He was old in both the literal and figurative sense — he was almost 97 years old, and he was also a very dear friend of mine, a man I had lived with and looked after for a number of years.
Ioan Mackenzie James was an extraordinarily talented British mathematician known for his advances in the field of topology, particularly in homotopy theory. Born in 1928, in Croydon, England, to Welsh parents, Ioan was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and later, Queen’s College, Oxford. In 1953 he graduated with a DPhil from Oxford with his thesis Some problems in algebraic topology.
After finishing his studies at Oxford, Ioan travelled to the US and studied at Princeton and UC Berkeley. Upon returning to England in 1956, he became a Tapp Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before making his way back to Oxford, where he was appointed reader in pure mathematics in 1957, a position he held until 1969.
From 1959-69, Ioan served as a senior research fellow at his beloved St John’s College. He went on to hold Oxford’s Savilian Chair of Geometry from 1970 to 1995. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1968, Ioan was later honoured with the Senior Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in 1978 (an award named after his doctoral supervisor). In 1984, he was appointed president of the London Mathematical Society.
But when I met Ioan, he was well into his ninth decade and was no longer a "practising" mathematician. Instead, he spent his days reading novels, perusing The Guardian and The Economist and eating good food.
I met Ioan at a summer garden party hosted by my friend Tina. Her then-boyfriend Richard was living with an elderly gentleman on the outskirts of Oxford, in a grand but crumbling old manor.
That elderly gentleman was Ioan. His beloved wife Rosemary had died some five or six years ago and, in the absence of any children or relatives, he had a young person — a lodger — who lived in a wing of the house, keeping him company, having lunch with him each day, and generally just being a friendly face around the place.
Ioan and I got along marvellously at that garden party. I told him about the thesis I had recently finished (on Thomas Hardy) and he enthusiastically told me about all the writers he knew and loved: Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie. I loved them too.
Ritchie eventually decided to move to Dubai, and so it came to pass that I moved into Drake House and became the new lodger. My time with Ioan was an incredible experience. I learned how to cook impossibly complicated French dishes (Ioan had a refined palate), how to deal with smoky ovens and burst pipes, and how to manage an extensive art collection.
I also learned some important life lessons. Watching Ioan over the years, I was impressed by his stubborn self-reliance. I gained a renewed appreciation for independence and autonomy, of honouring a person’s dignity, abilities and autonomy, no matter the challenges that ageing may bring. I came to better understand the love that endures decades, hardships and even death.
I never met Rosemary, Ioan’s late wife, but I feel as if I almost know her through his stories. Above all, Ioan taught me how to truly embrace life: to relish new friends and interesting conversations, to suffer no fools gladly, to eat swiss rolls with plenty of jam, to explore as much of the world as possible, to read in the sunshine and admire the roses — and the deer nibbling them.
My friend Tina lived with Ioan and learned these lessons too.
"I would like to highlight Ioan’s love for the world and for travelling," she said.
"Hearing about his grand expeditions across the Andes and his mountain-climbing adventures was truly inspiring. Despite us knowing him in older age, he still had this young adventurous side to him — he was clinging on to it. I thought this was really beautiful."
In his 96 years, Ioan didn’t just witness history, he was a part of it. He lived through moments I’ve only encountered in books or documentaries, his life woven into the fabric of the 20th century in ways that still astound me.
He studied with Niels Bohr, celebrated when his friend Francis Crick and colleagues unravelled the structure of DNA and was tutored by Alan Turing. He met Leonard Woolf at an orchestral recital, dined with Evelyn Waugh and decided not to invite Dylan Thomas to speak at an Oxford Literature Society function (he later regretted this).
I’ve noticed that when someone dies the veritable cascade (or trickle) of memories, obituaries and tributes tend to be overly glowing, somewhat shallow, or concerned only with the person’s public achievements. I have read so many obituaries that reduce a person’s life to a tidy list of achievements, relationships and milestones, failing to capture the contradictions, quirks and private moments that made them truly unique.
Ioan wasn’t perfect. He could be grumpy and cantankerous, and as my friend Will found, he had remarkably selective hearing (Ioan’s hearing aids conveniently packed up whenever Will decided to regale him with his most recent hare-brained mathematical theory).
Ioan had a tendency to sulk if he did not get his way (during the pandemic, for example, he couldn’t understand why we weren’t allowed to go to the pub) and he was infuriatingly stubborn at times.
But these moods passed over him like scudding clouds across the sky, and for the most part he was funny, gentle, kind and generous.
Janet, a warm and efficient carer, was with Ioan when he died. She got to know him very well over the latter part of Ioan’s life and was his favourite carer.
"He was a lovely, intelligent and professional man," Janet said.
"He supported me when I lost my confidence to drive on the A34 [a horribly busy motorway in Oxford]. He just loved life and he was the strongest 96-year-old. He was doing what he loved to do right till the end, holiday reading and having a pint of beer. He was so special and unique."
They say that a man dies twice: first when his heart stops beating, and secondly, when he is forgotten by those who knew him. Thanks to his incredible achievements in mathematics, Ioan James’ academic legacy will live on forever. But I’d like to think that Ioan will also be remembered for the warm, brilliant, multifaceted man he was.
I will remember Ioan sitting happily in the sunshine in the garden of Drake House, watching swallows and swifts wheel and carouse among the flowers his late wife had planted. I will remember his voracious appetite for reading — I must have downloaded hundreds of books on his Kindle for him.
I will remember his appreciation for my baking, and his gentle tolerance of my poor cooking (somehow, his ever-present hunger left him when I experimented with new dishes).
I will remember our discussions about music, literature and travel over the dinner table, and the time I conjured up an entire roast meal in commemoration of the Queen’s death (we watched her funeral together in the lounge, and her death hit him hard).
I am extraordinarily grateful for the time I spent with Ioan: his warm friendship, his wisdom, his wondrous stories, his generosity. Vale Ioan.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
