestigious universities which give you an all round look at life and various things but I was very pleased to go to Aberdeen and I think this attitude arose from seeing how confined the technical life at the likes of Imperial College was compared to a one campus site university as opposed to a university that's maybe scattered in twenty different places.
JC Yes, and highly specialised.
MH Yes. So I've seen both aspects of it and I think that even the specialised places ought to have certain lectures in their course, on their curriculum, of a much wider nature. No, Aberdeen was a nice size as well. I don't know how I would feel now joining in a university that's got now six or seven times as many people. Whether that has changed it I don't know. But it was a nice size when I was there.
JC I'm getting the picture of a very happy time as university?
MH I enjoyed my university time I must admit.
JC Yes, hard working in the academic sense but otherwise sort of very happy and a very nice mixture of experiences.
MH Yes.
JC Fine. Well thank you very much for talking to me it's been very interesting.
MH I hope there's something in it that might be useful.
End of Transcription |