Re: Yacht wanted,

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:43:04 -0000, "Duncan Heenan"
<duncanheenan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>"Paul Cooper" <a.paul.r.cooper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:sl65r1d8fu74jaavmgjs0eu1ebnmn35g3u@xxxxxxxxxx
>> On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 09:49:11 -0000, "Duncan Heenan"
>> <duncanheenan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>P.S. to my earlier, tongue in cheek post. As an Antarctican, did you ever
>>>come across David Wyn-Williams there or in Cambridge?
>>>
>>
>> I knew him quite well - we both work(ed) at British Antarctic Survey,
>> and I attended his funeral service in Great St. Mary's. His death was
>> a sad loss to us all; he was a nice person as well as a very talented
>> scientist.
>>
>> Paul
>
>I was at UCW Aberystwyth with David (we called him Wyn in those days) in the
>late '60s when he was doing his marine microbiology PhD. We were good
>friends as we lived in the same hall of residence together, and occasionally
>played rugby for the same crap team! We also used to go running together in
>a group of friends along the seafront and over the nearby hills. I left Aber
>in 1970, and we maintained 'Christmas card' contact for many years and
>actually met by accident on a railway station some years afterwards and had
>a good natter.
>With his life of commuting back and forward to the frozen south I gradually
>lost touch, and was shocked to hear of his death via his Times obituary. It
>had a particular resonance for me, that he was killed by a car when out
>jogging, as I have many memories of late night jogging sessions with him all
>those years ago. Neither of us were natural runners, but used to puff along
>together trying not to be too competitive - until someone made a burst! He
>was a great fellow, and universally popular; a real gentleman, who always
>had time for others and looked for the best in people. I am not a scientist,
>but I knew him as a person, and was enriched by the experience. It was a sad
>loss to everyone to lose him, and of course most to his family.
>Small world - the internet, eh?
>

As you say, it is a small world. With David, it stood a good chance of
making it to more than one world - one of his greatest "blue sky"
interests was in exobiology, in particular the investigation of the
potential for life on Mars. David had discovered the presence of
living organisms within rocks in Antarctica, and had realized that
this and other survival strategies for life in Antarctica might mean
that the conventional wisdom that Mars is too cold and dry for life
was not necessarily a bar to their being life on Mars. These days this
is pretty much conventional wisdom for Martian investigators, but
David put it on the intellectual map. In the year or so before his
death he was actively investigating techniques for detecting life on
Mars.

I had more to do with him over his more conventional interests in lake
biology, but we had several interesting chats on this and other
matters!

Paul
.

Relevant Pages

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