Yes.

Today we will have a little outline of
the history of the theory of condensed

matter group in the Cavendish lab.

mostly from my point of view, but some
bits from contributions also from others.

The TCM group started really on the 1st
of October 1954 when Neville Mott, and
6
00:00:41,7 --> 00:00:46,12
later Sir Neville, came to Cambridge as
the new Cavendish Professor of

Experimental Physics.

That was the title.

This is a bit ironic, because he was a
theoretician, but his style of doing

theory was to talk with experimentalists
and formulate puzzling issues, and then...

Then he thought about them and would
then come back and more discussions and

maybe write a paper about it and so on.

So that was his way of doing theory and
engaging with experimentalists.

I remember once I was reading a physics
journal,

and looking for something else.

And I noticed this was during the war.

I mean, not I was reading during the
war.
18
00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:46,6
The journal was published during the
war, and I noticed an article by Mott,

which I didn't stop to read.

I was busy looking for my own things.

But I just noticed what the heading,
what the paper was about, and it was

about the question

Sometimes, when you have a shell or a
bomb or something, it breaks up into a

small number of big pieces, and at other
times...

It breaks up into many small pieces.

And the paper was discussing what the
difference and I suppose it was

discussing why it's sometimes one and
sometimes the other and what makes it

and so on.

I don't know.

But certainly this topic of breaking
into a small number of big pieces or a

lot of small pieces was what the paper
was about.

And I think that typifies

This was during the war and his
contributions to the war work.

But this is how he works all the time.

It was also a bit ironic that the title
of the Cavendish Professor was then

Professor of Experimental Physics.

And

And this is obviously an anomaly.

But at that time, theory, there was no
proper theory in the Cavendish lab.

No proper theory group.

I mean, that was in the mathematics
faculty, where there was a big group on

theoretical physics, but they were
mostly on nuclear physics and mesons and

things of that kind.

I mean, there were one or two
theoreticians in the Cavendish.

I remember, at least I think, I'm not,
my memory is not very certain, but I
46
00:03:57,270 --> 00:04:00,6
think there was Ken Button who was...

theoretician, but also worked
experimentally with the studying the ionosphere.

This was in the radio astronomy group.

And of course, all their signals had to
come through the ionosphere.

And so understanding how the ionosphere
modifies signals was something important.

And so Ken Budden was the person who was
doing that, including

I think mostly theoretical work, I don't
know.

Certainly he was doing computing.

So that was one of the, so that
indicated how there was some theoretical

work as a sideline.

Another was

I don't remember the name of Professor,
but he was part of this mathematics

faculty on classical mechanics kind of
things, you know, tradition from Newton.

He was doing fluid dynamics and was
officially attached with the mathematics faculty.

But the mathematics faculty didn't have
laboratories, and so he had a laboratory

area within the Cavendish lab.

Yeah.

Well, one of the, I don't know whether I
mentioned it already just now.

You see, this is where my mind gets
confused.
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00:05:35,268 --> 00:05:42,8
Neville Mott was a theoretician, but his
style of doing theory was interesting,

was to talk with experimentalists and

find puzzling issues that the
experimentalist did not fully understand.

And then he would take that and discuss
it and learn about it and go away and think.

And then sometimes a year or two later
would be a paper where he was explaining

the things or doing some theory
connected with this.

was his way of working, rather than
building up a group.

When in 1954, when Mott came and started
the theory group, he brought John Zimon

from Oxford with him as a young
lecturer, who then did quickly gather a

little group of research students

around him and he started some graduate
lectures as a regular range part of

graduate education.

So he had a group and lectures and also
ran a seminar series.

So that was really the beginning of the
TCM group.

I should add that it wasn't called TCM
originally, it was called solid-state theory.

But then much later, when in the late
1970s I think it was, when Sam Edwards

came and joined the group from
Manchester, he was interested in

liquids to some degree, and polymers.

See, there was quite an experimental
group in the Cavendish on polymers, and

he took an active part in that group.

In fact, instead of sitting with the
rest of the theory group, he had an

office with the experimentalists on
polymers, and so that's what he spent

most of his effort on at that time.

The location of

Cavendish Laboratory, when you started
solid-state Theory Group, what's that?

Still the building in town centre, not
west Cambridge site.

Yes, I mean, this was all in the centre,
yes.

