Sarah and Joe visit

The weekend before I was hospitalised, we had a visit from Sarah Codd and Joe Seymour. Sarah is a kiwi lass, born and bred in Palmerston North, and a classmate of my daughter Catherine. After a Physics honours degree at Massey University, Sarah completed a PhD in Magnetic Resonance with John Strange at the University of Kent at Canterbury. She then returned to New Zealand as a post-doctoral fellow in my lab, where she met Joe Seymour, an American postdoctoral contemporary. The rest, as they say, is history. Joe and Sarah, now married, are both Professors at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. Miang and I visited them last year after the West Yellowstone conference and had a brilliant couple of days in this most beautiful place, including Joe and me hiking a peak in the Rockies.

Joe and Sarah link together so many mutual friends who have worked in my lab, including Ross Mair, Melanie Britton, Miki Komlosh and Andrew Coy. The upper picture shows from left, Mel (Andrew's wife), Andrew, Joe, Sarah and me (Miang took the photo) outside a new restaurant, Foxglove, on Queens Wharf where we had just enjoyed lunch together. The lower pic is of me and Joe celebrating after our "mountaineering feat"!

Sarah and Joe are both outstanding scientists. Sarah did some quite remarkable experiments in my lab on dispersion of restricted fluids. Joe introduced to our group the whole field of chemical engineering, and together we published one of our most highly cited papers. Now they both have their own exciting research programmes and are attracting excellent graduate students to work with them.

Sarah's visit had added poignancy for me. Her father, John Codd, died as a result of bowel cancer, on Christmas Day 2007. John was Professor of Policy Studies in Education at Massey University, my contemporary, and a man greatly admired and respected by all who knew him. To quote from an article by Paul Adams & John O’Neill, "John Codd seemed to have the admirable knack of saying what needed to be said (no matter how socially, educationally or politically critical) without offending people. He was a deep-thinking social theorist who knew implicitly the critical importance of education and teachers in creating a better society."

PS: In the group photo I am wearing my Icebreaker "beanie", a gift from daughter Catherine.