While all this was going on, my restlessness and decision to leave Glasgow began to spread to other young research students like an infection, and three others decided to do likewise - A. L. Morrison (later Director of Research, Roche Products Limited), T. F. Macrae (later Director of Research, Glaxo Laboratories Limited) and A. Lawson (later Professor of Chemistry, Royal Free Hospital Medical School, University of London). Of these (who were all one year senior to me in Glasgow) Morrison went with me to Frankfurt, while Macrae and Lawson went to Munich at the same time; in passing, I should add that we none of us ever regretted the move, and we have remained lifelong friends as a result of it.
I find it difficult to give an objective view of the University of Glasgow as it was in my undergraduate days. One's first experience of university life always becomes a treasured memory, and like most features of one's youth the unpleasant aspects tend to be forgotten and the whole experience seems to exist in a kind of rosy glow. One remembers, vaguely, student activities - the Union, the Charities Rag, the preposterous elections to the office of Lord Rector and the rowdy installation of that dignitary. I do not recall being overworked; I played a lot of tennis, although mainly for one of the city clubs rather than the university, and I acquired a good acquaintance with the dance halls, theatres and football grounds of the rumbustious and at times violent city of Glasgow. As to the actual academic courses, I have already said something about chemistry, in which they were almost wholly factual and where we heard practically nothing about the new electronic theories of organic chemical reactions, although these were already part of the regular courses as near to us as St Andrews! But the actual teaching was good, except in physical chemistry, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to the late T. S. Patterson for all the help and encouragement he gave me. In the undergraduate course we had to take a number of subsidiary subjects; I took physics and mathematics in my first year, geology in my second, and metallurgical chemistry in my third. In my third year I also took, as a voluntary extra subject, bacteriology. Of these subsidiaries I have little of consequence to say. Looking back now I recall particularly the efforts made by the Professor of Mathematics to get me to read his subject for honours; this was flattering, but was based on the misapprehension that, because I hadn't much difficulty with the course, I must be interested in the subject! Geology I found fascinating - so much so that I once contemplated taking additional honours in it. It gave me two things of great importance. Firstly, a knowledge of palaeontology which was my introduction to biology and, secondly, an ability to look at landscapes in the light of geology, which has greatly increased my appreciation of travel all over the world. Metallurgical chemistry I found useful as providing me with some knowledge of heavy industry and of the practical application of chemical, and particularly physico-chemical, theories - e.g. the Nernst heat theorem - which had hitherto seemed to me rather abstract. I also learned a great deal more about the phase-rule and its applications through the iron-carbon diagram, which was the central topic of our lectures on steel, together with quite a lot of rather useless factual material like the flow-sheet of the copper smelters at the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga. Both metallurgical chemistry and bacteriology I took in the Royal Technical College in George Street, Glasgow, never suspecting for one moment that, some thirty-eight years later, it was to become the University of Strathclyde and that I would be its first chancellor.
When I graduated in 1928 jobs were hard to come by and the majority of my contemporaries went into the teaching profession. For those of us who wished to do research it was also rather a difficult time, for research grants or scholarships were few and not of a very substantial character. I was lucky to be awarded a Carnegie Research Scholarship (£100 p.a.). The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in those days offered a few awards of £120 p.a. but it was firmly believed in Glasgow that there was a prejudice against Scottish applicants. Whether or not there was any truth in this I do not know, but I never met anyone in Glasgow whose application for one of these awards had been successful.
In my day there was (and I believe there still is) an active society embracing staff and student members of the chemistry department called the Glasgow University Alchemists' Club which organised lectures on chemical topics as well as social activities. During the latter part of my student days in Glasgow I was much involved in the club's operations and, indeed, it was at one of its meetings in session 1928-9 that I read my first paper to the Alchemists' Club - I suppose my first lecture ever - on the topic ' Did Paracelsus wear spats?' The paper was taken with moderately good grace by T. S. Patterson, although I fear it was a rather juvenile 'take-off' of one of his star lectures on the career of that mediaeval rogue. During my undergraduate years the club rather ambitiously ran a magazine entitled The Alchemist; as I recall it, the only year in which it actually made a profit was that in which I served as its business manager and shamelessly used my father's position in the city to bully a number of local firms into buying advertising space. The magazine, I am told, continued to exist for many years until rising costs eventually forced its demise in the sixties.
