51³Ô¹ÏÍø

A tribute from Brian Morgan

Robert (Bob) W. Airey

Bob was an individual, he was unique.

He joined the academic staff at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø College in 1962 and remained there until his retirement in 1997, although retirement isn’t the right word as he continued to give lectures to schools on behalf of the College’s Outreach programme until  last year.   His career centred on the development and application of optical detectors, mainly for astronomy.  He was author of many papers published in scientific journals or delivered at international conferences.

Bob’s knowledge of technology and chemistry was encyclopaedic and he dispensed it freely to all who asked, never seeking commercial advantage from his expertise.  As a director of one high-tech company put it “Bob Airey is a fountain of information”. 

His knowledge of the origins of television led to the construction of a working replica of John Logie Baird’s 30-line televisor which Bob built for the Science Museum’s exhibition marking the 50^th anniversary of the inauguration of scheduled BBC television programmes.  The system operated successfully throughout the six months of the exhibition.

Bob gave a very popular series of lectures in schools designed to attract pupils to science.  They were notable for their dramatic pyrotechnics which were usually under control.

Bob had an extremely wide range of interests outside his work.  He had completed a professional cookery course in his spare time and was an excellent cook.  His Christmas puddings were a highlight of the astronomy group’s Christmas parties.  He was very fond of theatre and, when the Sunday Times used to run a national competition for university dramatic societies, he was one of the judges.  He was in demand as a car mechanic (unpaid) and had a collection of early calculators and computers.

Bob will be remembered by his colleagues for all these things, but also because of his many hilarious adventures.  Hardly a week went by in the laboratory without an explosion or a fire: there  is a door on level 7 of the Physics building which still displays the scorch marks incurred when he dropped a large bottle of acetone near a Bunsen burner flame.  He had been pouring acetone from the bottle when he saw the flame flickering towards him and decided that it would be better if he were not  holding the bottle when the flame arrived.  On another occasion a friend’s car burst into flames  as soon as Bob sat in it.  A battery lead had been waiting for Bob before it shorted out.  Another colleague recalls Bob driving them back from a conference in Paris.  As they reached 80miles per hour in the outside lane of the French motorway the engine cut out.  After repeating this a couple of times they pulled into a garage where a mechanic cleared the fault by hitting the carburettor with a hammer.  Unfortunately, in the process, he broke a connection to the starter motor which led to complications when they had to push the car off the crowded ferry.

With Bob in the group life was never dull.  He shone at a time when two or three people in a laboratory could be making real progress to one now where hundreds (literally) can be involved in a single experiment.  It seems that there will be little opportunity in the future for people of Bob’s exceptional character to make such contributions to experimental science as he has done.