I didn't know Alan in his earlier years, or as a professional colleague.

I only got to know him and Pat when we came to live in this street 25 years ago,

but since then we have been close neighbours and friends.   To us, as to so many 

others in Dartmouth Row, Alan was a very familiar and much loved figure, whom

one could see almost daily working in the garden.... and what a marvellous garden....or looking after the Grove as he did so public spiritedly for the benefit of all.... one thinks of him particularly burning the leaves in Autumn, and creating that delicious smell......or walking to and from the corner shop with a basket on his arm.  He was always ready to talk and revelled in the small change of gossip which is what makes neighbourhood life, perhaps life in general, worth living.   He was mischievous, but never malicious.  He would approach you with a slightly conspiratorial air, with that wealth of gestures that characterised his talk, and always with something amusing to discuss.  At one level he seemed always to be treating life as a great (though subtle) joke, and so he helped to make it fun, or at any rate tolerable, for anyone he encountered, however casually.

Yet at another level he was one of the most truly serious men I have ever known. His laughing, light-hearted expression could change in an instant to one of intense thought. He was, of course, a very distinguished scientist, and as a layman, I so admired and appreciated his ability to communicate with laymen.

He was not the sort of expert who barricades himself within his own professional

mystery. He came out to share his knowledge, so far as possible, with the rest of us. He had a very wide range of interests and tastes;  there was nothing of the narrow specialist about him.  Above all, perhaps, he had humility, including intellectual humility, which is surely one of the qualities that can turn mere intelligence into wisdom.

 

I remember one evening when he showed that quality most notably, under rather provocative questioning from Arthur Koestler. Koestler was, of course, a remarkable and original man, with a good knowledge of science.....because he had been a scientific student in his youth, and remained passionately interested in science.

But he was essentially a scientific amateur, with a love-hate attitude towards the 

professionals and a tendency, which he found hard to resist to needle them and to try to get a rise out of them.

On the occasion in question he suddenly asked Alan:

"Would you agree that our knowledge of the human mind today is at roughly the same stage our knowledge of the human body had reached in Elizabethan times?"    A lesser man might have been so irritated by this question he would have reacted to it hastily, testily,  dismissively, or even angrily. But not Alan.  He paused to reflect..... as in my experience he always did, when anyone asked him a serious question.......and having reflected, he replied quietly:  "Yes, I think that's about right."  Arthur was immensely impressed, and others present, who may have been fearful that a row might develop, were considerably relieved.  It was a good example of Alan's humility, of his sense of proportion and historical perspective and of his sensitivity in dealing with people.

 

Alan will never be forgotten by his friends, and the mere act of remembering

him will bring infinite pleasure as his company did to so many throughout his life.

 

John Grill