The Revd Canon John Charlton Polkinghorne

16^th October 1930 - 9^th March 2021

John Polkinghorne was installed as the 38^th President of Queens’ College on 7^th July 1989. By his own admission he had had little direct contact with Queens’ over the years and famously joked that he needed to learn a whole new set of academic ancestors. Most of his Cambridge career had been spent at Trinity College and he had become accustomed to a college with far more disposable wealth and a much larger fellowship. In his first letter in the Record, John noted that one of the first things that struck him on arrival at Queens’ was “the care which had to be exercised to make maximum effective use of slender resources”. He was particularly impressed that a very high proportion of Official Fellows carried significant responsibility in the life of the College over and above their teaching duties. “The way that this is cheerfully and willingly undertaken is a sign of the excellent spirit existing in Queens’”. He was also used to the far more formal atmosphere of Trinity but he soon came to appreciate and in time embrace the friendliness of Queens’, maintaining tradition but with a light touch. In his final ‘letter’ in the Record as President seven years later, he said how “immensely grateful” he was “for the privilege of serving in this office.” “Coming to the College from elsewhere, I have found it to be a friendly and informal society in which academic work and wider interests both find their proper place, and are pursued with balance, enthusiasm and notable success”.

He was particularly conscious of the importance of the relationship between the President and Old Members, especially for fund raising. Privately he felt that he was a little lacking in the social skills necessary to get to know and enthuse the alumni. He was not a social animal and found it hard to engage in social chatter. He was determined, however, to do everything in his power to overcome his innate lack of such skills – it was, as he said, part of his job description. With the help of his wife Ruth, he rapidly established a great rapport with those who came to functions. The Old Queens’ men and women very much appreciated his efforts on behalf of the College and came to hold him in the very highest esteem. He had an innate decency and charm, which endeared him to any with whom he came in contact.  It was not within his nature to find it easy to ‘glad hand’ potential donors to persuade them to give to the College but realised that the College with its relatively poor endowment needed help and he was determined to pull his weight. During his time as President seeds were sown which led eventually to the establishment of an Alumni and Development Office and to the much more generous revenue stream which the College now enjoys from donors. For instance, a Committee including prominent alumni was convened to look at appeals. This Committee not only made useful suggestions about contacting Old Members but also served to introduce Lord Eatwell to several influential Fellows. John Eatwell was, of course, subsequently elected to succeed John Polkinghorne as President.

John worried that his slightly old-fashioned and formal style, which he certainly felt befitted his office, might be a barrier to good relationships with the students. He hardly ever appeared in public without a jacket and tie or clerical collar. When entertaining freshers on Saturday mornings to breakfast, therefore, he would try and lighten the atmosphere by wearing a jumper emblazoned with the equation e = mc². He was perhaps oblivious to the fact that 8.00 a.m. on a Saturday morning was not a time guaranteed to produce a full turnout of those invited. That these functions and Sunday lunch for third years went so well was perhaps as much down to Ruth Polkinghorne. She did all in her power to support John in his work as President and to maintain the traditions of hospitality of the College. She presided over the Lodge with dignity, poise and a minimum of fuss. Nothing seemed to phase her –visits of royalty or foreign presidents, shy or difficult undergraduates, small grandchildren, grand receptions, more intimate parties. She and John made a great team in the President’s Lodge, though few realised she was working as a geriatric nurse throughout their time at Queens’. Like John she was a mathematician, but had retrained as a nurse when John retrained as a clergyman.

John once likened his job as a Head of House to that of an eighteenth century constitutional monarch. “I do not see my role as purely decorative and symbolic, but believe myself to have responsibilities and even modest influence”. He was an excellent chair of meetings of the Governing Body or other committees, moving through the agenda quietly but steadily and firmly. If a topic was in any way controversial, he was not afraid to make his own opinion known, but, should a vote go against him, he immediately and graciously accepted the decision and backed it without rancour or grudge. As perhaps befits a mathematician, his communications with others tended to be brief and to the point. One or two Fellows felt his famously terse  (quite often only one sentence long) replies to sometimes lengthy letters were short almost to the point of rudeness but most appreciated his clarity of thought and efficiency in administration. He was a private man and not easy to get to know, yet the Fellowship warmed to him and he to them as time went on.