I mean, well, I don't think we need to
talk about the history of the buildings, but

The move to the new, the move out to
West Cambridge, that was I think around

early 1970s, sometime around then.

Okay.

I don't remember exactly where.

Okay, right, right.

But certainly, I had a large part in the
planning of the

the area that the top floor of the
building where the TCM group would then be.

An architectural firm has many different
people, and one of them was for interior design.

And he was pleased to talk with me,
because otherwise he would have to

invent what we wanted.

So he was very pleased that I talked a
lot with him, and we talked about

suggestions and so on.

And that, of course, worked very well,
as you will know.

We not just had offices, we had a small
seminar room for ourselves.

Yes, yes.

And this was not just for seminars.

I mean, most of the time, if you walked
past, you could see maybe two or three

people discussing physics together.

And it wasn't a seminar, it was two or
three people from the group.

But they were

young people, postdoc or graduate
students, in shared offices.

The offices were mostly for two people.

And there would be somebody from this
office and somebody from another office.

And they would sit down in the seminar
room to discuss, because

It is extremely disturbing to another
person who's a physicist to have a

physics conversation going on that he
was, well, he knows what it's about, but

he's not actually directly involved.

It's very disturbing.

I had this for a year or so when I was a
graduate student.

sharing a large office with a staff
member.

And that staff member, of course, had
graduate students coming and discussing

with him.

And it was very disturbing, yes.

So that was the reason behind that.

And of course, another thing about that
move was that to save money, I mean, the

The Cavendish Laboratory, the one that
is, the Mott Building and so on.

That came right at the end of a lot of
university building.

I mean, at the end of World War II,
everybody realized that you had to have

an educated workforce.

University was not just for a few
people.

And every country realized this.

And that's when in Britain, this is the
new universities like Bath and Brighton,

that's springing up all over the place.

And a part of it also was an expansion
in Cambridge.

And towards the end of this time in the
1960s,

60s, there was another period of
expansion, not by forming new

universities at that stage, but
expanding the existing one.

And the government demanded that
Cambridge and Oxford also, and the other

established university, also take part
in this.

And so

Cambridge expanded with more students at
that time.

So it was a part of a general wave.

I'm thinking about what to talk about
next.

Right.

You have just mentioned Professor John
Simon

joined the group and started teaching.

Yes, yes.

Is it on?

Yes.

So, as I was saying, John Zyman coming
as a young lecturer and building up a

group of research students and lectures
and so on.

This was all part of

this general expansion in the 1960s.

Another aspect of this was that, as I
said before, the title of the Cavendish

Professor was Professor of Experimental
Physics.

But then after a few years, this became
a nonsense.

And especially after

Sam Edwards came from, and he was
working with the polymer group as a theoretician.

Polymer, is it a solid?

Well, also liquids he was interested in,
and so the title was changed.

from, it was called solid-state physics
originally, but it was changed to Theory

of Condensed Matter at that time, which
was sometime in the 1970s.

And so it's convenient to just refer to
it as TCM, Theory of Condensed Matter,

all the time, but the original name was
a bit different.

Is it a coincidence or not?

The famous group in Japan, Tokyo
University, Tokyo University also in the

past have a solid-state theory group
that related...

Oh, what I see, right.

At what time our friend Professor Terra
Kura come to

I don't remember what time.

Right, okay.

I will ask him later.

One of the things that Mott did...

Well, there are two comments.

The title, the professorship, was
changed from the professor of

experimental physics just to the physics
professor.

The other thing that was changed, it was
no longer a special professorship just

for the head of department.

It was just one of the professors, and
then one of the professors would be head

of department, but not just
specifically.

This one.

So before Professor Edwards, that head
of department and Cavendish professor is

one position, so one person taking these
two positions.

Well, as I say, when Sam Edwards came,
at that time, we took away the professor

of experimental physics.

Professor of Physics.

Right.

And yes.

I'm putting the kettle on.

Would you like a cup of tea?

No.

I have ice cool water.

Thank you.

One of the things that Mott did in the
middle of the 1960s, well, all the time

after he was here, he attracted
visitors, academic senior scientists,

particularly from the United States,
because the whole idea of sabbatical

leaves was a new thing.

And so people came on sabbatical leaves
either for half

half a year or a whole year, there were
many, many senior professors who came.

