November 22, 2025 · 3:15 pm

Hamilton

A few days ago I went to see Hamilton for the fourth time (plus a few viewings of the film on Disney+). It’s my latest favourite London show, and it has an odd thing in common with my first favourite London show, in 1982 (Amadeus): they were based on the only two people whose biographies I ever remember reading as a child. I was never very interested in biography, but for some reason I checked both of these books out of the elementary school library and enjoyed them. There must be something about a life story that can appeal to a pre-teen that makes good material for a stage show.

Both the heroes were geniuses, undervalued in their own day. Maybe we all want to think that is us. And both shows are narrated by jealous rivals who destroyed them (though the play’s Salieri is more of an invention). Despite their charisma they end up as the villains. Maybe we all want to think that our enemies will be exposed and reviled one day.

Maybe at least it is a common feeling among playwrights. Peter Shaffer made me feel he identified more with Salieri, but perhaps that was British faux humility. Lin Manuel Miranda might show sympathy for Burr, but he actually plays Hamilton, so we know with whom he really identifies.

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November 24, 2024 · 10:43 pm

A Tribute to My Mother

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My mother died last month, at the age of 97. She was an extraordinary woman, working in a factory during WWII, getting a degree in Chemistry, and working for the Bureau of Standards in DC. Then she had her first child, and in line with the practice of the time, she gave up work to raise a total of five of us with a lot of care and attention. She was a private person and didn’t want a funeral, so we had a picnic in the park to celebrate her life.

In lieu of a formal tribute, here is a partial list of things I learned from my mother.

She taught me to try hard at school and be proud of my successes, which is not always easy for a girl.

She taught me to always speak my mind and stand up for what I believe. A friend once told me that she envied the way people listened when I spoke, and I got that partly from Mom and the emphatic way she expressed herself.

She taught me to play bridge, which was her passion, but also lots of simpler games and would happily play them with me for hours.

She set an example as a confident driver and taught me that a yellow light means ‘Step on it’. She had a perfect mental road map of DC in her head and could drive you anywhere.

She taught me to enjoy a good bargain and to manage my money.

She taught me not to be too worried about housekeeping. A bit of a mess wouldn’t kill me, and I would probably have better things to do with my time.

She taught me to enjoy my down time in my own way. I got from her my love of books, plays and movies. My parents met when they were cast in a play together at a church in Washington, and Mom always enjoyed being carried away by a story.

She used to sit at the piano and beautifully play Moonlight Sonata, Claire de Lune, and other pieces. She taught me how to play the piano, though I never progressed far. I would stumble through workbooks while she cooked, occasionally shouting No! from the kitchen when I played the wrong note.

Impressionist paintings were a favourite of hers, and she would often take me to the National Gallery to wander around.

She taught me to crochet and sew and she was always making quirky things with the Homemakers Association.

She grew beautiful roses, dogwoods, azaleas, candytuft, and she made lovely flower arrangements. She also loved visiting gardens and seemed to know the name of everything she saw.

She taught me to love October, the month when we both were born. The summer’s humidity and insects have mostly gone, and although the colorful flowers are fading, the leaves can be vibrant and the sky such a beautiful blue.

She taught me how to bake and that everyone enjoys homemade baked goods.

She gave the best hugs.

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July 31, 2022 · 5:43 pm

Sunset Boulevard

…has been the soundtrack in my head lately. It was my nickname for my old department at Imperial College, where I was working in the mid-90s when the musical came out. The Centre for Biological and Medical Systems was populated by a disproportionate number of emeritus professors, including my own boss, Colin G. Caro, who as I just discovered died a few months ago at the age of 96.

While I’m sure that CGC made more important contributions to science than I ever will, when I joined him he was already well into his 70s and seemed to me to have lost the plot. I was one of several underpaid lackies supporting him in a range of eccentric unpublishable experiments. He once sent me to Harrods to see if I could find a vacuum cleaner that would simultaneously suck and blow, which he planned to use to reroute vented helium gas. It got me out of the office at least, but the look of blank incomprehension from the posh sales assistant was a tad embarrassing. The job paid the bills during a recession when research jobs were scarce, but I felt my scientific talents could be put to better use. I identified strongly with poor Joe Gillis, put to work editing the hopeless script of a washed-up film star of yesteryear.

Now I’m older than Norma Desmond, supervising PhD students in their 20s, and talking to them about the old days when MRI was young. Backups on reel-to-reel tapes, the ‘cutting and weighing’ method of spectroscopic quantification — all about as antediluvian as silent movies. I guess the only difference is that unlike Norma Desmond I was never big.

Not long ago I read Jonathan Coe’s novel, Mr Wilder and Me, which describes Billy Wilder’s fascination with and sympathy for aging women. We all know how cruel the world is to women who used to be beautiful and now are not. Feminism gave me that one thing: I never sought to be valued for my appearance, which is lucky since there is now less to mourn.

Another recent watch was Misbehaviour, about the 1970 protests against the Miss World competition. It was a stunning glimpse of what used to be seen as normal behaviour. Good riddance to the old days.

