Reginald Ruggles Gates, 1882-1962

Abstract

Reginald Ruggles Gates died in London on 12 August 1962, at the age of eighty. He was a remarkable figure, alike in the picturesqueness of his antecedents, in his unusual upbringing, in the variety of his scientific interests, in the vicissitudes of his life, in his contributions to science at times of vital change and in the sheer volume of his published work, the product of a long life of intense industry. It was well said of him in one obituary notice that he was a man who influenced the thinking of his time. He was born on 1 May 1882, near Middleton, Nova Scotia, he and a twin sister being the eldest children of Andreas Bohaker Gates and Charlotte Elizabeth Ruggles. On his father’s side he was a great-great-grandson of Captain Oldham Gates, who was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1716 and migrated to Nova Scotia about 1760. Captain Gates was a half-brother of General Horatio Gates, the well-known leader during the American Revolution, who received the surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga. The Gates family in America was descended from Stephen Gates, who was born at Hingham in Essex and settled in Massachusetts in 1638. Earlier ancestors included Sir John Gates, who was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Henry VIII and a member of the Privy Council of Edward VI. The earliest Gates forbear known is Thomas Gates, circa 1327, though through the marriage of a Gates to Alary Joscelyn, the ancestry in that female line can be traced still further back.