A home for art and artists

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1910s, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, art, arts fellows, benefactors, library, physical education

Curator Donald Jamieson in the Hocken pictures stack, 1965. Photograph courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Box-240-004, S16-102b.

Otago does not, like some universities, have a fine arts programme; the highly-regarded Dunedin School of Art, established in 1870, is part of Otago Polytechnic. But the university has not neglected art: it has an art history programme, a prestigious fellowship for artists and one of New Zealand’s finest art collections.

That collection began when Thomas Morland Hocken donated his large collection of publications, archives, maps, photographs and paintings to the University of Otago, to be held in trust for the people of New Zealand. The deed of trust was signed in 1907, and in 1910 – shortly before Hocken’s death – the Hocken Library opened in a new wing of the Otago Museum (which was then run by the university). Hocken’s donation included over 400 pictures. Although his wife Bessie Hocken was a painter and photographer, he was not really interested in art for its aesthetics, but for the evidence it provided for research into his true passion, New Zealand history. The artworks he donated ranged from landscapes to political cartoons to paintings of Māori people and activities, and many included keys created by the Hockens to identify people and topographical features. Over the next few decades the library purchased further artworks and others were donated; the first published catalogue of the pictorial collection, dated 1948, included hundreds more works. Like the original collection, additions were mostly acquired for their historical interest, but they included many fine drawings and paintings. A great example is John Buchanan’s 1863 painting of Milford Sound. Linda Tyler, formerly pictorial curator at the Hocken, described this 1920s acquisition as ‘one of the icons of New Zealand art’; she recently discussed it on radio as her favourite New Zealand painting.

From the 1950s the Hocken pictorial collection took a new direction thanks to the influence – and generosity – of some noted art experts and collectors. Poet and editor Charles Brasch headed a new Hocken pictures subcommittee and – not without some opposition – shifted the acquisitions focus from history to aesthetics, and to include modern works. Brasch’s friend Rodney Kennedy made the first of many significant gifts to the Hocken in 1956 with 23 drawings by Colin McCahon. Kennedy attended the Dunedin School of Art in the 1920s and had many artist friends and a fine collection of New Zealand artworks; he was well-known around Otago as a long-serving drama tutor for the university extension department. Brasch, too, began gifting paintings in the late 1950s; both men gave further significant artworks during their lifetimes and by bequest. The Hocken’s important collection of McCahon’s works started with Kennedy and Brasch, but continued with gifts directly from McCahon and a bequest from his parents. Charlton Edgar, who taught at the Dunedin School of Art in the 1930s, gave nearly 400 works to the Hocken in 1961. This gift – known as the Mona Edgar collection in honour of his wife – ‘would update the Hocken with thirty years worth of modern New Zealand art’, wrote Tyler; it ‘changed the historical orientation of the collection irrevocably’. In subsequent decades the Hocken continued to purchase and receive generous donations of New Zealand artworks both modern and historical; by 2007 it held some 14,000 pictures. Those artworks have appeared in many exhibitions (in Dunedin and beyond) and publications and some can now be viewed digitally on the Otago University Research Heritage website. Dr Hocken little knew what he was starting when he gifted those 400 or so works depicting the history of New Zealand to the people of this country!

From 1966 the Hocken benefited from the existence of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, named in honour of one of New Zealand’s greatest artists. Modelled on the university’s Robert Burns Fellowship for writers, which had commenced in 1959, the new fellowship offered artists the opportunity to live in Dunedin for a year with a secure income and studio space provided; they had complete freedom of expression to work on projects of their choice. Anonymous ‘friends of the university’ made a large donation which endowed the fellowship, designed to aid and encourage painters and sculptors and foster interest in the arts at the university. The university was becoming an important patron of the arts, with fellowships for composers and dancers and children’s writers to follow later. Such fellowships were few and far between in New Zealand, so they carried considerable prestige.

