Today, I learnt the sad news of the death of Renaissance Mathematicus friend Tom McLeish. This didn’t come as a surprise, as I have known for several months that Tom was suffering from terminal cancer and was in palliative care.
They say that opposites attract and you can’t get much more opposite than Tom and I. Tom was a highly successful Professor of physics with a worldwide reputation, the founder and co-director of a prestigious history of science research project at Durham University, and a world class science communicator, who was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at York University, as an academic you can’t get much further up the greasy pole than Tom did. I am a two-time university drop out with virtually no formal qualifications, who presents himself to the world as a history of science rebel and mischief-maker. Tom was always socially correct and conservatively dressed in public, often in blazer, with collar and tie. I haven’t owned, let alone worn, a tie for more than fifty years. I’m an earring wearing, aging hippie, nearly always clothed in hoody and jeans, who will put on a collarless, grandad shirt, and waistcoat for a public lecture. Tom loved classical music. I’m a Deadhead and free jazz fan. Tom was openly and deeply religious. I’m the life-long atheist son of an atheist father and agnostic mother. But, and it’s a big but, we were good even close Internet friends.
The meeting point was of course history of science and science communication to which we both devoted a lot of time and effort. I first came across Tom through his Ordered Universe Project, an in-depth study of the work of the thirteenth century cleric, theologian, and philosopher Robert Grosseteste, who made important contributions to the evolution of medieval science. At first, I thought Tom’s work was presentist, but soon came to realise that it was anything but and became a fan of the project’s output. At the same time Tom became a fan of this blog, which I found more than somewhat flattering.
The mutual admiration grew over the years and developed into a strong Internet friendship, which reached a highpoint, when I invited Tom to write a guest post here at the Renaissance Mathematicus criticising an essay in the BBC Proms guide in 2019, on the historical relationship between astronomy and music, an apt topic for this blog.
Now Tom has gone the way of all flesh and I know that I am not the only member of the Internet history of science and science communication community who will sorely miss him. If the God that he so ardently believed in does exist, then I know that Tom will have truly gone to meet his maker. Tom was one of a kind and the world is a little poorer following his departure.