[meteorite-list] Professor Colin Pillinger lecture - Stones from the sky: A heaven-sent opportunity to talk about science

[Martin Goff]

Hi Doug,

He was certainly not all starchy white in reputation and was
definitely a bit of scoundrel at times, in a very British way of
course.

You wrote

"Anyways, he was definitely one of the most colorful characters of
early meteorite enlightenment, and as a publicist actuallydeserves in
my opinion even more credit than he gets"

You also wrote

"Wonder what Prof. Pillinger thinks of this?"

Well, i know that Professor Pillinger is currently researching a book
all about Edward Topham so we will have to wait and see what his
conclusions are! :-)


Cheers

Martin

On 10 February 2012 11:22, MexicoDoug <mexicodoug at aim.com> wrote:
> "Edward Topham was not a Sir"
>
> Hi Martin,
>
> Thanks for the kind reply; Someone else also said he was a Sir, I'm trying
> to remember.  Maybe there really is more to the story.  But, even if he were
> to have been knighted, wasn't George a bit too mad by that time, or are
> there others who have that power I wonder...
>
> Topham didn't even earn his title of "Major", he was just a captain, and
> upon retirement I think the policy was just to bump Captains up to Majors so
> they got bigger pensions.  The newspaper he founded, as far as I can tell,
> was the very first widely circulated tabloid newspaper in the world
> (coincidently named 'The Globe').  However, he got into all kinds of legal
> troubles just before the meteorite fell and had to close it down, since he
> apparently has offended a well-respected recently dead man.  If I recall, he
> pulled through the episode by the skin of his teeth and set some common law
> presicents in England saying a dead man's estate can't sue for libel.
>
> While he may have been respected in certain circles, I think he just sponged
> off Mrs. Wells during fair weather, made a business out of her with benefits
> (after this blew over she became a nun) and then as her superstar status
> began to wane, let her rot in jail and took her children away from her for
> himself.  I'm sure it was a bit more complicated than that (she had a
> brother or brother in law who was a scoundrel), but still, IMO he was just a
> fancy-pants socialite.  I really don't mean to offend since we like to give
> as much respect as we can to those great men and women in the history of
> meteorites, but the respect he got was probably more like a straight Perez
> Hilton of today (and many people live for that stuff in the USA!).  So I
> think it is worthwhile mentioning.
>
> When you think about the circumstances of the exhibition of the meteorite,
> it sort of fits together in my opinion, but I'm sure there are alternate
> interpretations out there that make him a hero instead of one of the King's
> yes-men ;-)
>
> Anyways, he was definitely one of the most colorful characters of early
> meteorite enlightenment, and as a publicist actuallydeserves in my opinion
> even more credit than he gets.  Wonder what Prof. Pillinger thinks of this?
>
> Kindest wsihes
> Doug



-- 
Martin Goff
www.msg-meteorites.co.uk
IMCA #3387