Michael Illingworth, photographed in his studio by Max Oettli, 1968. Illingworth was the first Frances Hodgkins Fellow in 1966. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, P2011-027, S16-102c. Reproduced with the kind permission of Max Oettli and Dene Illingworth.

The rules stated that potential fellows needed to have ‘executed sufficient work’ to demonstrate talent as a painter or sculptor, and shown that they were ‘a serious artist’ who would be ‘diligent’ in developing their talent and would benefit from the fellowship. There was no requirement for applicants to have any formal education in fine arts, ensuring ‘mavericks’ would not be cut out. The university – or, at least, its selection committee – from the beginning showed a willingness to be bold and support innovative and sometimes controversial artists. The first Frances Hodgkins Fellow, Michael Illingworth, made the news a year earlier when his painting As Adam and Eve, on show at Auckland’s Barry Lett Galleries, attracted an obscenity complaint to the police. That incident cemented the painter’s frustration with the conservatism of middle-class New Zealand. A friend, the writer Kevin Ireland, later described Illingworth as ‘a person with a blunderbuss conversation and philosophy – he sprayed out and hit everything yet his art was so worked and jewel-like and carefully done’. The fellowship got off to rather an unfortunate start when Illingworth left halfway through his 1966 tenure, claiming he couldn’t work in the studio provided. The second Frances Hodgkins Fellow, sculptor Tanya Ashken, found Dunedin more congenial. Among the friends she made was Philip Smithells, director of the physical education school; she joined the students in his gymnastic classes and her observations of their movements and poses contributed to her new sculpture. Following her fellowship there was an exhibition of her work in the foyer of the museum (where the Hocken was still located).

Finding a suitable space for the fellows proved a long-term challenge. In 1975 the Cumberland St house where fellow John Parker had his studio was demolished partway through his term and he moved into an alternative in Leith St. In 1978 fellow Grahame Sydney declared the latest space, near the Leith, ‘a completely satisfactory studio’, but that one didn’t last either. The 2008 fellow, painter Heather Straka, noted that the then studio in Union Street West had good light and hours could pass without her realising: ‘Before I know it, it is 1am and I am still working’. For the past few years the studio has been in a prefab near the Albany Street music studio. Another challenge was funding. Although the original anonymous gift was intended to endow the fellowship permanently, by the late 1970s inflation had eroded the value of its income, along with those of the Burns and Mozart fellowships. The university held a successful appeal to boost fellowship funds, attracting donations from individuals and businesses, along with a government grant. In 1986 the university decided to withhold the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship for a year to build up its capital, but donations from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and M.W. James Trust meant it could be offered for a shorter term of 6 months. Since then, the fellowship has been awarded every year.

The list of former Frances Hodgkins Fellows is a veritable who’s who of the New Zealand art world. Many of the artists held the fellowship fairly early or mid-career and went on to great acclaim, such as Ralph Hotere (1969), Marilynn Webb (1974), Jeffrey Harris (1977), Gretchen Albrecht (1981), Fiona Pardington (1996 and 1997), Shane Cotton (1998) and Seraphine Pick (1999). ‘It’s flattering to be in such good company’, said Heather Straka during her tenure. ‘Everyone who has come through this residency has been of quite good note and has produced great work while on the residency’. Freedom from financial worry – for a year, at least – led to the production of many fine works of art: John Ward Knox, the 2015 fellow, described it as ‘a windfall of time and space and freedom’ to create. The Hocken showcased the work of each fellow through an exhibition hosted soon after their tenure, and acquired some of those works for its collection.

If you’re in Dunedin, take the opportunity to see some of the highlights of the Hocken at its current exhibition (on until 22 October). And keep an eye out for the exhibition to be held later this year at the Hocken Collections and Dunedin Public Art Gallery to mark 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. If you’re further away, you can still enjoy many of the Hocken’s art treasures in digital format – happy viewing!

Boosting human capital

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1990s, 2000s, 2010s, benefactors, funding, law, leading thinkers, marine science, medicine, peace and conflict studies, science communication, Scottish studies

Professor Jim Mann, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre, with donors Jan and Eion Edgar at the official opening. It was the first project funded under the Leading Thinkers scheme. Image courtesy of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre.