The Alchemists' Club apart, there was relatively little communal life in Glasgow University when I was there, since most students lived at home. It may well have been different for those who lived in the very few residential hostels, but for most undergraduates social activities tended to centre on their home environment; in this respect most non-collegiate universities were probably alike. Nevertheless, one learned a lot from contact made with people of widely varying interests in the university and outside it, and from a thorough acquaintance with the common people of Glasgow - their hopes and aspirations as well as their virtues and vices. From that experience I think the most important thing I learned was that tolerance is one of the great virtues and that hasty judgements are only rarely sound.
2. Apprenticeship in research - Frankfurt and Oxford. 1929-34
Although neither of my parents ever had more than an elementary school education they were firmly convinced of the value of education and, in the belief that I had some talent, they saw to it that, even if it meant some sacrifice on their part, I went to a good school and later, when I was ready for it, to university. In this they were strongly encouraged by my uncle Walter F. Todd. The latter was very much younger than my father, being a child of my grandfather's second marriage. Orphaned about the time I was born, he stayed for some years with our family while he studied at Glasgow University with a view to taking up teaching as a career. This career he never followed for he enlisted in the army in August 1914 and after serving in Gallipoli and the Middle Eastern campaigns he became a professional soldier and retired shortly before the Second World War as a staff colonel in the Cameronians. It was, however, quite a shock to my parents to learn in 1929 that I proposed to study in Germany. Neither I, nor they for that matter, had ever been out of the United Kingdom and they viewed foreigners with great suspicion. However, they accepted my decision without protest, although my mother had grave doubts as to the level of civilisation I would find in Germany; so much so, indeed, that she plucked up her courage and insisted that my father should take her to Frankfurt a few weeks after I got there, just to satisfy herself (which she did) that Germany was a tolerable place for her son to live in! Before I went to Frankfurt in the autumn of 1929 the Carnegie Trust increased the value of my scholarship to £150 p.a. which made my plan to study there much easier to carry through. This sum, it is true, was barely adequate but with the Reichsmark at twenty to the pound sterling one could manage tolerably well on about £200 p.a. I found plain but comfortable lodging in Konigstrasse hard by the university in Bockenheim at, I think, 3 5 Rm per week including breakfast; other meals could be got at the 'Schlagbaum', a noisy hostelry at the Bockenheimer Warte, for as little as 50 pfennig. Having moved into my room, I reported to Professor Walther Borsche at the Chemical Institute of the university. My knowledge of the German language was at this stage rudimentary and Borsche spoke very little English. Our conversation was, accordingly, much restricted but we established that I would take up a problem in the bile acid field - the nature of apocholic acid -and that I could have a certificate from him, to transmit to the university administration, that I knew sufficient German to understand the lecture courses. I need hardly say that the certificate grossly exaggerated my linguistic capability but, armed with it, I duly matriculated and registered myself as a candidate for the Doctor phil. nat. in organic chemistry with physical chemistry and mineralogy as subsidiary subjects. The need for a certificate of proficiency in German was, incidentally, the direct cause of my first meeting with Bertie Blount who did his undergraduate work at Oxford and arrived just a few days later than I did, to work for his doctorate with Borsche on the constituents of kawa root. On the forenoon of my second day in the laboratory I was sorting out my glassware (everything except retort-stands and the like had to be purchased by students) when Borsche (a small grey-haired man invariably attired in a white laboratory overall which was too tight for his ample figure) came in and with some difficulty explained that he had an Englishman in his room and desperately needed an interpreter - would I come and play this role. I then went with him to his office where, reclining in an armchair, was Bertie. I asked him what the trouble was, whereupon he said, ' There really isn't a problem. I have been trying to tell the old boy I need a certificate of proficiency in German but I can't get him to understand.' When I had translated, Borsche roared with laughter - and promptly wrote out the required certificate. This meeting with Bertie Blount began what has been a lifelong friendship.