In Competition No. 3219, you were invited to supply clerihews on well-known scientists, past and present.
The subject of the first ever clerihew — a pseudo-biographical quatrain, AABB, playful in tone, metrically clunky — which was written, for fun, in about 1890 by schoolboy E.C. Bentley (and illustrated by his chum G.K. Chesterton) was a scientist:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
But it was all downhill from there, it seems. In his introduction to The Complete Clerihews of E.Clerihew Bentley, the poet Gavin Ewart contends that ‘nobody much except Bentley has ever written really good clerihews’. Even literary giant W.H. Auden, he says, doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
That didn’t put you off, though, and in a large and spirited entry honourable mentions go to Barbara Knight, John Maddicott, David Shields, Nicholas Stone, Philip Wilson, G.N. Crockford, P.T. Brown, Iain Morley, Max Gutmann and Rachael Churchill. The winners, printed below, pocket £9 each.
Brian Cox
Rocks.
When he talks of quark and quantum
I want ’em.
George Simmers
Erwin Schrödinger
Doesn’t mean to be a woe bringer
To the world’s feline population,
But his thought experiment occasions consternation.
Chris O’Carroll
Enrico Fermi
Does rather scare me,
For he was the Father of the Atomic Bomb.
Tiddley-POM.
Frank Upton
Alfred Nobel
Invented substances that blew people to Hell,
Then endowed six major prizes. Maybe seven
Would have got him into Heaven.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The young Marie Curie
Reacted with fury
When they said don’t worry your pretty little cranium
About uranium
David Silverman
Alan Turing
Spent years enduring
Unrelated abuse for achievements which should
Have earned him a knighthood.
Martin Parker
Archimedes of Syracuse
Ran from the bath with his news.
Eureka!
The first streaker.
Nicholas Hodgson
Alexander Bell
Could never have imagined the hell
His invention would lead to. Who could foretell
That countless millions would end up living in a cell?
Brian Allgar
Hedy Lamarr
Was a Hollywood star
Whose movies I recently rented
To watch on the wifi she sort of invented.
Robert Schechter
Einstein
Always drank beer from a fine stein;
He thought it the sign of an ass
To drink beer from a glass.
Carolyn Beckingham
Alexander Fleming
Made a great discovery, stemming
From a mouldy dish, which made the future cheerier
For all of us — except, of course, for the bacteria.
Sylvia Fairley
Tim Berners-Lee
Has a posh degree
And has connected every pleb
On the www.
Bill Greenwell
Ptolemy
Placed all o’ you and all o’ me
At the centre of all of it.
He was off by a bit.
Francis Harry
John Logie Baird
Dared,
Despite widespread derision,
To invent the television.
Hugh King
Ada Lovelace
Gave symbolic logic a poetic face
But took mathematics from her mother, rather
Than her father.
Ann Drysdale
Sir Francis Bacon
Said evidence shows if a theory’s mistaken;
Bear that in mind when somebody says
He wrote plays.
W.J. Webster
Georg Ohm
Finally left his Bavarian home
At his Mum’s insistence…
When he showed resistance.
C. Paul Evans
No. 3222: group think
You are invited to supply a dystopian short story that incorporates as many collective nouns for animals or birds as possible. Please email entries (maximum 150 words; please italicise collective nouns) to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 20 October.
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