Inspiration for policy and practice at Otago has come from many different places. Canada may not be the first country that springs to mind, but that was where the concept for a significant new initiative for the university was sparked!

In the 1990s and 2000s, as student numbers surged while the government tightened its belt, the university sought to diversify its funding. Unlike some countries, notably the USA, New Zealand did not have a strong tradition of large-scale philanthropy to tertiary education, though there were of course many gifts and bequests which established scholarships, prizes and the like through the years. During the early decades of the twentieth century Otago also benefited from some more substantial donations and bequests which enabled the teaching of new subjects (home science, anthropology and music), a boost to teaching and research in others (physics, chemistry, economics, English, dentistry) and the establishment of several new professorial chairs (physiology, medicine and surgery). Reaching out to Otago’s growing body of alumni was one way to attract a new wave of generosity. Functions for graduates around the world began to take off at the time of the university’s 125^th anniversary celebrations in 1994.

In Toronto the dynamic Gill Parata, first head of Otago’s alumni office, met Brian Merrilees, an Otago graduate who had a distinguished academic career as professor of French, also holding various administrative roles at the University of Toronto. He told Gill of the university’s very successful fundraising campaign and arranged for Graeme Fogelberg, Otago’s vice-chancellor, to meet with Toronto’s president and other key figures in the campaign. One aspect of Toronto’s campaign was to raise funds to attract ‘superstar’ academics to the university. Though they suspected the ‘superstar’ idea might not work in New Zealand, the Otago group liked the idea of focussing a fundraising drive on increasing the university’s intellectual capacity; they believed this would have more appeal than bricks and mortar, comments Graeme Fogelberg. Otago’s executive and council liked the concept, and so a scheme for ‘knowledge leaders’, later known as the Leading Thinkers initiative, was born. In 2002 Clive Matthewson, a former member of parliament and cabinet minister, was appointed as Otago’s Director of Development to oversee the project.

The government was also keen for tertiary institutions to attract more funding from the private sector and established a Partnerships for Excellence scheme, which matched dollar for dollar funds raised for major capital developments. The scheme was targeted at building development; one of its best-known outcomes was the University of Auckland’s large business school, funded by a multimillion-dollar donation from expatriate businessman Owen Glenn. However, after much hard work, in 2003 the Otago team managed to convince a sceptical government that human capital was also worth funding under the scheme. The government agreed to match funds raised over the next 5 years up to a total of $25 million, a goal the university eventually exceeded 6 months ahead of time.

The ‘advancement’ team had already raised funds for some new Otago projects before the government came on board, but projects funded through the official Leading Thinkers scheme eventually totalled 27. It took a gift of $1 million, matched by another $1 million from the government, to fund a permanent chair, and most of the projects enabled the university to establish a professor, often with an associated research centre. The initiative got a great kick-start with a generous donation from the charitable trust of Dunedin businessman Eion Edgar, who happened to be the university’s chancellor; this funded the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre. Donations came from a range of individuals, charities, businesses and other organisations. Some provided permanent funding for existing projects with precarious sources of income; for instance, Cure Kids funded a chair in child health research which enabled Otago to retain Stephen Robertson, the gifted paediatrician and clinical geneticist whose post had been based previously on short-term funding. Cure Kids also funded a second chair in paediatric research under the scheme, awarded to Christchurch neonatologist Brian Darlow.

Children in the Apple programme, one of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre’s first projects. This seminal study showed that community-based initiatives could successfully reduce the rate of excessive weight gain in primary school-aged children. Image courtesy of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre.

