Harold McCarter Taylor

Harold McCarter Taylor CBE TD (13 May 1907 - 23 October 1995) was a New Zealand-born British mathematician, theoretical physicist and academic administrator, but is best known ["New Zealander Harold Taylor is best known internationally as one of the authors of the monumental three volume Anglo-Saxon Architecture (volumes 1 and 2 were co-written with Joan Taylor; volume 3 is his own)." From the abstract of "Atoms and Architecture: Harold Taylor, 1907-1995", paper by Greg Waite, Otago, for the conference "Intellectual Diasporas: Australasians and the Study of the Early European Past", University of Auckland, 1 February, 2005. [http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/students/index.cfm?P=7536] ] as a historian of architecture and the author, with his first wife Joan Taylor, née Sills, of the three volumes of "Anglo-Saxon Architecture", published between 1965 and 1978.

Life and career

Taylor was born in Dunedin, son of a merchant, and graduated with an MSc from the University of Otago, whence he continued in 1928 to Cambridge and Clare College. He worked with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, received his PhD in 1933 and became a university lecturer and a Fellow of Clare College. [Waite, ODNB] Whilst still in New Zealand he had been an officer in the New Zealand Artillery, and on 3 March 1934 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the university Officer Training Corps, commanding the artillery section. []

Taylor developed an interest in Anglo-Saxon architecture early in life. With his wife Joan, née Sills (1903-1965), whom he had married in 1933, he began a survey of more than 400 churches with some remnants of Anglo-Saxon architecture, culminating in the publication in 1965 of the first two volumes of their co-authored "Anglo-Saxon Architecture". Joan died a few weeks before publication. In 1966, Taylor remarried his personal assistant Dorothy Judith Samuel (born 1931), who was also co-author of the third volume of his great work.

The archeologist Philip Rahtz, with whom Taylor collaborated in the investigation of St Mary's Priory Church, Deerhurst, describes Taylor as a "devout Christian" and as "unfailingly elegant, witty, gracious and neat. Rahtz notes in his obituary of Taylor: "Although he wore old clothes in the field, they were always pressed and clean. We could never understand how they remained so, even when he was clambering on dirty roofs or in and out of trenches." [Rahtz 1995.]

Taylor was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1981, the Society awarded him and Charles Thomas the first Frend Medal, set up by the church historian and archaeologist William Hugh Clifford Frend, "for services to early Christian archaeology". [Obit. at the website of the Society of Antiquaries of London] He was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England on 1 January 1972. [LondonGazette|issue=45551|startpage=14068|date=23 December 1971|accessdate=2008-08-04]

Notes

References

*Anon., " [http://www.sal.org.uk/obituaries/Obituary%20archive/harold-taylor Harold McCartet (sic!) Taylor, C.B.E., T.D., M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D.] ", obituary at the website of the Society of Antiquaries of London (accessed 2 August 2008)
*Rahtz, Philip, [http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba10/ba10obit.html Harold Taylor] , obituary, "British Archaeology", no 10, December 1995 (accessed 2 August 2008)
*Waite, Greg, " [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60411 Taylor, Harold McCarter (1907-1995)] ", "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 (accessed 2 August 2008)

External links

*NRA|ID=P39445|name=Taylor, Harold Mccarter (1907-1995) Mathematician Archaeologist Architectural Historian