My Student Days in England
By Syed Amir, PhD
Bethesda, MD
I arrived in Birmingham (England) in the autumn of 1960 from Karachi Pakistan to pursue graduate studies in Chemistry, a wide-eyed young man who had never set foot out of his country before. It was a gloomy, cold day, archetypal of fall days in the English midlands. A graduate student from the Chemistry Department had volunteered to pick me up at the railway station and gave me some helpful directions on how to get to the “bed-and-breakfast” where I had found temporary lodging. It was the home of an elderly English couple, well maintained but as was often the case with many homes in those days, not adequately heated.
The following day, I found my way to the Chemistry Department. Professor Maurice Stacey, then head of the department, a kindly-looking gentleman, greeted me warmly, took me to meet Dr Sidney Alan Barker who was to be my PhD advisor. I noticed Barker’s laboratory was a busy place, where some six or seven students were working on their research projects. Especially reassuring to me was the fact that among them three were foreign students, much like me.
Initially I had a problem understanding the local accent but, in time, I got to know all my fellow students. They proved very helpful in guiding me during my early initiation phase in the academic customs and norms of the department which were so different than those I was used to. There was very little socializing during work time and politics and religion were almost never discussed.
My thesis advisor, Dr Barker, a senior lecturer at the time, followed a strict routine. Once every week, he would talk to his students individually in his office for about an hour or so, reviewing the results from the previous week and setting some kind of research agenda for the following week. After that, he did not hang over our heads, pressing for new results. He had a very fertile mind, as I discovered during my weekly sessions, and in a short time he would come up with many suggestions about how to pursue a given line of research. In my lengthy research career in England and later in the USA, I can hardly think of another investigator who was so original and creative in his/her thinking.
His day started very early, so early that I don’t recall not seeing him when I arrived about 8 am. He left punctually at five in the afternoon and rarely stayed late. He always bid me, with his characteristic smile, “cheerio” on his way out. Soon, after embarking on my research, I realized that I was deficient in some important areas of chemistry that were never covered in our courses at the University in India. Most of the learning was done by rote. New advances in chemistry, especially, had not yet been adopted by our teachers who themselves were unaware of them. In the first year, to make up the deficit, I routinely attended a number of undergraduate courses.
Dr Barker was naturally a shy person, especially when meeting with strangers. He was occasionally invited by his overseas students to their national day dinners in the Student’s Union. He always came with Ruth, his first wife. While she was a confident guest, Barker felt a little awkward amidst strangers, but after he had a drink or two, relaxed and then enjoyed the evening, socializing with others.
Christmas time had special significance for us all. The university was closed for ten days, and all activities came to a standstill. Even shops and dining places were closed, and the city itself had a deserted, forlorn look on Christmas Day. Every year, Dr Barker held a party at his house a few days before Christmas for his research team, with an abundance of food and drinks. He was especially mindful of foreign students in his group who had nothing to do at this time of the year and customarily invited them for dinner at his house on the day after Christmas. It was a joyful occasion, savored in a relaxed and unhurried environment. He loved music and often played piano at home to entertain his guests.
Dr Barker’s research interests had been evolving, shifting from basic carbohydrate chemistry to life sciences and biochemistry. I completed my PhD in 1963 in chemistry, but then he guided me as a postdoctoral fellow to move in the direction of endocrinology, purifying and studying the chemistry of follicle-stimulating hormone, one of the hormones, essential for human fertility. My move to endocrinology was a lucky break as it opened an entirely new and thriving field to me and opportunities for employment in the USA.
Dr Barker’s primary interest was his research and he had no hobbies that I knew. At one time, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and was advised to relax and not be so preoccupied with his academic work. He forced himself to take some time off in the afternoons for a round of golf. Occasionally, he would ask me to accompany him in the afternoon for a leisurely cup of tea in the newly opened staff house. He later found a new hobby and, applying his well-horned investigative skills, traced records of his family history going back to the Norman Conquest.
I left his laboratory in 1966 for a position in Pakistan. In 1969, on my way from Pakistan to Los Angeles to take up a research position, I made a stopover in Birmingham, where my wife’s parents lived, and had a brief meeting with him. That was the last time I saw him. He retired in 1991.
When I visited the chemistry department in 2000, it had changed so much that it was hard to recognize it. One of the old research buildings had disappeared as had the adjacent undergraduate teaching laboratory, converted into a parking space. I stopped by my old lab. where I had spent six enjoyable and productive years. There was a busy new crop of young students, reminding me of my own days there some 40 years earlier. No one among them, however, knew Dr Alan Barker or even recognized his name. How ephemeral, I thought, was the nature of fame and celebrity. (October 14, 2019 will mark the first death anniversary of Professor, Sidney Alan Barker, FRSC, at age 92)
(The author is a former Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, and a health science administrator, US National Institutes of Health)
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