Biography of Roger Tant 24.03.1946 – 31.12 2021

By Phil Chitty with contributions from Tony Stace, David Smith, Elsie Tant, and Ken Grose

Roger Tant was born in Stratford, East London. On leaving Tom Hood School, Leytonstone, he originally wanted to be an electrician but, after a recommendation by his father, trained as glassblower at Baird & Tatlock in Walthamstow. When, in 1969, he was appointed as a scientific glassblower at the rapidly expanding University of Sussex, he left home and everything he knew in London, and moved to Brighton, where he met his future wife at Calvary Church in Preston Circus.

Elsie and Roger raised their three children: Alan, Kevin, and Alison, with a strong Christian ethos at Islingword Road Mission near Queens Park and later at Peacehaven Evangelical Free Church. Roger believed that there should be no such thing as a passive Christian, so he drove a minibus to bring older members of the congregation to church, sang in various choirs, served as youth leader and church council member, and regularly helped with cleaning. He encouraged his own children to live by his Christian values.

Research on organometallic compounds in the early years of Sussex involved several active groups that required custom-built glass equipment for the manipulation of spontaneously flammable substances that had to be rigorously separated from atmospheric oxygen. Organic chemists used large quantities of solvents which had to be purified, and from which valuable substances had to be separately extracted, so distillation columns were required. Further glass equipment was used for chromatography; for the development of this process, Archer Martin shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, before he came to Sussex as a Research Professor from 1973-1978. Roger also offered advice with research projects such as the work on C₆₀ for which Professor Sir Harry Kroto shared the Chemistry Nobel prize in 1996.

To meet the needs of these and other research groups, the University set up a purpose-built glass workshop in the School of Molecular Sciences (MOLS). It was well equipped with a large annealing oven and big lathe for glass joining and flange making. There were work benches for staff (Ken Pike, Roger, and Mike Knapman) and a small office for design and discussion. Outside the workshop the large quadrangle had a garden and fishpond and some seating for School celebratory meetings, as well as morning, lunchtime and afternoon tea and coffee. Roger and Ken with other MOLS staff lovingly planted and tended the garden and pond and made one of the most delightful (though little known) places on campus for relaxation or scientific discussion.

Roger made another personal contribution to MOLS. He brought Elsie to work as a tea lady. At that time there was little provision of specialist counsellors. Those responsible for student welfare, Deans, Sub-Deans, and Personal Tutors, acknowledged the unsung work of tea ladies in providing support and encouragement to students and in helping them through some of their anxieties and crises of confidence.

The way in which technical and academic staff worked together is illustrated in this comment from Tony Stace, now emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham. “As part of our research into the properties of clusters, we were interested in investigating how they behaved following excitation at infrared wavelengths. At these low energies, weakly bound clusters display far more subtle fragmentation patterns than when excited at visible or shorter wavelengths. We already had a CO₂ laser and to extend the range of accessible wavelengths, we considered the possibility of obtaining a CO laser. At the time, commercial CO lasers were available, but they were expensive and would not necessarily give the power needed to record the events we were looking for. Therefore, we approached Roger and Ken Pike to see if it were possible to construct a laser. The basic design consisted of a long glass tube within which a discharge could be sustained in the presence of a gas mixture (CO, He and N₂), and the whole was encased in an outer cooling jacket. Cooling was achieved through a closed-circuit flow of acetone (driven by an old washing machine pump!) immersed in a bath of dry ice. This laser worked well but gave neither the wavelength nor the power range needed for our experiments.

The mark 2 version was much more ambitious. We found a design for a laser that was cooled with liquid nitrogen! This consisted of an inner glass discharge tube; a second tube carried the liquid nitrogen and the whole was encased in an outer glass insulating jacket. Roger and Ken skilfully fabricated the laser, and it was held in place with a series of adjustable plastic brackets made by the mechanical workshop. The cooling tube was carefully filled with liquid nitrogen and the laser sat on a bench in the lab for about 2 minutes when there was a loud crash and the entire glass structure disintegrated into very small pieces. A vital component had been omitted. To counteract any contraction bought about by having liquid nitrogen sitting between two glass components at room temperature, the original design incorporated a pair of glass bellows. These latter items required great skill to fabricate, and it was thought that it might be possible to bypass their inclusion – but that proved not to be the case. After a great deal of practice, Roger, and Ken perfected fabrication of the bellows and these were incorporated into a final design. The resultant laser worked perfectly for several years and led to many good publications. As far as I am aware, only two of these latter lasers were constructed in the UK, one at Oxford and ours, and our success owed a great deal to the skill of Roger and Ken Pike.” Later, Ken Grose, from Imperial College, joined the glass workshop, and worked in it until it closed.

Beside the excitement of constructing state-of-the-art research equipment, glassblowers had to make lots of routine repairs. Everyone knows that that glass is fragile and chemists, like other mortals, are sometimes clumsy. Repairs often involved work in awkward and cramped conditions to save dismantling elaborate equipment. Over time, as the use of glassware in research decreased, the MOLS workshop was combined with those in Physics and Biology and brought in income from outside contract work, e.g., for the University of Brighton, Roedean School, and even the Brighton Festival.

Roger had to celebrate his 50th Birthday in hospital for the early investigation into what he soon learned was a virus that had attacked his kidney function. Many attempts were made to bring the condition under control, but Elsie and Roger were not afraid to travel, embarking on a couple of cruises and visiting America to see their daughter Alison and, son-in law James in New York State. Colleagues and family knew that the sun only needed to peak out from behind the clouds and Roger would immediately tan. With the tanned skin and dark glasses, he could be mistaken for a mafia boss! He loved working in his garden and after his retirement, he turned his hand to woodwork. He was well known and loved by so many kids, especially at Christmas time, for the gifts he brought to several different local groups. He had to pass on the mantle (and the reindeer) a few years ago as he continued to battle his medical condition. This was stable for many years but by 2014 he needed dialysis three times a week. Roger and Elsie knew this would be challenging, but as with all challenges they faced throughout their lives, they faced it together and made the most of what opportunities they had, going out for meals, meeting friends, and finding opportunities for weekends away. On September 11th, 2021, his family organised a traditional garden party to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary in beautiful Nutley, with their church friends joining the celebrations on the Sunday.

Roger was admitted to hospital in December 2021 and had to spend Christmas Day there. He made a videocall to his family, saw their presents, and cracked a few memorable Roger jokes, a skill that he has passed on to the next two generations. He was discharged on 30th December under strict instructions to not do anything, something he said he could manage! Little did his family know that this would be Roger’s last night, but they and their friends are thankful that he could enjoy it with them. For 25 years he battled his medical condition but always remained positive and refused to let it stop him from being as active as he could.