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Authority record

Pye, Sir David Randall (1886–1960), mechanical engineer and academic administrator

  • Person
  • 29 April 1886 – 20 February 1960

Friend and Biographer of George Mallory.

Born on 29 April 1886 in Hampstead, London, the sixth of the seven children of William Arthur Pye, wine merchant, and his wife, Margaret Thompson. Educated at Tonbridge School and Trinity College, Cambridge and was placed in the first class of the mechanical sciences tripos in 1908. In 1909 C. F. Jenkin invited Pye to join him in Oxford and he was elected a fellow of New College in 1911.

During the First World War, Pye taught at Winchester College (1915–16), then worked as an experimental officer in the Royal Flying Corps on design and testing, and learned to fly as a pilot. In 1919 he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer, and became a fellow of Trinity where he met Henry Tizard and Harry Ricardo. This association led to important pioneer work on the internal combustion engine.

In 1926 Pye married Virginia Frances, daughter of Charles Moore Kennedy, barrister. They had two sons and a daughter.

Pye's The Internal Combustion Engine (2 vols., 1931–4) was published in the Oxford Engineering Science series, of which he became an editor. In 1925 he was appointed deputy director of scientific research at the Air Ministry. He succeeded him as director in 1937 and in the same year was appointed CB and elected FRS. During the early war years he became closely associated with the development of the new jet propulsion aircraft engine which he did much to encourage.

In 1943 Pye accepted the provostship of University College, London. Serious illness forced him to resign in 1951. He was knighted in 1952 and in the same year became president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Pye was an enthusiastic climber and in 1922 was elected to the Alpine Club of which he became vice-president in 1956. He was a friend of George Mallory's and on his and Andrew Irvine's loss he wrote: Those two black specks, scarcely visible among the vast eccentricities of nature, but moving up slowly, intelligently, into regions of unknown striving, remain for us a symbol of the invincibility of the human spirit.

Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi (1873–1933), mountaineer and explorer

  • Person
  • 29 January 1873 - 18 March 1933

Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi was an Italian mountaineer and explorer known for his Arctic explorations and for his mountaineering expeditions, particularly to Mount Saint Elias (Alaska–Yukon) and K2 (Pakistan–China). In 1906 he led an expedition to the Ruwenzori Range (5,125 m), in Uganda. He scaled sixteen summits in the range, including the six principal peaks. One of them, Mount Luigi di Savoia, bears his name. The highest peak was reached on 18 June 1906.

In 1909 he aimed to climb K2 in Karakoram and he and his team reached a height of 6,250 m. The standard route up the mountain (formerly known as K2's East Ridge) climbs today on the Abruzzi Spur.

In an attempt on Chogolisa he and his companions again failed to reach the summit, but set a world altitude record, a height of approximately 7,500 m (24,600 ft) before turning around just 150 m below the summit due to bad weather.

Preston, George (1840-1913), classicist, Anglican cleric and Fellow of Magdalene College

  • Person
  • 17 March 1840 - 11 May 1913

Matriculated from Magdalene in 1860. 1st class, Classical Tripos, 1864. Made a Fellow in 1865.
Schoolmaster/headmaster at several leading schools, including headmaster of King’s School, Chester, 1875-1888.
Rector of the College living of Great Fransham, Norfolk, 1888-1913.
Classical lecturer at Magdalene, 1899-1900, between the death of W. A. Gill and the election of Vernon Jones.
Author of Greek and Latin poems and translations. His chief recreation was trout-fishing.

Pradier, James (1790–1852), sculptor

  • Person
  • 23 May 1790 – 4 June 1852

A Genevan-born French sculptor best known for his work in the neoclassical style. He studied under Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in Paris. In 1827 he became a member of the Académie des beaux-arts and a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.The cool neoclassical surface finish of Pradier's sculptures is charged with an eroticism that their mythological themes can barely disguise. James Pradier is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Poyser, A.V.

  • Person

Undergraduate at Magdalene College, 1902-1905.

Power, Eugene Barnum (1905-1993), entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of the microfilm industry

  • Person
  • 4 June 1905 - 6 December 1993

Eugene Power was born in Traverse City, Michigan and received his BA degree (1927) and his MBA (1930) from the University of Michigan.

During World War II, Power directed the microfilming of thousands of rare books and other printed materials in British libraries. He paid the library a minimal fee per exposure and then took the film to the United States where he sold copies to US libraries. The idea was both a clever business arrangement and a benefit to American scholars, who lacked access to European library collections. It was also an inventive form of preservation in light of wartime threats to libraries. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Power in the 1970s for this preservation work.

In 1938 he founded University Microfilms International in Michigan. The company merged microfilming with xerography, helping to make out-of-print books available for circulation again. The company also pioneered a business model for publishing limited-interest doctoral dissertations, becoming the publisher of record for all U.S. dissertations in 1951.
University Microfilms was acquired by the Xerox Corporation in 1962 for $8 million. Power continued to work for Xerox until his mandatory retirement in 1970 at the age of 65. The company he founded is now ProQuest.

