Tribute to Jon Hodge

When I moved to the University of Leeds in 1978, Jon got in touch with me, and started an unusual tutorial relationship (resolution of doubt for anyone, it was me that was the pupil). He encouraged me to attend HPS seminars, and he and I would regularly meet for lunch at the cafe in what was then the Leeds Playhouse. He educated me in broad fields: non-Whiggish analysis, what Darwin was really doing, etc.. Wonderfully, when he was attending international seminars, in the USA and Germany chiefly, he arranged for me to be invited as a participant. Our friendship also embraced my being invited round to his and Anne's house in Harrogate when an international worker or two was visiting. Summing up: this biologist by training got enough experience to be contributing to the published proceedings of international hist. & phil. symposia. This continued right up to his last illness, when we corresponded about Alfred Noyes' The Torch Bearers, a theistic account of the history of science: our brief debate was long in its own way. A true and wonderful friend.