Memorial Service for Dr Courtenay Phillips

A memorial service for Emeritus Fellow and former Tutor in Inorganic Chemistry Dr Courtenay Phillips (1924-2022).

The service was followed by tea in Hall.

• Order of Service [PDF format]

Prelude
Edward Elgar Nimrod
Anthems
William Harris Holy is the true light 

Johannes Brahms How lovely are thy dwellings fair

Voluntary
JS Bach Fugue in E flat BWV 552

Memorial Address

Given by Professor Tim Softley, Emeritus Fellow.

'It is truly an honour to say a few words about Courtenay Phillips here today – but I have known for 25 years that Courtenay was expecting me to do this.   In 1997 Courtenay took me on one side after College lunch and said ‘I have something that might be useful for you at some point in the future – you don’t need to use it… entirely up to you’. I looked puzzled at some hand-written notes in his hand. ‘I have written a few sentences about my life, as you may have to give an address at my memorial service one day – of course, I am not intending to pass away anytime soon’.  That was typical of Courtenay’s thoughtful support of his colleagues. Regrettably though, I must confess I subsequently lost the notes.

But, as a matter of record, Courtenay Phillips arrived at Merton as a Postmaster to read Chemistry in 1942, and spent almost 80 years of his adult life as a student and then Fellow of Merton. He told me he had spent only one year away from the college in that entire period. He of course achieved a first-class degree in Chemistry and was appointed a Fellow and Tutor of Merton in 1948 at the age of 24, and soon after became a University Lecturer in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford. He later became a Sub-Warden of the College from 1957 to 59 and Acting Warden in 79 to 81 and again in 84 to 85 and he spent two years as Interim Head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory in the 1980s.  He was clearly regarded as somewhat more than just a very safe pair of hands.

Writing in Chemistry at Oxford: a History from 1600 to 2005, Bob Williams notes that it was Merton Chemist Bertram Lambert, with whom Courtenay had done an undergraduate project, who persuaded Merton to appoint the very young Phillips to a fellowship. Bob Williams recalls
"Phillips had no publications, no doctorate and very little research experience, although later he did some fine research in Chromatography. Phillips turned out to be a very successful tutor and his wish was to give his pupils intellectual insight."

Personally, I first encountered Courtenay and his intellectual insights when I was a freshman Chemist at Wadham in 1977 and Courtenay signed me off for my first practical in the ICL. I remember hoping that this exercise would take less than 10 minutes as I had a sports trial to attend at Iffley Rd. 30 minutes later I recall Courtenay still passing on his intellectual insights and saying to me finally with slight exasperation "well when you were doing this practical, didn’t you stop and ask yourself the question 'why’?" – that was certainly advice worth missing my trial for.

Mike Porter, Mertonian from the late 80 s, and now Professor at UCL, told me "Courtenay was a tutor who really cared about his students and their development, and although I don’t remember much of the chemistry, his tutorials really helped me learn how to think."

The two-volume book, entitled ‘Inorganic Chemistry’, published in 1965, that Courtenay wrote with Bob Williams made a very significant mark on the teaching of Inorganic Chemistry at Oxford and internationally, because it was a book designed to make students – and indeed their tutors - think.  It conveyed a depth of understanding of the subject matter, a very physical approach, illustrated with graphical data, that went well beyond the mere cataloguing of chemical reactions and periodic trends that typified inorganic textbooks at the time.  

JJ Zuckerman of Cornell University reviewed the book in 1967 and wrote:

"We have here the results of the first attempt at gross departure from the old textbook pattern. The effect is dramatic. Never is a fact mentioned without an interpretation appearing nearby. We have inorganic chemistry presented here as the difficult and complex subject it is. The approach is thoroughly adult. And students had better know the meaning of ceteris paribus."

Colleagues in the ICL at Oxford were inspired by this book. Jenny Green recalls that this text book defined the Oxford Inorganic course for some considerable time and Mike Mingos remembers that he used it extensively and it influenced the way he taught.