He was, of course, particularly supportive of the life of the Chapel. He attended Morning Prayer assiduously every day and took his turn with the Dean and Chaplain delivering short sermons at the Sunday morning communions. He enjoyed presiding at the Eucharist in Chapel and the contact with students over breakfast afterwards. He and Ruth attended Choral Evensong without fail and he often preached. He was especially fond of music and encouraged the Chapel Choir and the St Margaret Society, attending concerts as often as possible. He was, however, a stickler for punctuality and the Chaplain soon learnt that he had to chivvy the Choir to assemble in time, so that Choral Evensong could begin exactly on the hour. He gave Dr Holmes in particular unstinting and absolute support when he became Dean of Chapel and maintained that support after he retired by continuing to attend Sunday Evensong and helping to entertain visiting preachers over High Table dinner. He was a very convivial companion at meals and in the Combination Room.

When John took office, the building of ‘Phase III’ (the Fitzpatrick Hall, the Underground Car Park and the Squash Courts building) of the Cripps Court complex was well advanced. In June 1992 John, together with Sir Humphrey Cripps, welcomed her Majesty the Queen Mother formally to open Lyon Court. This was an extremely happy occasion and one of the highlights of John’s Presidency. He also hosted the President of Mexico on a visit to Queens’. When Sir John Chalstrey (Queens’ 1951) was elected Lord Mayor of London, the Polkinghornes were invited to watch the Lord Mayor’s Procession from the official reviewing stand while members of the Boat Club shouldering their green and white-tipped oars escorted the carriage of the Lady Mayoress.

In 1995 John reached the age of 65. He had a myriad of projects on the go and decided that the right thing to do was to retire to devote himself to his writing, his preaching and his lecturing. He felt he had much to do and remaining at Queens’ any longer would seriously impinge on his work, and so he resisted all efforts to persuade him to stay on a little longer. He was the first President of Queens’ actually to retire since the Civil War – his predecessors for more than three centuries had either died in office or moved on to other posts. On leaving the Lodge in the summer of 1996 he was created both a Life Fellow and an Honorary Fellow.

Over the seven years of his Presidency, John did all in his power to ensure that teaching and scholarship at Queens’ remained of the highest standard and that the College remained a coherent community. Perhaps less tangibly his own reputation as a scholar and intellectual of the first order, recognised particularly within academia and the Church but also nationally and internationally, added considerable lustre to Queens’ College.

John Charlton Polkinghorne was born in 1930 in Weston-super-Mare, where his father was working for the Post Office. The Polkinghorne family were Cornish in origin, hailing from the small town of St Breock. John’s father George was later appointed Postmaster of Street, Somerset, and then Head Postmaster in Ely. John’s mother Dorothy Charlton came from Godalming in Surrey. A daughter died before John was born and their elder son, an R.A.F. pilot, was killed in action in 1943. Every Remembrance Sunday during John’s Presidency at Queens’, the College’s poppy wreath, placed in front of the War Memorial in Chapel, was always accompanied by a smaller one in memory of a much-loved brother, Flight Sergeant Peter Polkinghorne, RAFVR. When John’s father was appointed to Ely, John moved from the small rural Elmhurst Grammar School to the Perse School for Boys in Cambridge. At the Perse he not only shone academically but also edited the school magazine with the future theatre director Peter Hall. He was subsequently to become a Governor of the Perse and served as Chairman of Governors 1972-81.

