Roger Thomas
Editor, Physiology News

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.103.5

This issue will be published just before the 2016 main meeting of The Society, held jointly with the American Physiological Society in Dublin. To link with this we publish descriptions of Dublin physiology departments, and I have also asked several distinguished physiologists to remember their transatlantic postgraduate or postdoctoral experiences. Only three of them have met the deadline. I have the impression that such periods abroad were once more popular than they are now, perhaps because young physiologists are concerned that it may be more difficult to find a position back in their home country once they are abroad.

The Wellcome Trust has a scheme that gets round this problem, but it only covers a few fellows. Everyone I have contacted who did spend a year or more abroad seems very happy to have done so, if reluctant to write about it. There is an article about a numerical approach to Physiological Art, and more seriously, calcium and magnesium standards. We also publish a fascinating analysis of Darth Vader’s respiratory problems arising from a near-death experience on the volcanic planet Mustafar.

Perhaps it is relevant to outline my own experience. As one of the last (in 1958) to be liable for two years military service in the UK I had chosen to defer call-up in the hope that rumours of its abolition were true. I went to the University of Southampton (I was rejected by Bristol and St Andrews) and ended up in 1964 with a BSc, a PhD and a wife. (I still have all three) Call-ups for National service did indeed end in 1960. I next spent two very valuable years working at the Rockefeller University in New York. Ironically, since I had an immigrant visa, I was liable for military service in the USA after a one year residence! Being married and also too old I luckily escaped this. My laboratory PI was Victor Wilson, who has contributed an article to this issue about his year in Cambridge. While there, he met Gerald Kerkut, who later was my PhD supervisor at Southampton. Once my PhD work was finished it was Gerald who wrote to Victor and secured my position at RU. Remarkably, a few weeks after he wrote I received a letter signed by the President of the Rockefeller offering me a job at a salary, as I recall, of $7,000. I had filled in no application form, nor been interviewed by anyone. Gerald must have written an extraordinary letter. Apparently, it arrived just as the Dean was thinking it would be good to expand the course on basic neurophysiology. While there, I worked on cat motoneurones and Renshaw cells, and taught two short courses on invertebrate neurophysiology. The students were all graduates registered for a PhD, and many were older and better-informed than I was. I returned to the UK in 1966 to a postdoc at UCL with EJ Harris. The two years in New York were the highlight of my early years, and completely spoilt me for the seedy and dilapidated environment at UCL. Three years later, I became a lecturer in Physiology at the University of Bristol.

This issue also has a note about changes to the Society’s Articles of Association, to be approved at the Dublin AGM. One of the points made is described as follows: ‘Until recently, voting members could raise motions to be discussed at the AGM. This has not occurred in recent years and it was felt important to restore it. From 2017, voting members will be invited to submit such motions.’ It is ironic that this is for the Dublin meeting, since it was in the run-up to the 2009 Dublin meeting that the Trustees decided that motions could only be on the agends if supported by 5% of the membership instead of the two members as allowed previously. One member did obtain support for a motion from the required 5%, but his proposal to lower the required support from 5% to 5 members was defeated after the Trustees argued that such a low number might allow The Society to be hijacked by hostile elements. I always found that actual votes on motions enlivened AGMs, which too often seem organised to avoid any serious discussion of the Trustees’ decisions. Before 2009, any votes with which the Trustees disagreed were usually ignored anyhow.

Readers of The Society’s emails will have noticed that annual general meetings in the British Isles will soon be biennially detached from the main meeting. 30 years ago, they were always held in March at University College London, then they were moved to the summer and a wide variety of meeting sites. Now it has been decided that the main meeting in 2020 will be held in Germany, and the 2022 somewhere in Scandinavia. This is a consequence of an agreement between The Physiological Society, the Scandinavian PS, the DPG and FEPS to co-host a series of biennial joint meetings, starting in London in 2018. Meanwhile we have the 2017 AGM to look forward to. I believe it is to be held somewhere in Great Britain, rather than in Rio de Janeiro (where the IUPS meeting will be held instead of The Society’s annual main meeting), in a country whose president is being impeached as I write.

Some readers kindly enquired after my recovery from my downfall at the end of January. It is almost complete, thank you. The photo above was taken recently, and I can report that the stairs concerned are now fully carpeted and much better lit.

Errandum: We apologise for an error in our PN102 edition. The article Eat.Poo.Sleep was written by Sai Pathmanathan, who is a Science Education Consultant and Public Engagement Grant Awardee, and not Outreach Officer at our Society, as incorrectly stated.