This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
I knocked.
“Come in!”
I opened the door to the private hospital room and was greeted by a fog of cigarette smoke. Total white-out. Somewhere amid the murk was the bed in which lay John Maddox, Editor of Nature, in his indeterminate seventies and my boss, who’d broken his leg.
Before I came I’d asked a colleague how John was shaping up. Not very well, I heard. What had you brought him, I asked? Oh, the usual, came the reply – a bunch of grapes.
Grapes?
Grapes?
For Maddox?
On the way to the hospital I bought two packets of Marlboro reds.
“Here, John,” I said, sitting next to the bed. “I’ve brought you a present. Condensed Grapes”.
We lit up.
“Would you like to see my X-rays?” He asked with his usual twinkle.
“No, I … well, not really, I, well …”
Maddox picked up the phone. “Nurse! My colleague should like to see my X-rays.”
The X-rays arrived. They showed a femur, sheared right through. On either side of the bone were metal plates, joined together, through the bone, with seventeen bolts. I made sure to count them. Seventeen.
“John, if you went under an electricity cable you’d pick up Radio Luxembourg,” I said (So shoot me – I’m a palaeontologist).“How did you do that?”
“We were having a dinner party at home,” said John. “I got up to fetch another bottle of wine, and I slipped in a pat of butter …”
Everyone who met John Maddox, Editor of Nature from 1966 to 1973, and 1980 to 1995, and who died yesterday has at least one tale like that. Without too much trouble I could probably fill blogs for a month with tales of John: of waiting at the typesetter while he finished an editorial way beyond deadline; of a plan to visit Mexico together when we wined and dined the very attractive press attache at the Mexican Consulate; of how he regularly set fire to his waste-paper basket. Of being sent to the wine bar with a fiver for a bottle of Chateau Thames. Of him disappearing on a Friday night and saying, as the door closed, that he wanted a thousand words from me by Monday for the following week’s issue – on anything I pleased. Of many cases of exasperation and irritation, and many more acts of kindness.
And of how he hired me, seemingly on the strength of a chat about my Ph.D. work and on no other concrete evidence (certainly nothing of journalism of any kind), to write a pop-science column on the op-ed page of The Times.
Of how he taught me all I know. Of how major and breakthrough were banned words at Nature (“Most scientific results are single bricks on a wall that’s already huge”, he wrote in a briefing note I received when I started, “big discoveries are just two bricks at once”). Of the importance of good, old-fashioned news reporting. And the occasional stunt, done seemingly for devilment, but which exposed painful truths about the scientific process. L’Affaire Benveniste, anyone?
Of how, when he interviewed anyone, he used no tapes, no shorthand, just scribbling the odd note, and, when the interviewee had been charmed into a false sense of security, he’d ask the killer question that the victim hoped he’d never ask.
Of how, as a lifelong liberal (he’d been a science correspondent on the Manchester Guardian) it was only as his time at Nature was coming to an end that he accepted a knighthood. I phoned him as soon as I heard. “Congratulations, Sir John!” I said with as much bombast as I could muster. “Not you as well” he said. “John’s attitude to authority is as H. L. Mencken said,” a colleague noted, “the same as exists between a dog and a lamp post”.
Of how he was ahead of his time. Two things. First, his splitting of the Nature output into Nature New Biology and Nature Physical Sciences was seen at the time as a spectacular failure … except that, forty years on, Nature is the brand on dozens of speciality journals. Second, he would go on and on about the cell as a machine, and that one day all its components and their interactions would be mapped. Ideas that the biology editors scoffed at. Except that now we have genomics, proteomics and every other variety of omics, and a science called ‘systems biology’.
Of how, having hired me, he tolerated my many gaucheries and mistakes, and after a while let me make my own way.
A mentor.
A friend.
PS: I’m collecting online obits and appreciations here as they come in. Here are stories from
Nature News by Philip Campbell, current Editor of Nature
The Great Beyond
The Times
New York Times
Los Angeles Times (HT Dave Lull)
The Guardian by Bernard Dixon
The Independent by Tam Dalyell
Daily Telegraph (HT John Gribbin)
Boston Globe
Discover
The Economist (HT John Gribbin)
The Scotsman
British Humanist Association
Scientific American
Daily Scan
Center for Science Writings by John Horgan
Pharyngula
Melitoonline (in Italian)
BBC Online
Bio-IT World by Kevin Davies, a former Nature colleague and founding Editor of Nature Genetics
Verse Wetenschap (Dutch)
Steve Connor’s Science Notebook
National Post
Last updated: Monday, 13 Apr 2009 - 17:38 UTC
© 2009 Nature Publishing Group
I’m so sorry to hear this Henry.
My condolences, Henry; I’m sorry for the loss of your friend and mentor. I always feel a bit rudderless for awhile after an older colleague or mentor dies … sometimes even when they just retire and move away. Inheriting their old books, journals, and lab equipment is only the tiniest of consolations.
That’s a very warm appreciation, Henry. You make me wish I had known him.
Sorry to hear this, Henry. He sounds a great character and this is a lovely tribute.
My condolences Henry. You paint a very beautiful picture of your friend and mentor. He seemed like quite a wonderful man and intriguing mind.
I am very sorry Henry!
Even though he left Nature 14 years ago I hadn’t seen him for some time, he casts a long shadow. It seems very strange coming to the office today, the first working day in a Maddox-free world. Weird.
What a fabulous
eulogyepitaphblog post, Henry. That quotation about the size of the wall and the bricks thereof is absolutely inspired.Nice one Henry. Good Luck to all in a Maddox-free world…
It’s a strange place. Not a bit like Kansas.
Nothing, but Henry is apparently on record, as saying:-
Well done Henry, hope this is OK.
I’m glad you mentioned the “dry run” for the multi-journal empire that Nature has become. Yes, we did all see the fission of Nature as a failure – maybe it was splitting Nature’s core markets that caused it, and the thrice weekly schedule – but it was really just a part of a wider shakeup of the journals business that John did much to create.
By bringing journalistic thinking to the exercise – decent writing up front, news sense and a willingness to indulge in the sordid business of PR – John started something that rocked the cosy boat of the likes of Science and the institutional journals.
Did you see the nice obit by Tam Dalyell in the Independent? One for your collection. “He was the friend of many in adversity.”
Thanks Michael – for the link, your perspective, and Tam Dalyell’s obit which I shall of course ad to my collection above.
GrrlScientist has kindly included this post in her blog carnival Scientia Pro Publica – you know what to do.
Has anyone nominated this post for openlab yet? I would, but my internet connectivity isn’t what it was.
The funeral is in Wales on Friday. I’ll be there, along with some other
Naturistscolleagues.There’s an obit in this week’s Economist … with a mention of Mr Gee, in reference to “the Afghanistan Effect”.
Thanks David – John Gribbin saw it too and I have added it to the list. The correspondent was Natasha Loder, another ex-Nature staffer, who phoned me (and other people) for reminiscences.
The funeral was lovely, but I don’t think it would be right to say anything about it in a public forum.