In his research, Courtenay’s physical approach to inorganic chemistry also came to the fore. He made important contributions to the development of the technique of gas chromatography – a methodology still used today for separating and analysing gas and vapour mixtures, and deployed for example in drug detection, fire investigation, and pollution analysis. In the 1950s and 1960s the development of gas chromatography was steered largely by the petroleum industry, but Courtenay was driven more to understand the principles of the technique and how it could be improved. He introduced the method of temperature programming and worked on the thermodynamics of adsorption. He also applied it to substances that many others would not dare to – hydrides of boron and silicon and borazines for example. He was perhaps one of the earliest of the Oxford chemists to be willing to handle such unstable inorganic compounds, and others followed his lead. Mike Mingos recalls that Courtenay returned from a trip to a lab in Los Angeles with some rare, expensive samples of boron hydrides, quite possibly in his suitcase, and generously shared these with others in the ICL.

Courtenay’s own words in his opening paper to the Symposium of the Faraday Society in 1981, give insight to his approach to experimental research: "Finally, as the shadows of life begin to lengthen and policemen and chromatographers get so remarkably young, I would like to emphasise the power, and above all the simplicity of the chromatographic methods and the simple apparatus used. Sadly, my younger colleagues are made to feel that nothing worthwhile can be done without elaborate and expensive equipment."

Connected to his research expertise, and also his incredible breadth of chemical and general knowledge, Courtenay acted as an advisor to British and US government bodies on security and matters relating to the Middle East, he helped to set up the first university in the Sultanate of Oman, and was an advisor to chemical industries in the UK and overseas. I recall some students asking me whether he was a member of MI6… but he probably wasn’t.

But Courtenay was exceptionally dedicated to Merton and to his teaching. He cared passionately about supporting his tutees to achieve their best, he expected nothing short of excellence in a Merton chemist - and he always wanted to convey the interest and importance of Chemistry as a discipline.

Courtenay was also very much a tactician – he wanted to make sure that Merton students would get degree results that matched their abilities, especially where those were students with "alpha qualities." Gus Hancock who taught physical chemistry at Merton for a number of years recalls that Courtenay was a wizard at predicting what questions would come up in finals papers and Trinity students, who Courtenay also used to teach, also benefited from this

One student from the late 1980s recalls some of Courtenay’s oft-repeated phrases’ such as “If you’re asked to compare and contrast carbon and californium, and the only similarity you can see is that they both begin with the letter C, maybe you shouldn’t answer that question”

Laurence Harwood, organic tutor here in the 80s and early 90s recalls that every year there would be a little ritual where Courtenay gathered the freshers together early in Michaelmas Term and would say in a very matter fact kind of way…."Of course if you wish to do rowing that is entirely up to you – but I feel obliged to warn you that if you do row then you WILL drop one class of degree"

Courtenay was certainly not averse to sport. Indeed, he won a half blue for Golf as an undergraduate, and carried on playing well into his 80s, and in his retirement. he dedicated time to the development of a new golf course at Frilford Heath in Oxfordshire, where he had been Club Captain in 1979 and a Board Member 1980-2004.

Another student recalls that Courtenay ‘was what I expected an Oxford tutor to be - I can picture him walking across the quadrangle wearing a pale grey suit and tie, tan-coloured loafers, and a bicycle helmet and of course bicycle clips. He was able to bring up anecdotes from before the war and talk about some of the people we'd only heard about in textbooks as his colleagues. And Faraday was his tutor’s tutor for example.

Courtenay had an uncanny ability to probe almost anything at entrance interviews. One student recalled "I put down on my application form that I was an expert in deep sea diving, but Courtenay found me out."

As a colleague at Merton, Courtenay was always a pleasure to work with, and was always generous with his time. Laurence Harwood recalls "something that characterized Courtenay as a colleague and endeared him to me greatly was that he never intruded but always gave sound advice when asked."

Following his retirement in 1992, having given tutorials and classes for 43 years to at least 250 Merton chemists and many from other colleges, Courtenay continued to give revision classes in college, for several years. His record as the longest-serving Chemistry Tutor in Merton’s history is unlikely to be surpassed. Above all, Courtenay was a loyal Mertonian, through and through, whose contributions to the College were immense over many decades, and I am sure he is remembered today with great fondness and admiration by his colleagues, former tutees, friends, and family.'