After National Service in the Army Education Corps, he went up to Trinity College in 1949 to read Mathematics. He was ‘Senior’ Wrangler in 1952 and success in the Tripos led to a Ph.D. in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics under the supervision of the Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam within the group led by Professor Paul Dirac. Meanwhile he had met a fellow Mathematician, Girtonian Ruth Martin, through the Christian Union, and they were married in 1955. He finished his PhD that year and was elected as a Research Fellow at Trinity. However, a Postdoctoral Harkness Fellowship to visit and work at the California Institute of Technology came his way and he and Ruth spent nine months in Passadena followed by three months travelling in the States (John having learnt to drive in California). He returned to the U.K. in 1956 to a Lectureship at the University of Edinburgh but in 1958 he came back to Cambridge and to Trinity. He was promoted to a Readership in 1965 and became Professor of Mathematical Physics in 1968. His students included such future luminaries as the cosmologist and astrophysicist (Lord) Martin Rees and the Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson. His work centred on the theoretical physics of elementary particles and he played an important role in the discovery of the quark. He spent time as a visiting scholar at Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford and CERN in Geneva. In 1974 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Nationally he was a Member of the Science Research Council from 1975 until 1979, and also served as Chairman of the Nuclear Physics Board. He had a particular knack of explaining the complexities of particle physics and quantum theory to the layman as much as the specialist and published several books on the subject, most notably The Particle Play (1979), Models of High Energy Processes (1980) and The Quantum World (1984).

Meanwhile John and Ruth were raising their three children: Peter, Isobel and Michael. John travelled a great deal and the children always looked forward to presents from all over the world. The house was full of books. John would cycle off to DAMTP to work six days a week. Often he would return with a large bunch of flowers for Ruth. According to his children, however, he had an ulterior motive. He was a keen gardener and proud of his display of blooms and he wished to discourage Ruth from cutting flowers from the garden to use in the house. There were regular trips to concerts and to the theatre (the annual Arts Theatre pantomime was a family favourite which spanned the generations). Everyone looked forward to the family holiday in the Scilly Isles, of which the children and John and Ruth’s nine grandchildren (one of whom, Will Morland, came to Queens’ as an undergraduate in 2009) have very happy memories. His grandchildren remember him as a great story teller and one has commented that whatever he talked about he made interesting.

In 1979 John astonished his colleagues by announcing that he was resigning his chair in order to train for ordination in the Church of England. He often quoted the old adage that mathematicians do all their best work before the age of 40, when explaining his motives for the change in career. However, Christianity had always been central to his life, from childhood, and he was chiefly motivated by a strong vocation to the priesthood coupled with the perception that he could better serve the Christian faith from within its professional ranks. He spent two years at Westcott House, the Anglican Theological College in Jesus Lane, and was ordained deacon in Trinity Chapel by the then Dean, Bishop John Robinson, in 1981. He served briefly as a curate at St Andrew’s, Chesterton, before moving to St Michael and All Angels, Windmill Hill, Bristol. From 1984 to 1986 he was Vicar of St Cosmas and St Damian, Blean, near Canterbury. He greatly valued parish life, but his true vocation was in academe and in 1986 he accepted an invitation to return to Cambridge as Dean of Trinity Hall. He also served as Director of Studies in Theological and Religious Studies and supervised the Science and Religion paper. Several Trinity Hall students have written of their fond memories of his teaching. Then in 1989 came the invitation to move to Queens’ as Head of House.

His churchmanship was middle of the road though he tended perhaps to the theologically conservative. He and Ruth shared a deep, lifelong faith, which sustained them through all the ups and downs of life. He loved the cadences of the 1662 liturgy but was also forward-looking, whole-heartedly supporting the introduction of modern services at Queens’. His family recall that he always gave up alcohol for Lent. He saw science and religion as equally rooted in the graciousness of God and was convinced that the physical realities of the world could be explained in terms of God’s purposes. He saw no fundamental incompatibility at all between science and belief. He began to apply his knowledge of quantum theory and chaos theory in particular to produce new insights into the Christian faith. He is credited, with two or three colleagues, with virtually creating a new discipline within theology: that of the interaction between science and faith, and saw the expansion of courses in this subject at Cambridge and other departments of divinity. He was one of the founders of the Society of Ordained Scientists and also the International Society for Science and Religion.

