Mike Shiels (Physics, 1983)

Mike is an IT Design Manager for British Airways.

It is no exaggeration to say that without the Hertford Scheme, I would never have considered applying for Oxford. I was the first person ever, in my extended family, to stay on at school after O-levels. Consequently, I was the first ever to consider university, and the collective familial knowledge of what this involved was zero. One of my teachers encouraged me to look at Oxford, but the choice of colleges was overwhelming, and the prospect of the entrance examination was too daunting.

The interview itself was nerve-wracking of course, and I remember a challenge about a stack of sugar of sugar cubes (if lowered into a cup of tea, how high above the surface would the tea rise up the stack – clue: it’s capillary action…). In the end, I failed to get accepted through the Scheme, but received such encouraging feedback on how close I came to being accepted, that I got up the courage to try the entrance exam and succeeded through that route.

Once at Hertford, my memories of Neil Tanner are of an enormous flamboyant presence. It was clear that he was a dedicated and talented scientist, but seemed to operate largely on the basis of an intuitive understanding of how physics worked. He taught me that the people who make change happen dive into things and let others worry about the details. It was how he did science, it was how he did admissions, and it was how he lived his life.