Rhubarb 2020

ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

Minden in Germany, where Dominique was born. From there, the family moved to Bury St Edmunds where Chris was Adjutant of the East Anglia Brigade Depot. Nicholas arrived there in 1961. Chris’s next job was in HQ Far Eastern Land Forces in Singapore, which was accompanied, but the family’s peace was interrupted service in Brunei, during the Emergency, for which he was Mentioned in Dispatches. After two years of formal training at the Royal Military College of Science and at the Staff College, it was back to intelligence with two years at the School of Military Intelligence after which he returned to Suffolk to command a Company in the 2nd Battalion, then based in Felixstowe. Following two years teaching Officer by Chris’s short-notice unaccompanied active

Alps, camping and exploring and always looking at the world through his keen and questioning scientist’s eye. DALE, CHRISTOPHER (1931-2019) On 7th February 2019, Colonel Christopher John Dale (C, 1945-1950). Chris was born in 1931 to a service family. After St Edward’s, he went straight to Sandhurst and then to the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment. The friends he made there stayed with him all his life. In 1955 he was posted to the Regiment’s depot in Lincoln, where he met Simone. They were married in 1957. They were posted immediately after their marriage to Malaya where the 1st Battalion was on operations during the Emergency, with Chris as Signals Officer, and later moved with the Regiment to

O B I T U A R I E S

John Currey

agree that he was an inspiring lecturer who was able to share his passion for Biology and also provide wise counsel and support to all he met. John became Head of Department from 1984-1990, after which he also served as Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University. Although in 1999 at the age of 67 he had to officially retire as an academic, he was made an Emeritus Professor and continued researching, reviewing, examining PhDs and attending conferences until the year before he died. He had an excellent international reputation for his wide research into biomechanics, his over one hundred papers published from 1959 until 2017 and his three books. After his death his scientific library was given to Berlin Universities. John was also a family man whose children have fond memories of narwhal and ostrich bones in the freezer and of being encouraged to discuss and debate the issues of the day. He was very widely read and loved poetry and looking at art and architecture. He much enjoyed conversation with friends over food and wine and was a good cook himself. John was a lover of maps and an extremely enthusiastic orienteer for over 30 years, running for England a couple of times. He also loved hill walking and spent many family holidays in the

Temporary Whaling Inspector on the ship the Southern Harvester. His job was to monitor the size, species and numbers of the catch and also to ensure that nursing mother whales were protected. This experience made him realise what a cruel and exploitative process whaling is. On his return to Oxford, John became a Demonstrator in the Zoology Department and met his wife Jillian. He married her in 1960 and they have three children Louise, Guy and Nicholas and three grandchildren. His PhD thesis on “Functional aspects of the structure of bone, with special reference to Haversian systems” was published in 1962. In 1964 John was recruited to help create the Biology Department in the newly formed University of York. Four years later he took his family to Cleveland, Ohio where he spent a research year working mainly on bone mechanics with clinicians from the Veterans Administration Hospital and academics from Case Western Reserve University. In 1970 John returned to York as a Professor. He spent many happy and fulfilling years teaching animal locomotion and evolution whilst continuing to research bone in all its manifestations. He wanted to get the science right and to understand how animals functioned. His colleagues

Colonel Christopher Dale

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