And one of them was Phil Anderson, PW
Anderson.

I forget already when it was, maybe in
the 1950s already, or beginning of 60s.

Anyway, I think maybe beginning, yes, it
must have been, I think, beginning of

the 60s, because I think Mott was
already here.

And Mott arranged with the university
that Phil Anderson could have a

half-time professorship position.

Now this was something new, and the
university had to change its statutes to

allow it.

One heard all the time of people who had
professorships at university X, Y, or Z,

but then seemed to spend a whole year or
more at some other university where they

also had some connection and so on.

And in Cambridge, this was not allowed.

I mean,

The undergraduates, the students, have
to live within 3 miles of Great St.

Mary's Church.

This is one of the rules of students in
Cambridge.

You cannot be a student in London, be
living in London and be a student in

Cambridge within 3 miles.

But also, the lecturers,

The teachers and professors, they also
had to live not within three miles, but

within 10 miles of Great St.

Mary's Church.

And this was taken very seriously.

And so special arrangements had to be
made, a change in the statutes to allow

Phil Anderson to be appointed as a
half-time professor.

That was new.

But of course it was, I mean, it was
important that he kept his position in

the United States at Bell Labs.

And it was a great benefit because he
brought with him ideas that were

developing in the United States.

And so this was a benefit.

I mean, England is quite a small
country.

compared with the United States.

And so the amount of physics going on in
the United States was a lot more than

goes on in England.

And with the rest of Europe, it took a
long time for that really to develop.

Yes.

Anyway, so Phil Anderson came for half a
year.
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00:21:08,1 --> 00:21:12,305
and always gave a lecture course on
many-body theory.

Many-body theory was very new in the
1960s, as something that you lectured on.

It was not just research, and he
instituted that.

And of course, he then attracted other
people also to be visitors and give

seminar talks and so on.

But then after, I think, eight years
from the mid-1960s, there was a

disagreement with Brian Pippard.

And

And I think Brian Pippard was head of
the Cavendish at that then.

And Phil Anderson gave up coming to
Cambridge.

This was after eight years.

So we were sorry about that.

Let me pick up from where I was talking
about Mott coming to Cambridge and

bringing John Zeimer and so on, and then
later Phil Anderson.

But anyway, so in 1948 when Mott came,
1st of October, I also arrived from New

Zealand and started

and visited him in his office and said,
you know, I'm Volker Heine, I've come

here to do PhD with you.

And instead of sort of being pleased, he
was a little bit, I didn't know him, of

course, at that time.

I didn't know that his way of doing
theory, like I was explaining, was to be

an individual and talk with
experimentalists about their problems

and think about them.

He wasn't a group that had a group life
developing in some direction, whatever

it was, phase transitions or whatever,
photons or whatever.

I didn't know that, of course, from New
Zealand.

But I was a bit upset that he was really
trying to pass me off onto other people.

And you see, I had on the ship coming
over from New Zealand, of course it was

by ship in those days.

I had a month to read Morton Jones' book
on the electrons and metals.

And

And I knew this is what I wanted to do
for two reasons.

I mean, on the one hand, it was quantum
mechanics.

To actually use quantum mechanics to do
useful calculations was something new.

I mean, well, during the 1930s, Hartree
had done calculations on the elements,

starting with hydrogen, helium, and
well,

By the mid-1950s, he then did have some
students, and they'd got as far as aluminium.

That's as far through the periodic table
as they'd got by the 1950s.

Aluminium atom or aluminium metal?

No, just atoms.

These are just atoms.

Just atoms.

Spherical symmetry and so on.

That was the only

real quantum mechanical calculations
that were done.

There was on solids a tight binding
calculation for transition metals,

because they were magnetic.

And so that the application to magnetism
and magnetic alloys, that existed.

Approximately.

They were tight binding calculations.

And then, but in 1950, there was the
first orthogonalized plane wave

calculation for silicon.

I forget the man's name in the United
States.

And that was really the first proper

calculation in mainline physics.

And I was coming in 1954, only four
years later.

And so this, to me, coming from New
Zealand, quantum mechanics was a new world.

of physics.

Of course, it had been started in the
1920s, but as I say, by 1950 was the

start of actually using it to do real
calculations and real understanding

things in detail.

So that was a very important point.

On the other hand, I saw all these other
theoreticians doing mesons and ionists

and things.