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February 3, 2022 · 10:53 pm

Ethyl Mae

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Last Friday an email circular reminded me that I have access through the university library to lots of international newspapers, including it turns out the Washington Post, my hometown rag. Sadly not to current issues, only the historical archive up to 1991. But this allowed me to dredge up a 4-page spread on my high school and similar magnet programs for science and technology, published a couple months before we became its first graduating class.

I remembered the article quoted me a couple times, but I’d forgotten the lovely quotes from my inspirational chemistry teacher, Ethyl Mae DuBois. I’d also forgotten it included a grainy photo of us together with Kevin and Ty (Elbert), who remain good friends of mine. In senior year, we would eat our lunch every day in the chemistry lab with Ms DuBois and our other geek chic pals. Once a week we would also meet up with Ms DuBois for breakfast at Ranch House, the local cop hangout diner. The waitresses there called you Sugar while they refilled your coffee cup and brought you the 222 special — 2 eggs, 2 pancakes and 2 sausages or bacon rashers for $2.22.

I wish I could remember exactly how she earned our undying devotion — maybe it would make me a better teacher if I had studied her more closely. I know she was tough. She gave us the tools we needed to be good scientists, teaching us not just chemistry but fundamentals like how to take notes and keep good lab books, but we had to work hard using those tools in order to do well in her classes. And I know she was funny and enjoyed wit and mischief in her students. Every year she would get her class to graffiti a lab coat for her to wear. The Washington Post article reminded me that across the back that year it said “CAUTION: BREAKDANCER”.

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April 12, 2021 · 9:29 pm

My Accidental Publication

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Between Christmas and New Year I was tremendously bored. We were shipwrecked by the second wave of Coronavirus, forbidden to travel or see friends, and the university had shut down so I could hardly even work. So I decided to enter a short story competition with a deadline the following week, even though I hadn’t written a short story in over 30 years.

I wrote it as therapy more than anything. Instead of sulking about how much I wanted to travel and to get a dog, I wrote a story about those things turning into snowballing disasters. It was pretty rough – I only finished a first draft the day before the deadline, and I didn’t feel I could send it to anyone for a critique on such short notice. But I thought it had a few laughs and a good structure, so I sent it in.

If this were fiction, it would have won a prize, but of course it didn’t really. But then I found out that the Cambridge Writers’ Group publish a book of all the entries, not just the winners. I was torn – would my family really tell me if it was too embarrassingly bad to publish? Would any acquaintance who read it assume that the main character’s disgraceful behaviour was autobiographical? In the end, the lure of vanity publishing I didn’t have to pay for was too strong. You can purchase your copy here:

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February 28, 2021 · 11:57 am

Belinda

There was a question yesterday on the Washington Post Style Invitational site on Facebook about which poems people knew from memory. The most common answers seem to be Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse  and Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride which they were forced to learn in school. I myself learned a different Longfellow poem as an assignment in American Lit in high school, The Day is Done. But for fun as a teenager I also memorized a smattering of other poems I liked: Lord Byron’s She Walks in Beauty and his Headpiece to Don Juan, Robert Herrick’s Upon Julia’s Clothes, and (embarrassingly) Tolkein’s One Ring.  At least I didn’t memorize the Elvish.

The only poem (apart from my own) I memorized as an adult was one I’ve never seen written down. My grandmother learned it in primary school from a McGuffy reader or similar and used to recite it to us. She recited many such poems, but most were about topics like the importance of doing chores without grumbling, so my siblings and I never bothered to learn them. But this was our favourite, so when she was in her 90s I committed it to memory.

Belinda

Belinda was a cautious little maid

whose motto was the single word, “Beware!”

She never lost a chance to be afraid

and spent a lot of time in taking care.

Obliged one day on a railway train

to sit beside a grave, sedate young man,

a sudden terror seized Belinda’s brain:

“He’ll surely pick my pocket if he can!”

They reached a tunnel in another minute

and Belinda with her customary care

to guard her pocket, placed her hand within it.

And lo! Another hand was already there.

To show her fortitude and hide her fright,

Belinda seized the hand and held it tight.

And as the train into daylight rushed,

no wonder the modest maiden blushed.

No wonder the villain smiled a smile:

her hand was in his pocket all the while.

It’s no coincidence that nearly every poem people remembered used rhyme and meter. It’s possible to memorize poems that don’t use either, but it’s very difficult. And of course, this is presumably how poetry began, as an oral tradition. People would sit together and someone would recite a bit of Homer or Beowulf as entertainment. Neither poems rhyme, but both have very strong meters that drive the telling and prompt the memory, and I think this must have been crucial for such long epics to survive in the era before writing.

Certainly I think that after The Event, when we are all huddled around a campfire sucking the marrow out of rat bones, we won’t be reciting The Wasteland to each other, no matter how apt. Most likely Mother Goose will triumph.

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February 3, 2021 · 5:47 pm

Is Humour Alienating?