In 1967, Power created the Power Foundation for Philanthropy. He donated funds to establish the Power Center for the Performing Arts at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. He also endowed a scholarship program at the university (affiliated for many years with Magdalene College at Cambridge University) and helped to buy the site of the Battle of Hastings in England to preserve it from real estate speculation.

Power served two terms as a regent of the University of Michigan, served on the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and became president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in 1970. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1975.

In 1987, Marion Island in Lake Michigan, was renamed "Power Island". Power died of Parkinson's disease in 1993 at the age of 88.

Poole, David James (1931-present), artist

  • Person
  • 1931-present

David James Poole, was born at St Pancras, London on 5 June 1931, second son of Thomas Herbert Poole (28 December 1897-1978), and his wife Catherine née Lord (29 May 1897-1980), who married at Pontypridd, Glamorgan in 1929. His father was a miner from South Wales who migrated to London to find work during the depression of the late 1920s and in 1939 was a builder's foreman, living at 41 Sidney Road, Ilford, Essex with his wife Catherine. David was educated at Stoneleigh Secondary School and studied at Wimbledon School of Art 1945-1949 and after completing his Military Service 1949-1951, studied at the Royal College of Art 1951-1954. Lecturer at Accrington School of Art 1954-1957 followed by a position as Lecturer at Lowestoft School of Art in Suffolk 1957-1961 and was Senior Lecturer at Wimbledon School of Art until 1977 and married at Winchester in 1958 Iris Mary Toomer. In 1968 elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and elected their President 1983-1991. In 1977 commissioned by the City of London Corporation to paint the official painting of the Royal Family Group to commemorate Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Luncheon held at Guildhall and has executed several portraits of the Queen, the Queen Mother, the Duke of Kent, Lord Louis Mountbatten and Prince Philip and many civic dignitaries including Robert Runcie (1921–2000), the Archbishop of Canterbury and many others. He has had solo exhibitions of Portraits and Studies at the Mall Gallery, London in 1978 and an exhibition of Portraits, Drawings and Landscapes in Zurich in 1980. A diversion from his portraits in 2008 saw Poole exhibiting landscape paintings mainly in pastels at the Curwen & New Academy Gallery. In 2002, David Poole was living at Trinity Flint Barn, Weston Lane, Weston, Petersfield, Hampshire. He is sometimes conflated with the Norwich landscape artist David John Poole (1936-1995).

Pole, Reginald (1852-1934)

  • Person
  • 1852-1934

Nephew of actor William Poel. Created the Cambridge Marlowe Dramatic Society in 1907. Friend of George Mallory

Platnauer, Maurice (1887-1974), principal of Brasenose College, Oxford

  • Person
  • 18 June 1887 - 19 December 1974

Maurice Platnauer was Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1960. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and New College, Oxford. A classicist, he was a master at Winchester College from 1910 to 1915. During World War One he was an officer with the Royal Garrison Artillery and met up with George Mallory. In 1922 he became a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He was Vice-Principal of Brasenose from 1936 to 1956; and Editor of the Classical Quarterly from 1936 to 1947; and an Honorary Fellow of New College from 1957.

Pickersgill, Henry (1782–1875), painter

  • Person
  • 3 December 1782 – 21 April 1875

An English painter specialising in portraits. He was a Royal Academician for almost fifty years, and painted many of the most notable figures of his time.

Piccoli, Rafaello (1887-1933), Italianist and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

  • Person
  • 1887-1933

University Serena Professor of Italian (1929-1933), and formerly Professor of English at Naples. A stylish scholar, translator and poet, who died aged 46 from tuberculosis.
Made a Fellow in 1929.

‘Piccoli had it in him to be one of the dominant men of intellectual Europe – perhaps to bring English thought and feeling into that living touch with Europe (not Paris) we have so long needed’ (College Magazine vol. 70 (1933) pp.65-67).

‘By temperament he was a Neapolitan and he liked to explain his bold almost mask-like features – out of which the prominent mobile eyes piercingly, kindly, ironically, pensively, but always livingly, glanced – as proof of the survival of the ancient Numidian Mediterranean race, the race of Hannibal and Augustine’(College Magazine vol. 70 (1933) pp.65-67).

Peynot, Émile (1850–1932), sculptor

  • Person
  • 22 November 1850 – 12 December 1932

Peynot was born in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Burgundy. He became well known following his Grand Prize at the Prix de Rome sculpture competition in 1880 and a left a legacy of numerous monuments and reliefs in France as well as Argentina and Ecuador. He died in Paris in 1932.Emilé Edmond Peynot studied under Joffrey and Robinet, first exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Fraçais 1873, later achieving the Grand Prix de Rome in 1880 and gold medals at the Paris Expositions Universelles in 1889 and 1900. His work is held by museums in Paris and his public commissions for public squares and monuments in Paris at the Petit Palais, the Opera-Comique, and the Lyon train station are lasting preservations of his achievements.

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