That was all out there and rather
abstract.

Whereas metals and things were down to
earth.

And so this subject

greatly appealed to me.

It was both modern and forward-looking,
but it was also down to earth, as we

would say in English.

And so I said to Morton, no, I don't
want to work with these other people.

I really want to work with you on
quantum mechanical things related to materials.

And he said, oh well,

And then he gave me my project, and I've
often told this story.

He said, well, why don't you go down to
the low temperature laboratory, where

they're doing experimental work, and see
if you can make yourself useful.

I always loved that.

See if you can make yourself useful.

This says so much about the man and
about his style of working.

And something that really appealed to
me.

And so indeed, I went down and the first
project that I looked at, the first dot

of experiment, was too difficult because
it was to do with tin.

And that's a heavy element.
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00:28:53,266 --> 00:28:58,4
But then I went further and talked with
another graduate student.

And he was doing de Haas von Alphen
effect measurements on aluminum.

This de Haas von Alphen effect was,
again, something post-World War II,

something new to study solids and the
electrons in solids as quantum particles

for the first time, really.

Before that, one had a nearly free
electron picture, but

Who knows how accurate, whether it was
real.

But people were beginning to do real
calculations.

Like I said that for silicon, that had
already been done just four years before.

And so I knew that, and so the tools
were there.

If they could do silicon, I could do
aluminum.

And that was what the, it was a research
student, Max Gunnison from Australia.

He was doing these experiments.

And so I could do a band structure
calculation for aluminum and map out the

Fermi surface.

And it was the shape of the Fermi
surface that the Haus-Halfman effect was measuring.

In fact, the biggest part of the Fermi
surface is just pieces of a sphere of

three electrons, but then at the where
the sphere sort of comes to the corners

and edges of the Bouillon zone, there
were little in the second and third and

fourth bands, there were little areas of
Fermi surface.

And those were actually what the
experimentalists could see at that time.

At that time, they couldn't see the main
part of the Fermi surface.

That was just coming along.

So the thing was to look at the small
parts and see how well they tied up with

the theory and the experiments.

At that time, did you already invented

empty core, pseudo potential, not yet.

It was orthogonalized plane waves.

No, pseudo potential didn't exist.

No, it was orthogonalized plane waves.

So that's what we used.

Yes, and yeah, that's what I did.

Okay, let's stop there for a moment.

You said that this idea of make yourself
useful was something that I copied from

what, and I don't remember this, but you
say you told me that I

often used it in talking with new
graduate students.

Yes, every year, every year, September
time, those new graduate students

arrive, there will be an occasion,
everybody gather in TCM group and you

come along to say how Professor Mott
direct you to

low temperature freezing screw every
year.

Why don't you tell the story?

Sit here and you tell the story, just
like this.

Right.
366
00:32:48,868 --> 00:32:52,5
At some time I will...
367
00:32:52,5 --> 00:32:53,373
Do it now.

Do it now.

Then it's all together.

Right.

Okay.

Right.

I will say one or two words.

Is it running now?

Yes,

This idea of this remark by Mort, you
know, go to the low temperature groups,

see if you can make yourself useful, the
experimental group, see if you can make

yourself as a theoretician useful.

This idea of theory and experiment
together, I mean, that theoretical

physics wasn't just some mathematical
subject that was out in a different world.

But they were together, and this was
something new.

I mean, since Newton, I mean, the motion
of the earth and the moon and the stars

and the sun and all these things, they
were just, theoretical physics was sort

of in a different corner of its own.

But the idea that you're working with
between theory and experiment, this was

a much newer idea, and one that I liked.

And I mean, New Zealand is a very
practical culture, and that was one

aspect that I liked about it.

So his Mott saying,

Go down to the low temperature group,
see if you can make your soul.

That really resonated with me.

So you come down.

Okay.

Right.

I will fill up my part describing my
personal experience.

arriving at TCM.

The arrival day and the day which you
were coming the new students and new

postdocs in the group is not the same
day.

But let me slightly sort of make it
slightly longer.
400
00:35:33,66 --> 00:35:33,366
I

arrive one month earlier than the
typical time.

The letter from university suggests us
to arrive around September.

Is that?

Yes, around September is the time for
students to arrive.

But when I was admitted,

At that time, Clare College has no room.

