she taught physics were the daughters of very high-powered then later, back in England, in various schools, tutoring school scientists who worked at Harwell, Rutherford or Culham refusers, and at evening institutes. Even after she retired, laboratories nearby. and she and her husband had left London for Berkshire – to Helen’s children remember a happy home: making homemade give him more freedom to paint – she continued to work with marmalade or going on the many family holidays to different children, running a much respected and popular youth club at parts of England and Wales or further abroad to Brittany, her local church. Switzerland and Greece. On car journeys, she would always have the map on her lap to follow and make sure they went the Molly Scopes (née Bryant, 1954) right way. By 1984, retirement beckoned, and a labour of love tending their garden in Chalford Hill. They attended the local Methodist Church and became very much involved in running it. Born in Bristol in 1935, the eldest After losing Edmund in 2011, and then her son, Mark, four of three, Molly was one of the many years later, Helen downsized to nearby bungalow, before who benefitted from the 1944 moving, for the final few months of her life, into a care home. Butler Education Act reforms, making She remained positive through everything, with reading and secondary education free. She won a jigsaw puzzles, completing an impressive family photograph place at Colston’s Girls’ School (now album, and receiving visits from her family. Steady and reliable, Montpelier High School) and sailed sensible and considered, Helen is missed very much. through academically, ending up as head girl. Ann Schlee (née Cumming, 1952) She came up to Somerville to read MOLLY SCOPES Chemistry, and was taught by Eva Richards (Somerville) and Muriel Tomlinson (St Hilda’s), Born in Connecticut, Ann Cumming’s with Dorothy Hodgkin as a moral tutor. She chose Organic childhood was itinerant and Chemistry for her Part 2 and went on to study for her DPhil predominantly solitary, moving in the Dysons Perrins Lab. This was then still a very male between the US and North West dominated world: the Lab ‘class’ photo of May 1958 shows her Africa. Books were a refuge from this, with only three other women in a cohort of 70. and she appreciated being able to In Oxford, she met Roger Scopes and they were married in come to Somerville to read English, 1960, with two daughters following as Molly was appointed to though she commented that it was a lectureship at Westfield College. She became more involved ‘not surprising that my chief interest in the administrative side of the academy, and in the 1980s, as in Oxford was that I would have a ANN SCHLEE Dean of Science, she was in the forefront of the negotiations room in college to myself without for Westfield when the Government decided that the ten sites having to move for three whole years’. for science in London should reduce to five. She moved with She was sad that they were the only three years in her life in the science department to Queen Mary College in 1984, and which she suddenly did not want to read books. Reminiscing in the full merger of the two was formalised. In 1990, Molly later years, she said of this time, ‘Only at the end, with the final became Senior Vice-Principal at QM, working to weld the reckoning of the exams nearly on top of me, did I settle down two institutions together. Tributes sent on her death confirm and redeem matters to the extent of obtaining a poor degree. I that she made a huge contribution to the formation of the had at least learnt how my facile cleverness could let me down. expanded college. I went back to my college last summer and looked out at the On her official retirement, Molly became a Governor at lawns and surrounding buildings I had stared out at dreamily when I should have made use of that marvellous opportunity to Heythrop College in Kensington, serving there for the read. I realised I had known scarcely anything of England beyond maximum term of ten years. Appreciation and recognition for that small rarefied precinct. I couldn’t have found my way to the her work came in the form of an OBE (in 1997) and Honorary railway station’. What Somerville brought her were friends, who Fellowships at both QM and Heythrop. were to stay with her throughout her life, and an abiding love of Family and marriage with Roger provided Molly with the John Donne’s poetry, perhaps partly a result of being taught by anchor for her life. She was hugely supportive of her two girls Helen Gardiner. and her four grandchildren, of whose interests and academic After College Ann married the artist Nick Schlee and became a achievements she was very proud. It gave her great pleasure writer, producing the five children’s novels that she published that one of the grandchildren was an Oxford chemist (they by getting up at 5am and writing before her own four children went round the DP Lab together to find her old lab seat and woke up and had to be got off to school. Her adult fiction his). Molly remained loyal to Somerville all her life, founding included Rhine Journey, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981 bursaries to support Chemistry students struggling with living (and republished in 2024 by Daunt Books Publishing (UK) and expenses while at college. McNally Editions (US)), along with The Proprietor (1983), Her interest in music – both singing and playing the piano Laing (1987) and The Time in Aderra (1998). – stayed with her throughout her life. She sang with Roger She also taught for many years. Initially, as a young Oxford in choirs into her late 70s and pursued her piano through to graduate, at Rosemary Hall (now Choate) in Connecticut, diploma level, playing nearly to the end. 54