Amazing Man

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 571, 25 January 1929, Page 13

Amazing Man

‘Professor Bicherton, the Walking Encyclopaedia ’ BUILT BROWN PAPER HOUSES Great orator, builder of brownpaper houses, philosopher and ; follower of Prince Peter Kropotkin, “walking encyclopaedia,” scientist, astronomer, botanist, proprietor of an amusement park, free-thinker. This was the late Professor Alexander Bickerton, and there is small wonder that he offended against narrow thought. “He tvas one of the most remarkable men I liave ever met,” was the tribute paid to him to-day by Mr. Henry Hayward, of this city, who knew him for 20 years. Mr. Hayward spoke reminiscently of some of_ the outstanding features of the life of the man who was neglected and opposed for years, and honoured in his death. EXTREME IDEAS “He also came nearer to being a walking encyclopaedia titan any other mortal,” continued Mr. Hayward, “for he had an extraordinary knowledge of any subject you could mention. A man of extreme ideas, in politics he was a philosophic anarchist and follower of the Russian revolutionary, 'Prince Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin, and in religion he was a free-thinker.” It was these extremist views that brought him into conflict with the authorities of Canterbury University College, where he was Professor of Chemistry. Although he was a most successful professor, and his passes were better than any other lecturer and he brought out eminent pupils J like Sir Ernest Rutherford, his freelyI expressed opinions hurt people with more conventional views. “As a lecturer he was extremely unorthodox,” said Mr. Hayward. “His lectures were never of the dry-as-dust kind, looked for in academic halls, but they contained diversions into all kinds of subjects. In my opinion he was one of. the greatest orators I have heard, and I can compare him with Gladstone, Lord Rosebery and Charles Bradclaugh. He had a tremendous flow of language, and he spoke as though he was inspired and the words were welling out of him in a great stream.” BUILT PAPER HOUSES A believer in the open-air life, the professor had erected a small house in acres of pine trees .between Christchurch and New Brighton. He had an idea that the modern house was not good for people to live in, and he used to make collapsible dwellings of brown paper, treated to make it waterproof. A coterie of disciples looked up to him as a kind of super-man, and they followed his example and lived in these quaint shelters. “He was a man without dignity,” continued Mr. Hayward. “When he was dismissed from the college he thought out extraordinary ways of getting a living. One of them was the making of an amusement park on a small scale on the road to the New Brighton Beach in Christchurch. He had a lake, on which he staged mode sea battles between fleets of toy Ships and set off fireworks. Many people went to see the displays and to listen to his lectures on scientific subjects, which were interspersed with the pyrotechnics.” Mr. Hayward is confident that the fame of “the old prof.” will endure and that he will be regarded as one of the greatest of New Zealanders for, although he was not born here, his writings were published here. He was a master-mind in physics, but his fame rests on his discovery of the theory of cosmic construction by Partial Impact. He axiplied the principles of evolution to the cosmos and suggested in his book, which is now a standard work, that new worlds were born, had their lives, died, and that their being was renewed, by a partial impact between spheres. The tremendous force of the collision regenerated a new world, formed from portions of the two parent ones. WORK RECOGNISED I Prom being regarded "as fantastic the theory was now recognised, and the professor had been granted a pension by the new Astronomical Society of Britain for his work. The late Mr. Clement Wragge, said Mr. Hayward, was a follower of the professor, and he was confident that the time would come when statues would be erected to Bickerton’s memory, and he would stand with the giants of science. For the last 12 years, Professor Bickerton had lived in a little house close to Hyde Park, and much of his secretarial work had been done voluntarily for him by a distinguished New Zealander, Miss Ettie Rout, who had recognised his genius. “Full of kindness and generous to a fault, he never was in danger of accumulating money.” said Mr. Hayward. “In fact, he gave his money away, and was always poor. This world’s goods had no attraction for him. In his presence one always felt at ease; there was nothing 'high-brow’ or professorial about him.”