Charles Alfred Coulson, 1910-1974

Abstract

Charles Coulson used to say that he had led not one life but two or three: as a scientist he straddled physics, chemistry and mathematics, in all of which he occupied academic positions during his career—and his contributions to biology were not negligible. Also, during a good part of his life he devoted almost as much attention to religion as to science and, yet again, there was the public figure active in numerous charitable pursuits. Many-sided as Charles Coulson’s life was, no picture of the man would be true that did not convey the essential unity of everything he did—concern being perhaps the key word to describe the common strand that ran through all his works. To describe them and the man is thus not an easy task.