Bangor University 1884-2009. David Roberts

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       ‘Little Balliol’Growth and Development, 1893–1927

      Despite trials and tribulations in its early years, the University College of North Wales had created a secure foundation. Around the turn of the century, more of its founding fathers – the first professors – began to move on. Gray, who became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1896, moved to Glasgow three years later to succeed his mentor, Lord Kelvin. Dobbie left in 1903 and was elected FRS the following year; he was knighted in 1915 for his service as Principal of the Government Laboratories. Ballard Mathews left for Cambridge in 1896, and he too became a Fellow of the Royal Society; he later returned to Bangor as an Acting Professor. W. Rhys Roberts, an outstanding scholar, moved to the Chair of Classics at Leeds in 1904.

      Their successors were of similarly high calibre, and were unswervingly loyal to the Bangor cause. In Physics, one of Gray’s own students, Edward Taylor Jones, a native of Denbigh, succeeded him in the Chair. Jones was to serve for 26 years before he then succeeded Gray again at Glasgow. Kennedy Orton, a St Leonards man who originally studied Medicine at Cambridge before turning to Chemistry and gaining a highly-acclaimed Ph.D. from Heidelberg, was to hold the Chair of Chemistry for 27 years. Orton had wide interests, his enthusiasms including music, rocks and birds. P. J. White was appointed to a new Chair in Zoology in 1895, and was in post for 34 years, developing an interest in marine science and at one time attempting to fund a Puffin Island biological station which had been acquired. R. W. Phillips, a product of Coleg Normal and Cambridge became Professor of Botany and occupied the Chair for 29 years. He was a leading scientist who contributed the article on ‘Algae’ in the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Thomas Winter, a Yorkshireman, became the first Professor of Agriculture in 1895, remaining in post for 18 years, and under him the department became regarded virtually as ‘the agricultural headquarters of north Wales’.¹

      Thomas Hudson-Williams, born in Caernarfon and educated at Friars School, Bangor, had lectured in French and German before he took up the Chair of Greek in 1904 – a position he held until his retirement in 1940. Osbert Fynes-Clinton became Professor of French in 1904 (modern languages being divided to create departments of French and Romance Languages, and German and Teutonic Philology), holding the Chair until his retirement in 1937. A brilliant linguist, Fynes-Clinton studied the Arfon dialect of Welsh in his spare time and published a book on the subject in 1913.

      One of the most versatile scholars was John Lloyd Williams of Llanrwst, who had been educated at Coleg Normal and became an Assistant Lecturer in Botany in 1897. But he also wrote operettas, and was a much sought-after conductor of choirs and musical adjudicator. His keenest interest was in Welsh folk-songs, and he played a leading role in developing music in Bangor. He moved to Aberystwyth as Professor СКАЧАТЬ