A Tribute Sir Ronald Nyholm
It is my unhappy task, and my proud privilege, to pay trihute to a great chemist and a good friend in Professor Sir Ronald Nyholm who was tragically killed in a car accident on a December day in 1971. There is much to say about Ron Nyholm, because he was a man of so many parts, but as I must be selective I intend to say little about his chemistry, which is familiar, but to write mainly about Ron Nyholm, the man: the statesman of science, the teacher, the sportsman, the friend, the committee man, the neighbor, and not least the family man. First, I want to acknowledge the tremendous help I have had from people who knew him. Everyone I approached for information gave it without stint. Everyone, it was obvious, wanted to pay a tribute to him. And so this is an appreciation of Ron Nyholm from a large number of people. I shall he voicing their thoughts and their opinions, often using their words, as well as my own. Ronald Nyholm was horn in the town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia on January 29, 1917, the fourth in a family of six. His father, Eric Edward Nyholm, settled there early this century as a guard on the railway, after a varied existence which had included many years in the Australian outback. Nyholm's parents were hoth born in Adelaide but his paternal grandfather had emigrated from Finland and his mother's family from England. Ron always valued his Finnish connection and was later to take great pleasure in his election, in 1959, as a Corresponding Member of the Finnish Chemical Society. Broken Hill is a one-industry mining town which owes its existence to inorganic chemistry. Its central streets are named after minerals, metals, and anions; its public Primary and High schwls lie as a barrier across Cobalt Street which, to the southeast, crosses Kaolin, Bromide, Sulphide, Chloride, Oxide, and Iodide streets in succes-
This paper is condensed from the Memorial Lecture presented before the XIVth International Conference on Coordination Chemistry. 146
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J. Chaw The University of Sussex brighton, Sussex BN1 9QJ, Englond
sion. The surrounding countryside is arid, and on one occasion Ron Nyholm, hearing a complaint about the English weather said, "You don't know how lucky you are. Where I come from there is an average of one inch of rain a year and it all falls within twenty-four hours once every three years." The town is isolated by mountains and deserts from other centers of population. Organized entertainment scarcely exists, hut the car now provides escape for this purpose to a small town some 35 miles away, and to Adelaide. The unique character of Broken Hill made it a subject of a B.B.C program in 1971, from which it emerged as a place which is the ultimate in workers' control. The officials of the Miners' Union are, coincidentally, the City Council, and it is they who control the town and everyone in it. They determine who employs whom. No outsider can get a job while a native-horn inhabitant remains unemployed. A stranger feels himself constantly watched. Wages, however, are high, jobs are secure and the miners are prosperous. Ron Nyholm acknowledged his good fortune in being horn and reared in this mining town. His early years were difficult, financially, but his was a united family, brought up with a great regard for education-a regard which was never to leave Ron Nyholm-and for the Church. Eric Nyholm, a man of great intelligence, was the driving force within thefamily, every member of which did well. Nyholm entered High School in Broken Hill with a bursary in 1929, hut when his father died three years later i t was only the efforts of his eldest brother which kept him there. It was at this school that Ron met Mr, Norman Marks, whom he has described as an outstanding teacher to whom he owed much of his enthusiasm for inorganic chemistry. Marks encouraged the boys to extract what metals they could from the ores of the district. Perhaps it was the memory of this teacher which caused Nyholm, throughout his career, to lay so much emphasis on the good teaching of science in schools. In 1934 Nyholm went to the University of Sydney on a Public Exhibition, He set up house in Sydney and was later joined there by his mother, a brother and a sister. Centers of higher learning are often places of dissent where orthodox views are questioned and Nyholm, from the provincial orthodoxy of Broken Hill, found in the University an environment which hoth shocked and stimulated him. Although Ron never knew him personally, the liberal views of John Anderson, Challis Professor of Philosophy, which had attracted the unfavorable attention of the State Legislature and thrown the University into a ferment, had considerable influence on him and weakened his attachment to orthodoxy. Major influences in the chemical field came from Charles Edward Fawsitt, from Thomas Iredale who taught him thermodynamics, and from George Joseph Burrows who introduced him to the coordination chemistry of simple tertiary arsines, first in his lectures and later, in his fourth year, as a small research project. This project appears to have given Ron his life-long interest in tertiary organic arsines as ligands. Later he was much troubled when he discovered that Burrow's tertiary arsine complexes of cupric copper were in fact tertiary arsine oxide
