Life Stories
David Conrad Milner
David Conrad Milner (1949 BA DPhil Chemistry) died on 8 February 2024 aged 93.
First educated at Bristol Grammar School, he came up to Keble as a Scholar in 1949 to read Chemistry, in which subject he later undertook research in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory to gain a DPhil. His principal activity outside academic work was participating in the technical side of University drama, including service on the Technical Committee of the University Dramatic Society. Among many other things, he built the set for a notable Keble production of The White Devil and designed those for an Experimental Theatre Club Review ‘Fancy That’ at the Playhouse Theatre.
At the end of 1955 he travelled to the United States of America to work for Professor Malcom Dole, at Northwestern University, on the structural effects of radiation on polymers. On returning to the United Kingdom in 1957, he completed his doctoral thesis and joined Associated Electrical Industries, first at their Aldermaston Research Laboratory and subsequently at their headquarters; developing and editing their wide-circulation technical journal AEI Engineering until, like many others, a takeover by General Electric led to redundancy.
As a result in 1968 he joined the Ministry of Technology, subsequently part of the Department of Trade and Industry; there initially representing the government interest in a number of industrial research associations for which it was providing funding. He then became Secretary and later Executive of one of the Department’s Research and Development Requirements Boards and in his final years as a civil servant organised and ran a programme designed to promote advanced materials technology in industry.
Earlier in 1961 he had married Shirley (known as Sally) Morris and while living in Reading became a regular attender with her at Friends (Quaker) Meeting. After retirement in 1989 and a move to Richards Castle on the Shropshire/Herefordshire border, they became members of Ludlow Meeting. Ecumenical in outlook, David was much involved in setting up Churches Together Around Ludlow and in its subsequent evolution. A lifelong interest in English History and the visual arts found an outlet through the Ludlow Civic Society and the Ludlow Art Society and spending time on the committee of both.
Primarily a scientist, David Milner came from a family of artists associated with the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, of which his father, Donald, was eventually President. From them he inherited a strong aesthetic sense and was a skilled maker and designer. The art historian, Mildred ‘Tim’ Archer, alumna and Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s, was a cousin and in the summer of 2003, when Keble’s Ian Archer was Oxford’s Junior Proctor, by co-incidence the same role at Cambridge was held by one of David’s sons, the two meeting in Oxford over the annual proctorial bowls match.
Kindly provided by his son, Timothy Milner