In fact, I didn't, I was not able to
find a college, and it was you who

talked to Clare College, negotiate them
to allow, to treat my case as an

exception, because Clare College

has the goal to provide all clear
students with accommodation.

So here is this one extra student has
been admitted by the department and the

language test sort of just enough.

Everything is ready but is not
associated with any college.

So you negotiate with the college

somehow college agree, I live outside of
college by myself.

I will have to, well my parents have to
take care of my own rent.

Do not benefit from college, this is a
lower.

rent or any benefit.

So that was a deal and you very kindly
make an international telephone call to

my family and talk to me and my father
saying that this is the solution.

I will be accepted by Clare College on
the condition that

I will use the accommodation outside of
Clare College.

That will be slightly more expensive.

You calculate the difference in rent.

And you see, at that time, our family
was so happy about I was able to be

accepted by this world-famous
university.

my father quickly said, Yes, of course,
we accept the condition and we really

appreciate for extra arrangements for
this making the conditional offer

fulfilled to be in conditional, right?
430
00:38:26,673 --> 00:38:27,7
And

I was then prepared to arrive one month
earlier to look for accommodation on

market because I'm not like other
students when I arrive, they will be

given a college room.

But then, luckily, when I was preparing
to arrive one month earlier, Clare

College informed me someone didn't

come, was not able to come, and I was on
the waiting list, I get accommodation in

Third Kill Court.

Yes.

Then I have all these cheaper
accommodation and all the benefits like

all the other class students.

So I arrived one month earlier, and my
first day experience

to coming to west side of this Cavendish
laboratory was, I was a bit frightening

because at that time I have not yet get
myself a bicycle.

So I walk from Circuit Court, of course,
not a long distance, but everything is new.

You see, I have to follow the map.

And then, not like today, we have mobile
phone satellite positioning.

The light spot means where we are on the
map.

So I have to read the map and try to
match whether I'm on the right track.

And I realized I have to pass through
university library and Robinson College

and the small footpass on the website.

I asked myself, is that going to happen
for the rest of the three, four years?

Do I have to every day work such a long
distance?

It was much later I realized when people
are in a not familiar environment, the

journey seems to be quite long.

Once we get used to it, is automatic.

I remember you told me before, you have
autopilot.

Every morning you sit in your car and
then...

When you realize it, you arrive in
Cavendish Lab, right?

You told me before, you have autopilot.

When something, you drive to Cavendish
Lab many times, and then it's easy, right?

So, of course, later I got my bicycle
that also speeds up, and this commuting

or coming to lab and return to college
from Circuit Court to Cavendish Lab.

become very easy.

And then one month quickly passed and I
already settled down in circular court.

Let me say one more thing about circular
court.

When I arrive, I report to Porter's
Lodge at the circular court and Porter

said, okay, you go out and turn right
and there's circular court and that is a number.

Right.

And then when I entered the staircase, I
was walking on wooden stairs.

It has so many years.

In my lifetime experience, I have only
walked on wooden stairs in my great-grandparents'

home.

So this kind of Japanese building as
wooden staircase.

So that, that is so exciting.

Right.

So now, one, I have already familiar
with Clare College lifestyle, and then

there's a time, this

TCM formally welcoming new students from
all over the world and also postdocs and

the announced time and people come up to
come out to the coffee area in the

circle and you come to address welcoming
speech

to all the new arrival members.

And that is the time I first, the first
time I heard your story, how you arrived

from New Zealand, Professor Mott.

I think I can vividly try to mimic the
kind of expression you get at that time.

Professor Mott was busy on something.

He may not even look at you with long
eye contact.

He was working on something and tell
you, why don't you go downstairs, or

something like that.

I don't know whether that agree with
your memory, because at least that was

the kind of situation you described to
all the new arriving members.

And the reason I know every year you do
that is because I was in TCM for four years.

The students in, PhD students in TCM
typically graduate around 3.5

years.

Some very quick three years is finished.

And I'm one of these

slower ones.

So most of the students graduate, finish
in 3.5

years.

I finished, it took me four years to
finish.

So I have four occasions.

So I do know every year it was you come
out to address the welcoming message for

new students, new postdocs.

and this story will be told, was told in
TCM.

So in this TCM 70 anniversary, all those
members from all the generation, none of

us is unfamiliar with, every one of us
is familiar with the Professor Mott,

Professor Heine's story on newly arrival
New Zealand students

was directed to experimental group to
make himself useful.

