Jack Heslop-Harrison was born in Middlesbrough to John William Heslop-Harrison and his wife Christian Henderson, the last of three children.
20 Facts About Jack Heslop-Harrison
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Jack Heslop-Harrison completed the Higher School Certificate Examinations in 1938, scoring highly in chemistry and physics but not highly enough in mathematics to win the State Scholarship he required to go to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge.
3.
Jack Heslop-Harrison took the King's College Scholarship Examination as well, not doing well enough in chemistry to get in.
4.
Jack Heslop-Harrison met Yolande Massey, his future wife; they took the same courses and frequently competed for top marks.
5.
Jack Heslop-Harrison eventually graduated with first-class honours in Biology, as did Yolande.
6.
Jack Heslop-Harrison was provisionally given a place on a radio operator course, and as a result spent some of his remaining time at the university doing a course at the physics department on electronic wave theory, something which had no relation whatsoever to his eventual position.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison was trained to operate radio equipment in relation to radar and geolocation, and towards the end of the course got to handle the then-new cavity magnetron.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison graduated first in his course and chose to be posted to Orkney.
9.
Jack Heslop-Harrison was given a position at an AA battery near Dounby with the equivalent rank to that of second lieutenant, something the battery commander was not happy with since Heslop-Harrison was effectively a civilian.
10.
Jack Heslop-Harrison was next commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps on 17 April 1942, and was later moved to South Ronaldsay.
11.
Jack Heslop-Harrison officially transferred to REME on 1 October 1942.
12.
Jack Heslop-Harrison's team proceeded to Pelzerhaken, near Denmark, where many of the scientists uprooted by allied bombings had been based.
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The department was small, consisting of a professor, a lecturer and a second lecturer, and when Jack Heslop-Harrison applied to take a PhD there was nobody qualified to supervise him.
14.
Jack Heslop-Harrison acted as a guide at the 1949 International Phytogeographic Excursion where he met W H Pearsall, who before leaving offered him a place as a lecturer at University College London, with the understanding that he would be shortly made a Reader should everything work out.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison moved to UCL in 1950, becoming a Reader in 1953, but returned to Queen's in 1954.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison did not personally get involved in research, but regularly assisted other scientists with various papers and theses.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison left Queen's again in 1960 to become a professor of botany at the University of Birmingham.
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Jack Heslop-Harrison relinquished it in 1995 due to the increasing political instability in Northern Ireland.
19.
Jack Heslop-Harrison spent about a year as "director-designate" without official duties or pay and spent much of this time researching for his position, meaning that by the time he was officially appointed he had a clear idea of the direction in which he wanted to take the Gardens.
20.
Jack Heslop-Harrison made large changes to the way the institute worked but clashed with the government, who funded the institute, and eventually resigned in 1976, the first Director to do so since the position was created in 1822.