Robert Crispin Evans (1909-2005)
Robert Evans on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 1999.
Robert Crispin Evans died peacefully on 18th December 2005 at the age of 96. As well as being the oldest of our Honorary Members, he was senior Emeritus Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and was also the last surviving founder of the IUCr.
Robert Evans was born in November 1909 in Wallington, Surrey, to a business family. He was educated at Repton School, Derbyshire, and Clare College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1928. He also had a B.Sc in physics from London University, which he apparently took as an external student while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge! He was a research student in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory and gained his Ph.D. in 1934 for a thesis was entitled 'The evaporation of ions and atoms of the alkali metals from hot surfaces'. Two of the papers from this work were communicated to the Royal Society by his official supervisor Lord Rutherford.
Evans became a member of the staff in the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology at Cambridge in 1933, serving as Demonstrator 1933-1945 and as Lecturer 1945-1977. During World War II, from 1940 to 1945, Evans was with the Ministry of Supply where he worked on shell ballistics and experimental firings. He returned to Clare College in 1945 and was elected a Fellow of St Catharine's College in 1947.
He gave extremely well received lectures that he illustrated with models mainly conceived and constructed himself. His lecture demonstrations of crystal optics and microscopy were notable. He built an electromagnetic mineral separator that was a great improvement on previous instruments and was much used by research students. Among other devices that he worked on with colleagues were a mechanical machine for the computation of two-dimensional structure factors and a concentrating X-ray monochromator. In essence, he was a tutorial don, who was not driven, as university staff are today, by the need to research and publish. Rather, he was a teacher and mentor to generations of students. His major academic contribution was his comprehensive book on Crystal Chemistry, published in 1939. The idea for this book arose from his translation of the short book Kristallchemie (1934) written in German by O. Hassel of Oslo. The preface acknowledges that he had been actively aided and encouraged by J.D. Bernal, who in 1937 had left Cambridge for Birkbeck College, London. The chapter on molecular compounds had been discussed with Dorothy Crowfoot (Hodgkin).
Crystal Chemistry omits any discussion of X-ray methods. It opens with chapters on the crystal lattice, interatomic binding forces, and quantitative lattice theory (Born, London, Pauling, Bloch, Seitz et al.) One can see how his thesis work would have stimulated his interest in these topics. Much the larger part of the book is on systematic crystal chemistry. When his tasks with the IUCr had finished in 1960, he was able to complete a second edition of Crystal Chemistry in 1964.
Evans was a key figure in the first years of the International Union of Crystallography and carried undoubtedly the largest single work load. XRAG, the predecessor of the BCA and led by Sir Lawrence Bragg, arranged an international scientific conference 'X-ray Analysis during the War Years' in London in July 1946. Afterwards, the Provisional International Crystallographic Committee of 31 persons from 11 countries met on 12 and 13 July with Lawrence Bragg and David Harker as joint Chairman, and Evans as Acting Secretary. This meeting, which decided to create a Union and develop a journal and other publications, was effectively the 'Zeroth General Assembly of the IUCr'. Evans and Paul Ewald were heavily involved in launching the new journal Acta Crystallographica. Money had to be raised, including grants from UNESCO, and from industrial and other sources in the UK and USA. A publisher had to be chosen: Cambridge University Press was selected. Manuscripts had to be sought and printed. Remarkably, the first issue of Acta Crystallographica appeared in April 1948.
Robert Evans was Secretary of the Provisional International Committee (1946), then General Secretary of the interim Executive Committee (1947), and then General Secretary of the Union from its formal inauguration in 1948 for the first two triennia until 1954. In addition, he was a Co-editor of Acta from its launch in 1948 until 1960, and carried the very demanding load as Technical Editor until 1958 by which time Acta was three times its initial size.
Evans' responsibilities concerned the arrangement of the formal business of the Union to be transacted at the sessions of the General Assembly. Actually, this formal business was transacted without real difficulty, despite Ewald's initial attempt as Chairman to create the Union by the acclamation of the entire audience of Congress participants rather than by the votes of the official delegates. "Evans somehow rescued me" Ewald wrote later. In fact, at that time there were only four members - the Adhering Bodies of Canada, Norway, UK and USA - indeed when Evans was making preparations, the number of formal members, as he wrote later, "could be counted on the thumb of one hand". Ewald and Evans, with their different styles, formed a very effective duo for the accomplishment of the necessary business.
Evans was a careful scientific and technical editor. He had a genuine interest in all aspects of print production. I remember being invited to his office in Cambridge in 1949. In those days, the text of papers was typewritten, but equations and symbols were inserted by hand. He pointed out kindly the ambiguities in my handwriting and showed me something of the way a paper should be marked up for the printer. In 1954 he gave a talk at an XRAG meeting in Cambridge about the work of an editor. He illustrated his talk by mentioning some of the problems in submitted papers. As each infelicity was mentioned, he raised his head a little and nodded gently to the relevant culprit in the audience.
In 1955 he married Betty Bond, whom he had met when she was a librarian in the Scientific Periodicals Library. She survives him; they had no children. Their home in Elsworth, a village outside Cambridge, was an important focus for hospitality of all kinds, and not least, hospitality to students.
After retirement in 1977 he had two hobbies, one as a beekeeper and the other by opening his small workshop to encourage the youths of the community to learn skills in wood work activities. He was a kindly person, generous with his wisdom, but somewhat reserved in manner. However, on a public platform there was a side of Robert that could perform to great effect. He was not a joke teller, but he could make a remarkably effective and witty speech, simply by his choice of words and timing.
For his 90th birthday celebrations at St Catharine's College, the anecdotes he related included the following. The Cavendish Laboratory, where he was a research student, was enjoying its most illustrious epoch "not only because I was there" but because no fewer than 8 Nobel Laureates were there too. On one occasion Einstein was visiting Cambridge and made a tour of the Laboratory accompanied by Lord Rutherford and J. J. Thomson, who was Rutherford's predecessor and discoverer of the electron. The party visited a practical class in which Robert was demonstrating and after their departure he was asked by one of the students "Who were those other gentlemen with Einstein?"
On Monday 7th April 1997, fifty years after, its inception, the IUCr invited Evans to visit Chester to open the latest extension to its offices. He spoke of the creation and early days of the Union. One of the major reasons for inaugurating a new Union was the desire to launch a journal of the highest standards to serve the entire crystallographic community. Appropriately, the Union's first half-century was celebrated in the place where its family of six journals was being produced with the most modern of computer technology. Very fittingly, the celebrations were enhanced by the presence of the last surviving founder of the Union: Robert Evans.
Durward Cruickshank