Not all of the initiatives were in health sciences, indeed, they included all of the university’s academic divisions. And not all related to existing fields of teaching and research at the university: some took it in brand new directions, sparked by the particular interests of the donors. A good example is the Legal Issues Centre and associated chair. This was endowed by philanthropists Grant and Marilyn Nelson through the Gama Foundation, inspired by their frustration with a drawn-out legal case. It aimed to act as a ‘critic and conscience’ of the legal profession and system, and provide insights to ‘reorient the legal system so that it works better for people’. The Gama Foundation also funded a research fellowship in bipolar disorder through the Leading Thinkers scheme. One interesting donor was the Stuart Residence Halls Council, the organisation which founded and ran Arana and Carrington Colleges. Having sold the colleges to the university, it generously donated much of the money back to endow two new chairs, in science communication and Scottish studies. There was just one exception to the rule that the Leading Thinkers scheme was about people. It wasn’t precisely bricks and mortar, but the ocean science research vessel Polaris II certainly wasn’t human! There isn’t space here to describe all of the initiatives, but you can read a little about each in an article published to celebrate the scheme’s tenth anniversary.

The Polaris II, a former fishing vessel purchased and refitted to serve as a research vessel for a wide range of marine and environmental science activities. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

The Leading Thinkers scheme proved an enormous boon to research, teaching and public engagement at Otago, bringing inspirational scholars of international reputation to the university and helping retain other excellent minds. The dynamism of these people led to impressive results, quickly achieved, and drew other good people, both staff and students, to work with them. Thanks, Canada, for the idea!

Staff and students of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (plus a few from tourism) at Otakou Marae in 2013. Foundation professor Kevin Clements is the tall figure with white hair in the middle. The centre began in 2009 as a Leading Thinkers initiative and quickly developed a great record of research, teaching and public engagement. By 2014 it had 6 academic staff and 24 PhD students from 19 countries. Image courtesy of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

From natural philosophy to physics

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1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, benefactors, mathematics, physics

The physics staff and senior students in 1926. Seated are (from left) lecturer Agnes Blackie, Professor Robert Jack and lecturer Robert Nimmo, who was about to head to England for postgraduate research and would eventually succeed Jack as professor. Everybody has signed their name on the back of the photo, but I haven’t been able to match all the names and faces. Others include Helen Thomson, Phyllis Sutton, Allan Harrington, James Horn, William Somerville and Harold Taylor, who would all graduate BSc in 1927, plus Doris Wheatley and Evelyn Franklin. Later departmental photos show Agnes Blackie surrounded by men, but physics was clearly less of a male bastion in 1926! Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Department of Physics archives, MS-3846 Box 2, S06-516.

I’ve written about the beginnings of various departments created in the 20th century, but this week I look at the early decades of a subject which has been around for much longer: physics. John Shand was one of Otago’s first professors, appointed to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy in 1870. “Natural philosophy” was an old term for “the study of natural bodies and the phenomena connected with them.” By the 1860s it was being overtaken by the term “physics”, though less so in Scotland; this may explain why Otago stuck with the traditional “natural philosophy” for its professor until the 1920s. Shand concentrated on teaching maths to begin with, but in 1881 and then from 1884 onwards he provided specialist classes in physics. As the university grew, the council appointed additional professors. In 1886 mathematics and natural philosophy were divided into two chairs; Shand chose to continue with physics and drop maths.

One of the remarkable features of physics at Otago is that until 1948 it had just two professors. Shand retired after 43 years of service and his successor, Robert Jack, after a mere 34 years. So, for nearly eight decades these two men had enormous influence on the research and teaching of physics in this country. I’ve written about both previously on this blog (here for Shand, and here for Jack). They were well remembered by many students, including health science students who sometimes struggled through their compulsory physics course! “Bobbie” Jack also became famous among the wider public as a pioneer of radio broadcasting. The professors weren’t the only long-serving staff, though: Agnes Blackie was assistant and then lecturer from 1919 to 1958, and Stan Hughes was a technician from the early 1920s to 1978.