complexes, and he was particularly anxious not to hurt Burrows when he made the correction. Nyholm was also greatly influenced hy David P. Mellor who, on returning from working with Linus Pauling, introduced Pauling's "Nature of the Chemical Bond" into Sydney University teaching, where undergraduate courses had been based on Sidgwick's "The Covalent Link in Chemistry." The influence of these two books is evident in all Nyholm's scientific work, where ideas of bond types and physical methods of structural investigation play so important a part. After taking his first degree Ron Nyholm spent a year in industry with the EverReady Battery Company, and then joined the staff of the Sydney Technical College. Here he met Francis P. 3. Dwyer, the lecturer who had the greatest single personal influence on Nyholm's scientific work. Dwyer was an enthusiastic coordination chemist, also from the school of Burrows and Mellor. An everlasting friendship grew up between the two of them. They published joint papers on tertiary arsine complexes of various platinum metals, particularly rhodium, and Ron Nyholm developed his interest in unusual oxidation states. With the end of the second world war came the end of restriction on travel, and Ron applied to University College for an Imperial Chemical Industries Limited Research Fellowship. This brought him into the school of Professor Christopher Keld Ingold, in London in 1947 where, a year later, I first met him. There he found Professor S. Sugden's magnetic balance, and developed his interest in the magnetic properties of complexes. When Nyholm arrived, Ingold was building up a new staff in a department depleted by war. Nyholm was his most illustrious recruit. Apart from a short spell, from 1952 to 1955, as Associate Professor a t the Technical University of New South Wales (formerly Sydney Technical College), Ron Nyholm spent the remainder of his working life at University College, becoming Head of Department on Professor Hughes's death in 1963. 1948 saw Ron Nyholm's marriage, in London, to Maureen Richardson of Sydney. They had three children, Peter, Elizabeth, and Rosemary, all now a t University. Ron's devotion to his wife and family was always paramount and always obvious. It was from the early 50's that Nyholm started to become au international figure. He was never drawn into the Ingold-Hughes school of mechanistic studies, but retained a healthy independence both in his chemistry and in his thinking. He was one of the most enthusiastic experimenters one could meet. He bubbled over with ideas, usually simple, but very searching ones. A characteristic which never left him was his boundless energy. He seemed to work all hours in his laboratory. One would find him there, eager to discuss his work and to learn of one's own. He frequently visited my laboratory and we enjoyed a fruitful collaboration, but, by mutual agreement, with no joint publications. It was about this time that he developed the use of the famous diarsine, o-phenylenebis(dimethylarsine),to stahilize unusual oxidation states of the metals and, using Pauling's ideas, he made his well-known attempts to use magnetic data to define bond types. I t is interesting, too, that both his and my concern with the complex chemistry of phosphine and arsine complexes stemmed by different routes from researches into arsenicals by Sir William J. Pope in Cambridge during the First World War. This, however, has been chronicled in detail by D. P. Craig (Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society, 18, 445 (1972)) and I will not elaborate on it. There are two distinct periods to Nyholm's work. The first during his early period in London was that of the seeker after new knowledge. His main theme then was the stabilization of unusual oxidation states and investigation
of bond types, for which he was awarded the Corday Morgan Medal and Prize of the Chemical Society in 1952. His return to Australia (1952-55) had appeared less productive but was a preparation for the next leap forward. This was the correlation of the properties of coordination compounds with the more fundamental properties of the metal atoms and ligands. His success in this way was recognized by his election to the Royal Society in 1958. Nyholm, in his inaugural address t o the University of London in 1955, defined inorganic chemistry as the integrated study of the chemical elements and their compounds excepting most of those of carbon. He was concerned that inorganic chemistry as it was usually taught appeared to lack a system in the sense that organic chemistry is systematic and physical chemistry quantitative. He turned to a systemization of inorganic chemistry in terms of simple concepts such as crystal field theory and the Sidgwick-Powell theory of spatial disposition of bonds, modifying and refining these where necessary to fit the greater number of facts then available. This led him into the purposeful preparation of compounds of unusual coordination number and stereochemistry to test out his conclusions. He attempted the correlation of oxidation state, coordination number, stereochemistry, the nature of bonds, etc., in terms of more