And that really is the first thing these
newcomers, including me, receive as the

kinds of atmosphere of TCM.

And in fact, TCM under you and also

Professor Mike Penn, Professor Richard
Nease, and Professor Sam Adams, all

these professors has this very
collaborative tip and also a friendly

atmosphere of making oneself useful and
an open discussion and helping people.

And also one of the things you very
often encourage us is not to reinvent

the wheel.

If I know something and you know
something, I don't know, then we collaborate.

We collaborating people and make
ourselves progress

faster or more, or this is also a way of
learning more.

That is the kind of very precious thing
a member in TCM group can receive and learn.

And personally, a very strong impact

Last time, from at the end of last
recording, which was not recorded, I

explained to you one day, my project, my
first project was related to electronic

structure calculation of aluminum
oxides.

different phase, compare energy, that
seems to be a doable project.

Oxygen pseudo potential was a challenge,
but PhD project is a long three, four

years project, so we see what we can do.

But then one day you walk into my
office, that is a three student shared

room in

Our old cabinetish laboratory, West Side
cabinetish laboratory 2.0,

first year students has no window.

That is a long tradition.

Only second, after second year, the more
senior students will be arranged.

to a window office.

By the way, now this new Cavendish
Laboratory, Ray Dubey Centre, every

office, shared or not shared, has
window.

The designer was good that the meeting
room has no window.

That is okay.

But every office has window.

But in the past, first-year students

do not have a window, they have to be
waiting for second year or more senior year.

Right, you walk into this room 543 and
with a big smile sit down in front of me

looking at me saying, Ming Shen, I'm
going to give you a great honor.

I thought, Oh, what a great honor.

And you said, I'm going to ask you to
generate pseudo potential for the entire group.

And that was the mission you have given
me.

Yes.

And the background is Dr.

Lin, my senior, also a Taiwanese.

He has got a new contract in

Faraday Institute in London, Royal
Society, Faraday Institute.

He was a quantum chemistry trained in
University of New Mexico in the United States.

And coming to TCM, I learned from
Professor Richard Nease using a code.

that I think originally developed by
American scientists and to generate

pseudo-potential to be used by CASTEP.

So he has a new contract, but the demand
of this pseudo-potential, that

pseudo-potential, at that time, on the
entire periodic table, we only have less

than 10, only a few

common elements.

That is, the cast is ready to be used
for very many types of material.

So that was the time I arrived.

Being the Taiwanese, he and I are
Taiwanese, and even when we met and

talked, we realized

We graduated from the same Taiwanese
university.

He graduated from the chemistry
department.

I graduated from the physics department.

Both of us are alumni of Tang Kang
University.

So with this extra connection and bond,
he

he was very friendly to me, willing to
teach me how he did on generating pseudo potential.

I think he must have suggested to you or
Mike or Richard that I could be a

student to take up his mission,
continues to generate pseudo potential

for the entire group.

And based on

The first thing you told me you are
going to give me a great honor, that

means my interpretation was usually
students do not do that.

It has to perhaps more experienced
postdoc.

to generate potential and test potential
for the entire group.

And I was given this mission, so I was
very happily, proudly, but also I remind

myself I must have a higher standard to
help the group, to serve the group.

So whenever

They will request from group members
saying, oh, they want to do some

materials, need this element or that
element to be software in order to be

put in to workstation or supercomputer.

Yeah, they make their request and I will
come back and think, what should I

choose the parameters?

to help them to have as soft as
possible, use minimum, as less as

possible, plane waves, but still to be
accurate enough for the physical

property to be sensible.

So that takes

up a big part of my PhD research in TCM.

So if I'm just operating a code for
people, that may be not very much a progress.

But TCM has this kind of atmosphere

many people know very many different
things and you yourself as a shield of

potential experts.

So I was able to work on top of Lean and
previous people's idea to develop

something new, something extra to make
the shield of potential easier and softer.

And given that is new, therefore qualify
a

PhD thesis.

You see, we cannot sort of copy or we
have to create something new.

So that was how I was lucky enough, very
lucky, that a mission you gave me to

finally become five chapters.

The main part of the thesis and original
aluminium oxide project is the last

chapter, the chapter 6.

Yes.