Professors are important figures in university departments today, but once upon a time they held greater sway. Agnes Blackie, who started out as a student in 1915, recalled that they got to know their professors well, for “the professor was the whole department. In some of the larger departments – English, Physics, Chemistry – there might be an assistant who marked essays or practical books or helped with practical classes. For the rest, the professor did everything, gave every lecture, supervised every practical class.” She remembered Jack was “a bundle of nervous energy” whose workload meant “he curtailed his hours for sleep. He gave at least seventeen lectures a week, never giving a lecture without preparing it the night before; demonstrated eight hours weekly in the first year laboratory; spent a great deal of time helping students in the advanced laboratories; and then there was all the rest he had to do.”

Calendars for the 1890s outline the courses taught in Shand’s day. They provided broad coverage of various aspects of physics: heat, sound, light, static electricity, magnetism and current electricity. Textbooks included Deschanel’s Natural Philosophy, Garnett’s Heat, Tait’s Light, Thomson’s Electricity and Stewart and Gee’s Elementary Practical Physics; the advanced class used Maxwell’s Theory of Heat and Treatise on Electricity; Glazebrook’s Physical Optics and Gray’s Absolute Measurements in Electicity and Magnetism. As well as these physics courses, Shand taught the paper in elementary mechanics and hydrostatics: this was classed as part of mathematics by the University of New Zealand, but considered a traditional part of natural philosophy. When David Richards, who had an engineering background, became Professor of Mathematics in 1907, Shand handed over to him the teaching of mechanics, which was then renamed applied mathematics.

Shand and Jack were both renowned as thorough and clear lecturers, often faced with students who had been inadequately prepared at high school. Demonstrations kept their classes interesting. Blackie recalled that Jack’s lectures “were amply illustrated with applicances that the lecturer obviously enjoyed demonstrating. Wheels ran up hill, gyroscopes performed strange feats, waves ran along ropes, strings and tuning forks vibrated in resonance, light turned itself into brilliant colours, sparks cracked from electric generators, and I for one sat there fascinated.”

A generous bequest to the university by watchmaker Arthur Beverly, who died in 1907, provided a boost to the teaching of physics and mathematics with scholarships and funding for additional staff. In 1909 Thomas Hamilton became the Beverly Demonstrator in Physics, “the first adequately paid assistant any professor ever had,” according to university historian WP Morrell. In 1915 funds from the bequest also allowed the appointment of a “mechanic” – I guess we would now call him a technician – for the physics department. Another generous endowment, this time from the Mackenzie family of Walter Peak Station, enabled the appointment of Charles Focken, a Melbourne and Oxford graduate, as Beverly-Mackenzie lecturer in physics from 1926.

Physics has been located in the Science III building since 1977; prior to that it was in the “physics building” – the southernmost extension of the main clocktower building. The extension was built in the early 1920s, taking over the space once occupied by a large silver birch tree (transplanted to the Andersons Bay home of the architect, Edmund Anscombe) and a tennis court. Before getting its new wing, physics was squeezed into the original part of the clocktower building, together with many other departments. Laboratory work took place underground, in the basement.

I’ll close this post with a little inspiration from Agnes Blackie, who wrote some wonderful reminscences of her many years at Otago. She was a true fan of her subject: “I can’t imagine a better subject for a lecturer. Brimful of interest, it illumines and explains the world of everyday experience yet leads out in the furthest realms of space and inwards to the intriuging mysteries of the very small.” Long live the physics department!

The gift of music

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1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, benefactors, music

John Blair, the Dunedin seed merchant whose generous legacy allowed the music department to get started. Image from the Cyclopedia of New Zealand: Otago & Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905), courtesy of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

Turnips and opera may seem an unlikely pairing, but at Otago the former eventually led to the latter! Turnips were one of the specialties of Dunedin seed merchants Nimmo and Blair, regular winners of prizes at agricultural and pastoral shows around Otago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. John Blair, one of the owners, was a Scotsman drawn to the colonies by the lure of gold. After some years in Victoria he arrived in Otago in 1862, attracted by the new rush to the Dunstan. When he failed to make a fortune on the goldfields, Blair settled in Dunedin, finding work with a seed merchant. Blair proved a better businessman than he was a miner. With partner Robert Nimmo he purchased his late employer’s firm in 1876, and Nimmo and Blair quickly flourished as growers and suppliers of seeds, also branching out to sell fertilisers and agricultural implements. When he died in 1913 Blair was a man of considerable means, leaving money to his family and to various charitable causes, especially those connected with religion and education in the south.

