My History
I was told that it snowed on the day of my birth in the village of Fitzwilliam in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and that a Labour Government was elected. This last fact would have caused celebration, as Fitzwilliam, then a coal mining village, was (and remains) staunchly Labour. My father, like many of the rest of my extended (but not immediate family) worked in the pits; although, I remember him only as a secondary school caretaker. My mother, also of mining stock was secondary a cleaner at the same school and also at the local council offices.
Over the years, people, because of my unusual and posh -sounding first name, have assumed I had a more privileged background.
My youth was blissfully spent rooming the pit yards and slag heaps, but more generally in the local woods and fields.
Fitzwilliam lies within walking distance of Nostell Priory were my friends and I roamed with a keen interest in nature, as well as the occasional shooting and poaching with the village "mesters." I was particularly interested in the collection and study of butterflies and moths, which inevitably leads to keen knowledge of wild flowers. When, one Christmas, I was given an inexpensive microscope I began my deep, lifelong commitment to the study of microbes.
Youthful bliss was tempered somewhat when I passed the eleven plus exam and went to Hemsworth Grammer School Here, it was revealed that I was absolutely useless at math’s and French, although I did well at my other subject, notably the sciences. In those days, teachers didn't bother with failures, and the family had no money to employ a math’s tutor. So, until I eventually taught myself sufficient basic math’s to pass the first level exams, I was known as the sad boy who dreamed of being a scientist, but was useless at math’s.
Then to Nottingham University to read Botany. By my final year, I had become consumed by the subject of Fungal Ecology and Microbial Genetics and on gaining a First Cless Honors Degree stayed on to do PhD in Environmental Microbiology. After that, at the age of 24, my Wife Chris and I spent a short, but happy, time in Canada, where I was a National Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, working at the Soil Research Institute in the then delightful "cottage city " of Ottawa. I then spent a 42-year career, as lecturer and researcher in the Department of Microbiology and then the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Sheffield, in my native Yorkshire.
At the dawn of the new millennium, I had the greatest of fortune to collaborate with Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and others at Cardiff University, and elsewhere, working on the topic of panspermia. Panspermia the theory that life come from space was developed in its modern guise by Chandra and the famous astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle.
Since 2013, we have been reporting the isolation of unusual microbes from the stratosphere (circa 30km) which we term biological entities (BEs). As far we can determine, these organisms do not represent terrestrial species and provide evidence to suggest that they are incoming to Earth from space.