Friends and colleagues remember John Meurig Thomas

John Meurig Thomas died from cancer on November 13 2020, aged 87.

At a meeting in Cambridge in 2007 to mark the 75th birthday of John Meurig Thomas (known affectionately as JMT), the Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail paid tribute to his prolific and profound contributions to the science and technology of nanoporous catalysts and to his brilliant teaching and promotion of science to the public. But there was more. A Welshman to the core, JMT’s masterful presentations were recognised for their clarity, eloquence and scholarly intellect, with close friend and eminent scientist David Buckingham noting: ‘His command of the English language sets a standard for us to aspire to, and this despite English being his second language’.

JMT was born on 15 December 1932 in Llanelli, the son of a coal miner, and brought up in the Gwendraeth Valley in Carmarthenshire, Wales. He felt fortunate that education reform meant that he did not have to follow his father and brother down the mines. That surely honed his life-long vision that higher education can indeed enable social mobility.