Blair had a great fondness for music and in 1925 the University Council learned from his trustees that he had bequeathed funds to pay for a music lecturer at Otago (the delay after his death was presumably to allow various life interests and annuities in his estate to be completed). With funds for a lecturer’s salary guaranteed, the university was happy to expand its academic offerings to include the study of music; it was already supporting more informal adult education classes in music appreciation through the Workers’ Educational Association.

The council advertised for a lecturer, but did not have to look far to find a perfectly qualified candidate. Victor Galway, who was organist at First Church, conductor of the Dunedin Choral Society and its orchestra, a private music teacher, and the WEA lecturer, started work as the University of Otago’s first music lecturer in 1926. Galway, then in his early thirties, had excellent academic credentials in addition to practical experience, for he was the University of Melbourne’s first doctoral graduate in music (he was born in England but migrated to Australia with his family in his teens).

The University of Otago’s first music lecturer, Victor Galway, photographed in 1931. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand Free Lance collection, reference PAColl-6303-32.

The music department had small beginnings, with just 12 students in its first year. Early courses on offer included harmony, counterpoint, musical appreciation and history, and – for advanced students – composition and orchestration. The actual performance of music would not become part of the curriculum until much later, though staff and students of the department took part in many musical activities outside their classes.

Otago was late getting off the ground with music – Auckland University College had a music lecturer from 1888 and Canterbury from 1891 – but its programme grew steadily. Victor Galway, who was promoted to professor in 1939, reflected in 1949 on the department’s first 25 years. There were now 185 students, including 45 studying for the specialist Bachelor of Music degree. Galway took pride in the achievements of those he had taught, particularly those who had gone on to influential positions in education: “The Professor of Music in Canterbury University College and both of the lecturers in Music there are students of mine and graduates of this University, as is also the lecturer in Music in Otago [Mary Martin, who had graduated MusB in 1930 and was appointed lecturer in 1939]. The Departments of Music in the Dunedin Technical High School, the Christchurch Technical College, the Papanui Road Technical College as well as in many other post primary schools in New Zealand are staffed by men and women trained at the University of Otago. Others of our graduates hold leading positions in the National Broadcasting Service, as Church Organists, and as performers and teachers throughout New Zealand.”

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Honor McKellar, who was a student in the department in the early 1940s. She remembers the music staff of two – Galway and Martin – being squeezed into a small office shared with the German department in the clocktower building. Among the half dozen or so other students majoring in music then were John Ritchie (who became Professor of Music at Canterbury and a noted composer) and Walter Metcalf (who studied both science and music and ended up with an academic career in chemistry). Metcalf was a good violinist who led the university orchestra, while McKellar played “about fourteenth violin.” She describes herself as “dispensable” to the orchestra – when somebody in a front row broke a string she passed her violin forward and retired from the concert!

Honor McKellar’s great talent was in singing, and Prof Galway called on her to illustrate the public lectures he often gave. He was a popular lecturer, well-known for swinging his watch chain as he walked from side to side across the stage. He was a good teacher, she recalls, and gave them a thorough technical training; she could “write a fugue backwards”. He was, though, very conservative in his musical tastes, and famously described nineteenth-century opera as “the lowest form of art”. Seventeenth-century composer Purcell was more to his taste, and in 1941 he led the Otago University Musical Society in a concert performance of the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas. Galway’s successors as Professor of Music, Peter Platt and then John Drummond, were opera enthusiasts who developed this aspect of the department’s work greatly.

