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Reynold Chevallier Cobbold F/Mc Married Married: 1929-Aug-31 Betty Joyce Lindner F/Mc | |||||||||||
| Richard Southwell Chevallier Cobbold [CFT #610] Born: 1931 |
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| b Worcester, Worcestershire d ? in Biographical notes 1931-1966 At the age of 7 in 1939 Richard was sent as a boarder to Gilling Castle in North East Yorkshire. It was the junior school for Ampleforth College and run by Benedictine monks. The long journey from home in Essex together with chickenpox, periods of medical isolation and frequent visits to the basement as air raid precautions made his first two years pretty unpleasant so he was glad to be transferred to a smaller boarding school, St. Richard's in Little Malvern, Worcestershire. Here he captained the school cricket team, before going on to Douai Abbey, near Woolhampton in Berkshire. Having been given a Crystal radio set aged 9 his interest in electronics was born and by the age of 14 he had built his own superheterodyne radio receiver. His first two jobs were those of Assistant Chemistry Master in a local school, and Assistant Experimental Officer at the High Explosives Research Establishment, neither of which got in the way of his construction of his own TV set enabling him to watch a 1950s Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race on a little 6? screen. Having signed up to do a degree course in Physics at Birkbeck College he heard in 1952 that he had been nominated to take part in Operation Hurricane in Australia. Following a long sea voyage and 6 weeks of preparation the test was a plutonium implosion bomb and he recalls seeing the mushroom cloud being swept away by high winds well before the sound of the explosion travelled the 15 miles required to reach him. After his return by air he decided to pursue a full-time degree course in Physics at Imperial College and during the first summer vacation he worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company on a twin rotor helicopter project. His next summer job was for the Defence Research Board in Ottawa. Fortunately, they offered Richard a grant and subsequently a position in the Defence Research Telecommunications Establishment. His work involved papers to be published in technical journals and conference presentations in both Canada and USA. It was about this time that Norman Moody, his mentor, became Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan and after 3 years at DRTE Richard resigned in order to take up a research assistant position at the University of Saskatchewan. This position allowed him time to study for a Masters degree supervised by Norman Moody who had just started work on the application of new electronic devices for the measurement of cerebral blood flow. This soon led to a desire to be able to view the coronary arteries on X-ray film over a specific period in the cardiac cycle and became the basis of his MSc thesis 'An Automatic Injector and Timing Device for Cardiac Research.' It was accepted and was probably one of the first graduate theses in Canada on Biomedical Engineering. 1961 saw Richard appointed a lecturer in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and he became much involved in work on silicon-based devices and particularly implantable pacemakers for the control of heart rate whilst continuing to work with other Masters students, resulting in the publication of a number of papers. Later that year he was appointed Assistant Professor and the following year he met Margaret St Aubyn, a Physiotherapist who he married in Redditch in 1963. Returning to Saskatoon, he was busy in the Electrical Engineering Dept. and Margaret restarted her physiotherapy work at the University Hospital. Adrian was born in 1964 about the same time as Richard was invited to lecture at the University of British Columbia where they offered him an Assistant Professorship in Electrical Engineering; this he declined as he already held such a post. By this time his former mentor, Norman Moody had formed the Institute of Bio-medical Electronics in Toronto and Richard joined him there as Associate Professor. He had already made arrangements to present two papers at the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering in Tokyo in August 1965. Back home his second son, David arrived in February 1966 soon after the founding of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society whose first conference was held in Ottawa with Jack Hopps as Chair and Richard in charge of Papers selection. The Trust holds lists of Patents & Publications issued whilst Richard was employed at DRTE Labs in Ottawa, 1956-1959 and those while at the University of Saskatchewan, 1959-1966. |
1: 1964 Adrian Chevallier Cobboldc W/C 2: 1966 David Chevallier Cobboldc W/C 3: 1968 Christopher Mark Cobboldc W/C | ||||||||||
| 3 Children | |||||||||||
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