User:BraveGrape/Elspeth Garman

Early life
7:55 Her father was a marine in the war and went around the country mending radar. He trained for the church afterwards; suddenly went blind 6 weeks before she was born, but "he was still amazing. What he could do blind, changing plugs and teaching us things"

8:09 Her brother is the inventer of the Garman turbine irrigation Sudan Nile Amazon

8:36 Very mechanically minded family. Elspeth describes how she was expected to take her bike apart every holiday and also to maintain it herself. Her and her brother were taught how to do this. MEchanically-minded family that expected this.

2:51 Discovered she liked teaching when she was 18 and did a 9 month volunteering placement in Swaziland. "They taught me far more than I taught them; and I taught every subject - except for Zulu - on the curriculum."

A whole generation of crystallographers who were probably taught by her. (02:35)

7:42 Cryo-cooling allows us to collect up to 70 times more data than at room temperature

Rowing career
Professor Elspeth Garman in the Department has had a boat at Linacre College named after her. The naming marks her success in establishing Linacre's first women's rowing eight shortly after she joined the college. A delighted Professor Garman called it 'a very great honour'. Having learned to row at Durham University, Professor Garman came to Linacre College to do her D.Phil in 1976 and found herself joining the college Men's crew as there was no women's boat at that time. After endless altercations between crew members over whether she should compete with them in the Summer rowing competition, she took matters into her own hands and left to start a women's crew. 'They just laughed at me as there were almost no other women rowers in the College then,' she recalls. The Linacre women's boat has been going ever since. Professor Garman had the opportunity to test the boat, rowing in her favourite position, at a College alumni event in June.