The seed merchant’s legacy – still commemorated through the Blair Professorship in Music – clearly had quite an impact on Otago. As well as the lectureship, his bequest funded scholarships for many music and arts students until the 1970s, when the money was redirected into the newly-established Mozart Fellowship for composers. Other music lovers later followed his example and contributed financially to the department’s activities; most notably, a large bequest from Dunedin physician William Evans funded a travelling scholarship and lecturers in music performance. Honor McKellar returned to Otago as its first executant lecturer in 1971; performance was offered as a degree subject from 1966, but tuition was initially contracted out to external teachers.

The Department of Music has offered much to Dunedin, and the wider world, ever since it started in 1926. It’s nice that this is a reciprocal relationship, with those who enjoy music supporting its teaching. And how appropriate it is that money earned from seeds got it started and helped it flourish!

Advertisement for Nimmo & Blair from the Otago Daily Times, 9 November 1895. Image from PapersPast, courtesy of the National Library of New Zealand.

 

 

The textbook bonanza

Tags

1890s, benefactors, chemistry

Dr J.W. Mellor, c.1904. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, from Album 518, S13-215a.

Reading the newspaper story about recent law graduate Jason Ushaw inspired me to think about other Otago graduates who have overcome difficult odds. One from the university’s early years is among the most distinguished scientists to come out of Otago. Like Ushaw, Joseph Mellor came from an unprivileged background. Born in Yorkshire in 1869, he arrived in New Zealand with his parents at the age of ten years. His father Job Mellor, who worked at the Roslyn Woollen Mills, could not afford to send his six children to high school, so Joseph started in the boot trade when he was thirteen. He read and studied in his spare time, and when the Dunedin Technical Classes Association started evening classes in 1889 he finally had the chance to pursue secondary schooling. Three years later he matriculated, entitling him to enrol for a university degree.

Thanks to a co-operative employer and a scholarship, Joseph Mellor began part-time classes at the University of Otago in 1892, where he studied under the charismatic Professor of Chemistry, James Gow Black. Mellor completed a BSc in 1897, followed by an honours year. His brilliance then won him a prestigious 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, offered to about eight recipients from Britain and its empire each year. This would fund three years of overseas research. Before heading to Victoria University in Manchester to begin his research, Mellor taught for a while at Lincoln Agricultural College and married Emma Bakes, the Mornington Wesleyan Church organist.

After completing his doctorate in 1902, Mellor remained in England. While teaching in Staffordshire he became interested in the local pottery industry and became a noted expert in the science of ceramics. In the ‘spare time’ he squeezed out of days spent as director of a research institution Mellor completed the task for which he is best remembered today, writing a remarkable number of textbooks. His books covered a range of topics within chemistry and some, such as Modern Inorganic Chemistry (first published 1912, 8 editions) became standard undergraduate texts. His master work was the 12-volume Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry, published between 1922 and 1938. Not all of his writing was serious, though, for he also wrote amusing letters and drew cartoons for his nephews and nieces in New Zealand (Joseph and Emma had no children of their own).

Joseph Mellor, who died in London in 1938, obviously appreciated the education and opportunities he had received back in Dunedin. Emma Mellor, who visited Otago in 1950, gifted books and archives, including cartoons, from his collection to the university (it is now part of the University of Otago Library Special Collections). She also made a very generous bequest to the university of the royalties on Joseph Mellor’s books. This become the Mellor fund, administered by the Professor of Chemistry for the benefit of research in pure chemistry. Joseph and Emma Mellor are remembered today by a prize for the leading student of 400-level chemistry.

The charming photograph of Joseph Mellor teaching comes from an album which belonged to his father, Job Mellor. I’m told by those who know better than me that the first line of calculus written on the board is the Van der Waals equation.

Do you have any plans to write a bestseller? If so, you might like to remember Otago when you decide what to do with the proceeds! And if you feel that your road to academic success is a rocky one, you might be inspired by what one biographer wrote about Mellor’s many achievements: “It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Mellor’s determination to undertake such heavy tasks must have been fortified through mastering the adversity of earlier years.”