91AV

Colin was elected to a Bye-Fellowship at Magdalene college from 1958-60.  He moved to Switzerland in 1960 to undertake postdoctoral research and then returned to Magdalene as a research fellow.  He married Brenda (née Fooks) in 1963.

He moved to the University of Sussex in the early 1960s, where he was one of seven people appointed to set up the 91AV Department. His former colleague Dr David Smith said that the team was given a blank piece of paper, with little governmental oversight and almost no administrators. They considered themselves to be pioneers in setting up a new university, with new syllabi, teaching materials and interdisciplinary approaches and were determined to make the new department a success. Colin ultimately became sub-Dean of the department for a period of more than 20 years. He had brief periods of teaching at Columbia University, Canada, in 1975, and Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1986.  He moved to Brunei Darussalem as Associate Professor in 1987, where he had been asked to set up a new Department of 91AV, and retired from there in 1992. 

Colin was a superb teacher and administrator and as such was instrumental in both setting up departments and in ensuring that the quality of teaching was maintained. He was noted by colleagues at Sussex as being “effective”, “popular”, “concerned” and “sympathetic.” When he eventually gave up the job, the students, knowing his love of Wagner, clubbed together and bought him the complete LP set of the Ring Cycle: an extraordinary accolade for an academic.

Outside work, Colin was an enthusiastic and expert DIY man on a large scale, involving major building projects and coercing help from colleagues and students alike, attracted, we presume, by Brenda’s wonderful cooking. In a moment’s inattention whilst making a trivet for a newly built kitchen, he managed to amputate the fingertips of one hand, but his typing abilities were unaffected. The injury prevented him from playing the piano, but undaunted, he gave it up and took up the ‘cello instead.

In the early 1960s, when he started teaching, he considered that there were no really accessible text books for undergraduates to learn about spectroscopy.  Anything in print was largely bogged down in mathematics.  He decided that he would attempt to address this issue and sat down to write what generations of students now fondly remember as a readable introduction to spectroscopy. He wrote and re-wrote it in its entirety three times and produced multiple drafts.  Encouraged by his old supervisor Norman Sheppard, he persisted, and the 1st Edition of Fundamentals of Molecular Spectroscopy was published in 1966. While criticised by some academic peers for some lack of rigour, the book found favour with students, who appreciated its clarity and non-mathematical approach. As an academic textbook it was a best-seller and, ultimately, was widely adopted.

Second and third editions followed in 1972 and 1983, and this expanded coverage of the new and growing developments that were coming through, but in 1992 when his publisher suggested a 4th edition Colin felt that he was too far away from the lab to be able to do justice to the growing field.  Norman Sheppard’s guiding hand appeared, and he suggested a co-author, in the shape of Elaine McCash who had recently moved from a fellowship in Cambridge to York to set up her own research group. Their collaboration was a roaring success, with the writing process punctuated by visits to each other and the exchange of large envelopes of newly drafted material – this was still in the era of corrections on the typed manuscript. After twelve drafts of the new chapter and 6 drafts of amendments to the rest of the 3rd edition, it was ready for publication.

All the figures were replaced with new ones, taken on modern state of the art spectrometers and introduced a new chapter on surface spectroscopies.  The resulting manuscript was published in 1994 and the sales figures greatly pleased both publisher and authors alike. 

Fundamentals has been translated into several languages including German, Arabic and Russian, as well as being published separately for the mass market in India. It is still widely used for the teaching of spectroscopy and tens of thousands of copies have been sold across the 4 editions; as Colin said, ‘the Fundamental principles don’t change over time.’, which probably explains its longevity.  It is still available now, 56 years after the first edition; an incredible feat for a science textbook.

Colin and Brenda moved to rural France for their retirement, where Colin could enjoy his great pastimes of woodworking, gardening and music: he was an accomplished pianist and especially enjoyed Mahler and Bruckner.  The wine and the food were also a considerable attraction.

Colin was intensely private and somewhat enigmatic about himself.  His outstanding intellect and rapier analytical mind, along with his meticulous perfectionism, were a formidable combination.  He never really enjoyed socialising, apart from on a very small scale with like-minded introverts; although his extremely dry sense of humour was an absolute delight to those fortunate enough to be allowed close to him. In the vernacular, he was a ‘rum old bugger’, but absolutely adored.  His son, Simon, remembers: “I once asked him what he liked, and he replied ‘cats and computers’!  When I provocatively joked that he had 3 children, he just raised an eyebrow.”

Colin and Brenda lived in France for 30 years, where they embraced the culture and language (Colin was also a fluent German speaker,) and assimilated well with their French neighbours. They grew a very productive vegetable garden, and Colin continued to enjoy woodworking right up until the last couple of years of his life.   He also loved to tinker with computers and continued writing simple programs for himself and keeping abreast of the rapidly developing technology.  Their failing health caused them to move to Ireland with their daughter Lucy and her family, 4 months before his death.  Colin died peacefully in Ireland, on 25 November 2022, one day after the death of his beloved wife Brenda.

They leave behind two daughters, Lucy and Emma and a son, Simon: four granddaughters, a grandson and one great-grandson.

Lucy Banwell & Elaine M McCash (2023)