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An editor from Nature once came to speak at my Institute, giving us tips on how to publish in high-impact journals. The tip I remember most clearly was this: don’t try to be funny. Lots of people won’t get the joke and will be put off, particularly if they are reading the paper in translation.

I found this disheartening, because trying to be funny is a fundamental part of how I write and who I am. But it’s true that every attempt at levity has been expunged from my scientific writing through the years, by editors or by senior colleagues.

And then I became an editor myself. I was invited to join the Committee of the British & Irish Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and then at one of my first meetings the Chair pleaded for someone to take on the job of starting up a newsletter for the organization. I knew it would be a lot of effort, but I saw an opportunity finally to use the unique qualities of my voice to foster a sense of community. After all, what is special about the British if not their sense of humour? So, I started Positive Spin https://www.ismrm.org/chapters/british-chapter/, where alongside serious pieces about upcoming conferences and changes to regulations in medical imaging, I would insert the occasional joke piece.

For example, in a profile about the history of MRI in Cardiff, I wrote a paragraph about their ground-breaking work in diagnostic imaging of those aliens who fell sick on the set while filming the documentary series Doctor Who. The illustration was this MRI of tentacular torsion in the Ood. It took a lot of time to Photoshop, but this was lockdown in April 2020, so I had a lot of time on my hands plus a desire to lighten people’s mood.

Over the past few years my newsletter has attracted occasional praise, at least in part due to the fun tone and humour. But I didn’t get a peep of reaction about this particular article or issue. And speaking to one colleague I realized he didn’t even know it was a joke.

Even when humour isn’t aimed at a particular butt, it often creates divisions between people who like it, people who don’t get it, and people who get it but don’t like it. So, while I still believe in the power of humour to bring people together, I’m starting to think the Nature editor was right about keeping it out of formal scientific publications. As for the newsletter, I’ve now handed it on to students to carry on with, and I’m hoping they can keep a bit of fun alive.

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December 23, 2020 · 3:05 pm

Christmas Bakeoff

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For your seasonal enjoyment, here is a video I made about my friend Frosty. https://youtu.be/kV1dn8H27zc

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July 22, 2020 · 9:47 pm

Amadeus

I enjoyed the National Theatre production of Amadeus streaming this week. It had an interesting blend of modern music with the Mozart, performed by a live orchestra. It was more sombre and less fun than I remember from the last time I saw it, on my first trip to London in 1982. But that first production was devastating enough – it changed my life more than any other piece of art.

I was 14 and I wanted to be a classical musician. I played flute, and I wasn’t bad – I was in the junior all-state band that year, though I was only 12th chair in it. Susie, a year younger than me, was something like 10th chair, so her mother harangued the band instructor in junior high to promote Susie ahead of me, in the middle of the school year. Ms Beard explained it didn’t work like that.

However, it was clear that I would be overtaken one day – by Susie, and by other musicians who were just that little bit better than me. I was never going to be quite the best. And it was going to torture me – that fact was borne in on me while watching Amadeus. At 14, my self-knowledge may not have been thorough, but I knew that I was no Mozart.

And what is the point of a musician who doesn’t play superlatively well? A scientist can make real contributions to society without being an Einstein, but a mediocre musician not only doesn’t shine, but also can bring down the whole ensemble. One performer’s squawked note is heard above the 34 people playing true.

The following year I entered a magnet center for science and technology, and (regretfully) dropped band from my schedule. I did still keep up the flute for a few more years, but I no longer had any thought of performing for a living. I don’t regret the decision. I now realize that my chronic lung problems would have hindered my career — and probably they explained some of the limitations I had at the time. I’d get dizzy at the end of a long phrase, and would have to try to sneak in twice as many  breaths as other people. I’m no loss to the world of music. But I can still pull out the flute and play. I’ve spent the last few days working my way through Mozart’s only two flute concertos. Actually, they’re a bit dull — I prefer Francois Devienne.

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March 29, 2020 · 7:58 am

Coronavirus Countdown

IMG_20200304_180234820March 2020 was a bad time to travel to international conferences, sight-see, and visit my elderly mother. Now that I’ve returned to England, life has become a countdown to see whether I got away with behavior which in retrospect looks foolhardy.

March 20: Two weeks since my conference at UCSF ended, my last dinner in Chinatown, my last play.

March 24: Two weeks since a visit to a crowded Baltimore Aquarium.

March 26: Two weeks since my conference in Baltimore ended with a final banquet.

March 27: Two weeks since I took the train from Baltimore to DC, and had lunch in the food court at Union Station.

March 28: Two weeks since my last visit to a crowded bar, at the TopGolf center in Oxon Hill MD.

March 31: Two weeks since my shopping trip in Waldorf MD, buying clothing and supplies since I expected my return flight to be cancelled.

April 6: Two weeks since I flew home from DC. My return was delayed by a day then rerouted via New York, where I almost got stuck due to suddenly closed airspace.

At that point the nature of my counting will change. Two weeks since I last saw my mother, my sister, my brother. Three weeks, four. Two months, four, six, twelve, eighteen. Hoping that it wasn’t the last time.

March 2020 will have been a good time to visit my family.

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