fundamental properties of the atoms such as electronic configu- . rations, atomic energy levels, atomic promotion energies, ionization energies, electron affinities, and such. He used simple ideas to great effect and these culminated in his Tilden Lecture in 1961, a lecture which even now stimulates and encourages the inorganic chemist. At one time Nyholm firmly believed that magnetic moments would provide a diagnostic pointer to bond types in the coordination complexes of transition metals, hut as the theory became more complex he abandoned it, prohahly because he felt that the detail was removing the generality of the approach. All physical techniques were broueht to hear on his structural nroblems. Jokinelv he " would say "All chemistry is coordination chemistry; physical and organic chemistni are mere branches of it." His chemistry gnew no boundaries hut a compound was not interesting to him unless it contained a metal atom. He used physical measurements as a tool in inorganic chemistry, never as an end in themselves. At the time of his death Ron, in his capacity as Honorary Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Structural Chemistry, was directing some particularly interesting work on the coordination chemistry of the alkali metal ions. He was also developing the chemistry of compounds containing metal-to-metal bonds. Of interest in this field is his last work, published posthumously by, and with, his collaborators~wherethey show that triphenylphosphine is cleaved by [ O S ~ ( C O ) Ito~ ]produce a bridging-benzyne complex and other even more exotic products. I could discuss Nyholm's chemistry for a long time, but I must go on to speak of him in other ways. When he came to Enaland. inorganic chemistrv was unfashionable, but he was great propagandist for the things he believed in and his infectious enthusiasm and forceful lecturing helped to promote the renaissance of inorganic chemistr; in the United Kingdom. He could use his powers of persuasion for matters important or trivial. There is a story which concerns the trivial. Near to University College there was a pub, the Orange Tree, popular with staff and students. Ingold had two nuns as research students whom, he told Nyholm, be had never been able to persuade to join him in the Orange Tree. Nyholm wagered f l that he would accomplish this and sure enough, later that day when Ingold came into the Orange Tree there was Nvholm sitting 2 a table with the two nuns. He walked oveFto Ineold and collected his f 1. then as he returned to the nuns the elder one held out her hand. "How kind of Professor
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Ingold;" she said, "Why with your f 1 and his, that makes f 2 for our children's home." As I read the letters from people who knew him, I was considerably moved by the way in which he came alive through them. And from the letters three facets of this manv-facetted man shine more than the rest. They are: his international character and his contribution to-international science. his n e a t contribution to education both a t school and univers& level, and his personal qualities of warmth, humor and humanity. It is always this third facet which illuminates the rest. It would be difficult to decide whether he was more of an internationalist or more of an educationalist, but there is no doubt that to every sphere he brought the same human qualities. I want to show him in each of these separate ways, but it will not he easy because they so often overlap. It is a complex prohlem because he was a complex man. Ron liked to say that he was a truly international person since he was born in Australia, with grandparents from two other different countries, and had lived many years in the United Kingdom. But he was an internationalist in every sense of the word. At least 30 nationalities were numbered among his research students, and when Ron was present social gatherings were enlivened by discussion of the political and cultural issues of the countries they represented. Often Nyholm had more knowledge of a man's country and its problems than had the man himself. There is a story, vouched for by Professor Kirschner, that once in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Nyholm gave a demonstration to the Czechs on how to barbecue meat in the Czechoslovakian style. Though Ron Nyholm was familiar with most countries of the world it was, perhaps, Italy which had first place in his affections. He was a great friend of Italy and of Italian science. From 1960 onwards he set up many joint research programs, by exchange of scientists between University College and various Italian universities, and by his own lectures in many parts of Italy. He was awarded the gold medal of the Italian Chemical Society in 1968; the Sigillum Magnum of the University of Bologna in 1969. He was Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Lahoratorio di Chimica e Tecnologia dei Radioelementi del CNR. In 1971 he became a memher of one of the Advisory Committees of the CNR in Rome, for the Research Institute of Professor Gabriello Illuminati. Also in 1971 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Sicilian Academy of Science. "I understand," he wrote, "that this carries with it full membership of the Mafia without