So not only my time, four years as a
member in TCM, after I went back to

Taiwan to teach, every two or three
years I come back to visit.

And also quite a few occasions

you address the audience, especially the
new arrival, new students, this

Professor Mott's story on you.

So I know and everyone in TCM know you
have been given very many times, right?

Yes, right.

Wonderful.

that was a wonderful story.

Yes, which...

of course I knew that this was
important.

I mean, this was part of my New Zealand
culture.

I mean, when I was in New Zealand, the
country was only 100 years since it was

joined to England and European
civilization.

I mean, the Maoris had been there for
about 1,000 years.

before that, actually not so very long,
600 a year.

Not so very long.

They had come from the Pacific area.

But modern research.

Yes, say that it actually Taiwan was the
jumping board for human **** sapien.

to spread into South Asia and Taiwan.

And they then went eastwards and then
from there, they then came to New Zealand.

When they overpopulated to small
islands, then they had to get in their

canoes and discovered New Zealand.

Not only biologically, genetic study
show they are closely linked

Some of their aboriginal languages share
the mountain tribe languages of Taiwan.

Some of the phrases, they understand
each other.

They give the same name on the same
thing.

that was very interesting about what you
said about how I behaved and how I

introduced new graduate students and so
on.

Yes, it feels very familiar.

And it was so much part of my New
Zealand culture.

Make yourself useful.

I mean, when I

I arrived in New Zealand on January
1940, just inside the World War II.

That was another story.

But the country was only 50 years, but
no, less than 100 years old from the
641
00:58:55,168 --> 00:58:58,4
time when it joined the British Empire.

And it was one and a half million

the population.

So that it felt very new and was
starting things.

And during World War II, of course, it
was stuck out there in the Pacific, cut

off in a way, in many ways.

So yes, making oneself, paddling one's
own canoe was the other expression.

In New Zealand, we had
649
00:59:32,5 --> 00:59:36,643
love many, trust few, and always paddle
your own canoe.

So that was part of my culture of how I
grew up.

Yes.

Quite different from the image that I
had from New Zealand, and an image that

was to consider extent still quite real,
of being very erudite and very

Yes, very theoretical and so on.

Yes.

Are we close to the story of New Blood
Project or not yet?

Because data are

I heard from senior people, including
you, New Blood Project.

New?

New Blood, sending young, talented
scientists to the United States to learn

things and return to Britain.

That starts the New

researchers and professors such as Mike
Penn and Richard Nees.

So are we at that part yet?

I do know this is a part of TCM history.

Yes, it was.

I mean, England is a very small country
compared with the United States and the

development of science.

I mean,

everything in Europe came to a dead stop
with World War II.

And it took several years to really come
to life again.

And in the meantime, the United States
kept developing and developing and

developing and was giving leadership in
the world.

So

Yes, it was very important for us to
relate to science in the United States.

And we all went for one or two years as
postdocs to the United States.

Yes, I mean, I remember Neville Watt
when I came towards the end of my PhD.

we discussed where I should go.

At that time, the supervisor played a
large part in placing a graduate student

for the first postdoc to somebody else
that they knew.

Now there are so many graduate students,
it doesn't work like that anymore, but

it did at that time.

And

And he arranged for me to go to
Berkeley, California with...

Kittel?

Charles Kittel?

Charles Kittel?

Yes, to work with Charles Kittel.

You see, I'm aging and names and things
just evaporate.

Yes, but Charlie Kittel.

In fact, it turned out that Charlie
Kittel was not in good health.

And he was spending the year in Hawaii.

And I was looking after one or two
graduate students of his.

And so that was all a bit strange.

But it worked.

Right.

Yes.

And I went.

There was also a big

meeting of the American Physical Society
in January.

So I went to that and made contacts and
visited Bill.

Well, the first time I didn't visit Bell
Labs, I visited General Electric or such

labs where Charlie Cattell had very
contact.

And then they invited me back the next
year and so on.

Yes, that was a very important part of
the system.

Yes, yes, yes.

But this whole matter of making yourself
useful, yes, this was part of my New

Zealand culture, yes.

And it was part of growing up during
World War II.

Yes, I was in secondary school during
World War II in New Zealand.

So yes, that was a very strong part of
the culture that I thought was important

and tried to generate in the TCM group.

I think we stop here and think what else
there is that we should talk about.

Okay.