John Polkinghorne will be chiefly remembered for his many books and his writings on the interface between science and religion. It goes without saying that he was one of the most influential figures in science and religion of his time. According to the Church Times, the key themes of his writings were set out in three books published after his return to Cambridge in the mid 1980s. They were The Interaction of Science and Theology (1986), Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding (1988), and Science and Providence: God’s Interactions with the World (1989). He published many more books (some 26 in all) relating science to topics as diverse as the doctrine of the Trinity and eschatology. Further books included Science and Christian Belief (1984), The Faith of a Physicist (1994), Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (2005), Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (2007) and Questions of Truth (2009).

He served on a number of important national committees on ethics, including the Medical Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission. From 1988-1989, just before he came to Queens’, he chaired the Committee on the Use of Foetal Material. The Committee recommended that it was acceptable for human embryos to be used in research up to the point when the primitive streak was beginning to develop. This is the first indication in an early embryo of orientation and the specialisation of cells and happens to correspond with the time when a viable embryo implants in the uterine wall. The conclusions of the Committee were, and are, regarded by many as controversial but John was happy robustly to defend the recommendations. He also chaired the Taskforce to Review Services for Drug Misusers 1994-96.

On retiring from Queens’, John continued to travel the country and the world preaching in college chapels, ordinary parish churches and great cathedrals. He continued to lecture in the Divinity Faculty and at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, an interdisciplinary research institute in Cambridge which is devoted to the improvement of public understanding of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences. He accepted many invitations to speak at schools as well as at seminaries and theological colleges and universities and at church and academic conferences all over the world, from the Far East to the Americas. He featured in several TV documentaries and debated publicly on TV with Richard Dawkins. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Exeter, Leicester, Kent, Durham, from Marquette University in Milwaukee and Hong Kong Baptist University, from Wycliffe College, Toronto, and the General Theological Seminary of New York. He was an Honorary Fellow not just of Queens’ but also of Trinity College, Trinity Hall and St Edmund’s College (where the Faraday Institute is based). He was the ‘Six Preacher’ at Canterbury Cathedral 1996-2000. In 1997 he was knighted, though, as a clergyman, he was not, of course, able to use the title ‘Sir John’.

John was called upon to serve the Church of England in a variety of roles and his skills as a committee chairman in particular were much used on the national scene. For many years he was the representative of the University of Cambridge (officially called the Proctor in Convocation) on the General Synod. He was a Member of the Church of England Doctrine Commission. He chaired the Science, Medicine and Technology Committee of the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility. He was a Governor of the publishing house S.P.C.K. (the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge) and chaired its publishing committee. He was Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral 1994-2005. He was a Member of the Council (essentially the governors) of Ridley Hall, the other Anglican theological college in Cambridge. In 2002 he won the extremely prestigious Templeton Prize (which was presented to him at Buckingham Palace by the Duke of Edinburgh) for ‘Progress towards Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities’. Rather than keep the considerable sum of money, which came with the prize, for himself, he donated much of it to Queens’ initially for a research fellowship in science and religion. He was described by the Church Times as “one of the most outstanding Christian apologists of our time”. Despite all these accolades, he remained a basically humble, grounded person, anxious to be of service.

For many years he continued to attend Choral Evensong at Queens’ as well as to attend many College functions and dinners. He also served as Honorary Curate of the Parish of the Good Shepherd in Cambridge and greatly enjoyed the friendship and fellowship of the ordinary parishioners. They in their turn loved and admired him and cherished him as a scholar of international renown in their midst. Ruth’s death from leukaemia in 2006 came as a terrible blow to John and he lost some of his zest for life thereafter. His autobiography, From Physicist to Priest, was published in 2007. Sadly his health began to deteriorate and he was more-or-less confined to a wheelchair for the last few years of his life. Until quite recently he continued to come to Queens’ once a week for lunch, collected by Brian Hebblethwaite in his car, but was always keen to leave promptly so that his carer could start her statutory break exactly on time. He welcomed visitors to his home in Hurst Park Avenue but increasing deafness became a barrier to communication and the effort to converse tired him easily. Early in 2020 after his live-in carer retired, he moved into a care home in Cambridge and he died in Addenbrookes Hospital on 9 March 2021, aged 90.