undue responsibilities!". He was also a memher of the Editorial Board of Znorganica Chimica Acta. He was a great encouragement to the Board in its early days, and Professor Croatto, in a tribute to Ron Nyholm, says that the modern scientific policy of Inorganica Chimica Acta owes very much to the enlightening suggestions so liberally given by Ron Nyholm. There is a story told of his encounter with an Italian taxi driver. Nyholm complained that the fare he was being charged was too high. One thing led to another and before long they were exchanging family informationperhaps showing photographs, I don't know. Anyway, I do know that they parted on very friendly terms and with the taxi driver charging only half the amount he had first demanded. There is no doubt that one of Ron Nyholm's greatest and deepest interests, throughout his life, was in education, and in education through science. I t was his theory that any training for a full life should involve some acquaintance with science in its simplest form. He suggested that if a man were to claim himself an educated, socially responsible memher of society, he should recognize that it is at least as important to be familiar with the reasons why the burning of coal in open fires in large cities is 148
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a menace to his fellow men as it is to know the meaning of an iambic pentameter. When it was said that the scientist should show an interest in the arts Nyholm agreed, and said that he hoped that this would cut both ways and that the arts man would take the trouble to learn something of the basis of science. His abiding concern in education was in the teaching of science, and especially of chemistry, at all levels. Perhaps nowhere did he do more valuable work than in raising the level of the teaching of science in schools. He became particularly interested in this because at the school attended by his two daughters there had heen difficulty in replacing a physics mistress. His anxiety led to discussions with friends in the educational spheres, as a result of which he approached Shell with a scheme for giving teachers a sabbatical year at University College. I t was this suggestion, I was told by Anthony Birch, who is Convenor of the Shell Grants Committee, which led eventually to the setting up of an annual "Shell Chemistry Teachers Fellowship" at University College London. The Fellowships were provided for lively young schoolteachers who wished to develop and bring up to date their knowledge of their subject and a t the same time gain experience of undergraduate work in a large chemistry department and of modern chemical industry. It was expected that not only would the Fellowship provide an opportunity for a teacher to improve his o w performance in the classmm, but would also encourage his greater involvement in, and appreciation of, current and future developments in science education generally. In all the reports given by these Fellows, Nyholm's unflagging concern and interest was emphasized. He often invited them to criticize the teaching methods in the Chemistry Department a t University College. "Tell us old chap," he would say, "in your own words, what's m n g with university teaching?" Mr. J. F. Davies, Headmaster of Hinchley Wood School of which Ron Nyholm was a Governor, tells us that Nyholm did far more than he was called upon to do as a Governor. For instance, he used the relationship to provide a basis of dialogue between the School and the University. He recalls Nyholm's clarity of mind a t Governors' meetings. " . . hut with never a hint of talking down. Always the humor hubbling underneath and the quizzical lift of the eyebrows when logic appeared to have gone by the hoard." "My lasting impression," he wrote, "is of an unspoilt man. Australian, of course, and proud of it, seeking to give the maximum opportunity to the parents, pupils and staff he so gladly served." These are sentiments we all endorse. Ron Nyholm worked hard for his opportunities and valued them. He did not want them to he denied to others. Nyholm was a member of many committees concerned with education. Among other things he was Chairman of the IUPAC Committee on Chemical Education for the first six years of its life. The Nuffield Foundation called upon him to lead an enquiry into the organization of school and technical college courses. He was Chairman of the Nuffield Chemistry Teaching Project from 1962 to 1965 and served on other national committees too numerous to mention. He also believed that chemistry should feed industry, and his contacts with the industrial world brought thousands of pounds to his Department, because industrialists trusted him to work on problems which mattered to them. His Presidency of the Chemical Society (1968-70) was amongst the most momentous in its history. During this time the Society undertook its long-planned move into new accommodations in Burlington House, with the reorganization, inaugural receptions, and other ceremonies this involved. It was upon Ron Nyholm's suggestion that Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness Prince Philip received and accepted an invitation to the new apartments. Ron showed himself to he as equally at home with his Sovereign as with his students.
