Philip Stewart
Philip Stewart 1939-2022
Philip John Stewart was born in London on 8th January 1939 and died on 23rd November 2022 after a long fight against cancer.
Philip Stewart was boarded at Bryanston School and decided at an early age that he did not want to choose between arts and sciences. After taking degrees at the University of Oxford in Arabic and in Forestry, he spent seven years in Algeria, 1967-1974, working in forest and soil conservation. In 1975 he returned to his old university, where for 31 years he taught Economics to Biology students and Ecology to Human Sciences students, occasionally also taking Arabic pupils. In 1981 he translated Children of Gebelawi by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Nehguib Mahfouz with input from Mahfouz himself. His special interest was in the way that people’s beliefs affect the way that they interact with natural systems. Chemistry always fascinated him as linking the vast world of stars and galaxies to the utterly minute world of the atoms and molecules of our living planet.
In 2004 he published a new representation of the periodic table of the elements “The Chemical Galaxy”.
The Periodic Table in Galaxy Format as amended by Prof. Philip Stewart and titled: The Chemical Galaxy details of which may be found on his website: http://www.chemicalgalaxy.co.uk/
Further information may be found here: https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/1373923/Rebuilding_the_Periodic_Debate__Philip_Stewart/
and here: https://en.everybodywiki.com/Philip_Stewart
Philip Stewart’s general interests included the integration of economics into ecology, Islamic culture and history, chemistry, English poetry since 1800, and bicycles. He researched and become an expert on the lives of the various poets who had made Boars Hill their home and this was the subject of his last book: “Oxford’s Parnassus” which was published in 2021.
Philip had a distinguished career at Oxford University, and such was the quality of his teaching, that he developed lifelong relationships with many of his alumni.
He was proud to have lived on Boars Hill for over 50 years with his wife Lucile. Here they raised their five children in a happy and richly fulfilling home.
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In 1978 Philip Stewart wrote a short piece for the Boars Hill Association entitled Trees on Boars Hill and we are pleased to present a scanned copy in his memory which may be read by clicking on the link. This particular copy was dedicated to Maud Rosenthal one the founders and long time Secretary of the BHA.