I t was also during his Presidency that the scheme for the amalgamation of the Chemical Society with the Royal Institute of Chemistry, The Faraday Society, and the Society for Analytical Chemistry was brought to a successful conclusion. Ron Nyholm, with his flair for rationalization, worked hard for this amalgamation and his powen of tactful persuasion contributed greatly to its success. Unfortunately he did not live to see its inaugural meeting in Manchester in April 1971, but the final form of amalgamation to produce a body of some 45,000 chemists, still to be known as the Chemical Society, had been completed before he died. You will prohably also have noticed a number of new Chemical Society Awards. These were Ron's idea and he was largely instrumental in persuading industrial firms to give generous sponsorship. But Nyholm the chemist, Nyholm the internationalist, Nvholm the educationalist. were lit bv the character and p&sonality of Nyholm the man. I do dot think I have had a single contributor to my information on Ron Nvholm who, after he had said what he bad to say about work, did not continue to talk about Nyholm the man. The man stood above his work. "I think," said one man of him-and he echoed the thoughts of many others-"that the main characteristic of Ron Nyholm was that his mere entry into a room, whether for a meeting or for a party, infused a happy and cheerful atmosphere into the gathering. Moreover, when you met him, he always appeared delighted to see you. In fact I believe he genuinely was delighted; such was his gift for friendship." He is recalled with affection by his students. One student mentioned his constant amazement that such a busy man gave so freely of his time. There was often an invitation after a seminar to call in and sample some wine or sherry and with the invitation there was always the feeling that you, the student, were helping Ron Nyholm, as well as the converse. This same student says how much his death hurt. "It was" he said "as if an old, very close friend had been taken away." These are sentiments we all of us echo. Ron never forgot what it was like to be a student. He used to recall marching in demos in Sydney, and if he was sometimes puzzled by the precise issue which excited today's students, he would search about for an answer rather than condemn them. But he knew how to sort out the indolent and the devious. In the year before he died a notorious student asked him if lectures could start-at 9:30 a.m. instead of nine-o-clock, because travelling in the rush hour exhausted him to such an extent that he was unable to pull himself together to concentrate on the lecture. Nyholm's answer was typical. "I sympathize with you immensely, old boy. I feel exactly the same every morning. But I'll tell you what I do, and if you do it you'll feel ever so much better. I make a point of coming into College a t 8:30. I then have a good half-hour to get over the rush hour so that I am quite able to lecture at nine-o-
holm's
clnrk"
He was always in his Department by 8:30 a m . , briefcase and string bag bulging with papers already digested. That was the time to see him. After half-past nine his students found it more difficult. But not only did he work from early until late every day, he thought nothing of flying hundreds of miles to meet a fellow worker in an airport for a couple of hours to discuss a problem with him. He got things done, not by steam-rollering his opponents as he could have done, but by persuasion, by reasoned argument, and by personal charm. His prime quality was to infect alm,ost any situation with gaiety and optimism. He was rarely seen in a mood of pessimism. He
could reveal an unpromising situation, sum it up in a few scathing sentences, and then immediately start casting around for a solution. His role was that of an originator, and when he had cracked a major prohlem his tireless mind was off on the next. Work did not stop when he went on holiday. He kept up a daily correspondence with his secretary back in England. The family took their annual holiday in Italy and on the beach. one is told. he read chemistrv texthooks. decently covered in brown paper so that their titles should not offend the susceptibilities of other holidav makers. His holidays, though,-were not just a chance td catch u p on his reading. He was well known in the local shops and restaurants where he held enthusiastic conversations in his limited Italian. A stream of visitors passed through the Nyholm holiday flat in Varrazzi. and it is said that a t le&t one romance originated there.' Ron Nvholm's exuberant nersonalitv and his hieblv - .developed iense of humor are iemembeied by all who knew him. He was a t ease with people from all walks of life and, equally, he had the ability to put others at their ease. His sense of fair play and his intolerance of injustice were characteristic of him. And as so many of his former colleagues and students can testify, friendships once established were wholehearted and of lasting duration. Honors were showered upon Ron Nyholm, for his service to science-for which he was created Knieht Bachelor in 1967-and especially for his service to theteaching of science. The list of his professional awards, his government appointments, and his named lectureships in many countries is a long one and I have not attempted to give more than a little of it. I have chosen, rather, to speak about the man upon whom all these honors sat so lightly and fitted so well. There was scarcely a year in which some award or lectureship did not come to him. In 1969, in addition to his regular activities, he coped with four named lectureships (two in the US., one in Australia, and one in the U.K.) and he was Visiting Professor to Macquarie University in New South Wales. This was the year in which he was also awarded the Sigillum Magnum medal of the University of Bologna. I mention 1969 as an example not only of how much he did-there is very much more to that-but of the esteem in which he was held by chemists everywhere. I cannot do better than finish with the words of Lord Annan, Provost of University College London who, in his memorial address, said "How well we remember him, chest out, head slightly to one side, talking and arguing, glass in hand, his laughter breaking through the air. Ron Nyholm never entered a room. He bubbled into it and exploded into good fellowship, mirth and happiness. He was a life-enhancer . . . . . . . wherever he went he raised the temperature but he raised it not with pugnacious self-assertiveness hut with bonhomie, good sense, and enthusiasm." "Enthusiasm was the clue to his life. He communicated his own belief in the value of his subiect and its inexhaustable resources to his graduate stuhents, his colleagues, and even to those of us who are not scientists and could not follow him into the maze of complexities through which he led the way . . . . More than any man, he made his subject flower." We shall miss Ron Nyholm. We shall miss him for so many t h i n g s b i s enthusiasm, his gaiety, his work, his friendship, his goodness. But I think he would have preferred that in remembering him we should not only look backwards, which we cannot help hut do, but forward. We shall build upon the foundation he has laid and continue the work which he has started.
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