Overview
The following is a potted biography of my life thus far, and originally appeared in my father's autobiography, An Impact under Pressure, which was published in December 2007. It's perhaps a little whimsical, and I'll try to write something a little less lengthy when I have the time, but it certainly tells you most of what you might ever want to know about me!
Diana Archer Galletly was born in Liverpool Maternity hospital on August 31st 1974. Due to Marjorie's [my mother – Ed.] advanced age, she was born by Caesarean section. She was mostly a reasonably placid baby, who teethed early, was talking in full sentences by the age of two, but was still almost bald at that point! Marjorie spent a lot of time playing with, and reading to, her and as soon as she showed the signs of being interested in reading herself (when she was under three years old), started to teach her to read. Indeed, she was so keen on reading that Marjorie had to ration the amount of time that they spent on this, for fear that Diana would tire of the activity. Fortunately, these fears proved completely ungrounded, and Diana is still an avid reader now, who devours several books (both fiction and non-fiction) each week.
Marjorie was very keen that she should learn to swim as soon as possible and took her swimming as often as possible, initially to mother-and-baby classes and then to swimming lessons. The first lot were not very much good, but eventually she found a strict, but excellent, teacher at the Rock Ferry Swimming Baths. Diana made rapid progress and by the age of six succeeded in swimming a mile. Bronze, silver and gold medals swiftly followed.
Between the ages of five and eleven, Diana attended the junior department of Birkenhead High School GDST. It soon became apparent that Diana was gifted at both mathematics and English, and she frequently came top of her class in the examinations that were held twice a year. At the age of six, she began to play the violin, and made good progress with that, gaining her Grade 5 certificate before leaving the Junior Department of this school. At the age of eight, she began learning French at school; Marjorie had already been teaching her a little French from the age of six, but now began a more concerted effort. Diana took to French like a duck to water, and thus began a love of French, France and all things French which continues unabated to this day.
During this time, she also went to extra-curricular ballet and speech-and-drama lessons. For many years she entered various classes in both of these at the Crosby festival, where she won many prizes for her recitation of the set poems, and in the quick-study class. She was less successful with her dancing, and at the age of thirteen decided not to continue with her classes in this!
At the age of ten, she sat the entrance examination for the senior department of Birkenhead High School GDST. This was a nerve-wracking time, but we were delighted to learn the Monday after the examination that she had been awarded a scholarship of half the fees (we later learned that she had been awarded 100% on all four of the entrance papers!) It was suggested that she might wish to go straight into the second year but, since she was already the youngest in her year, we decided that it would be better for her if she advanced with her peer-group instead.
She made the transition to secondary school relatively smoothly, and revelled in the wide range of subjects now on offer. As well as continuing with her French, she now picked up German and Russian and excelled in them as well (although they are by now very rusty compared with her French, which she maintains to this day and is now fluent in). She continued with the violin, and at the age of twelve passed an audition into the Wirral Youth Orchestra, which gave her the opportunity to develop her skills alongside other talented young musicians. She also participated in the orchestra and choirs at school.
At around this time she began tennis lessons, and played in several matches both for her school and for Birkenhead Lawn Tennis Club. She also played a couple of hockey matches for her school, but soon realised that this was not a sport that she enjoyed particularly.
At school, she continued to love mathematics but was often frustrated that she was not being sufficiently stretched, so she began to teach herself at a more advanced level. The school gave students the opportunity of entering the Liverpool Mathematical Society's "Challenge" competitions, and Diana began eagerly to await the time of year at which they would occur! Over the years she collected several second prizes, and in the sixth form she won the "Open Challenge" competition in both years – the first time that anyone had ever won it more than once.
For her GSCEs she studied Mathematics, English Language, French, German, Russian, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Music, attaining A grades in all of them. The Music GSCE required her to assemble a portfolio of compositions – one of these was judged sufficiently good that it was performed at the Spring Concert that occurred annually in March.
For her A levels, she studied Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, along with (after some considerable discussion with the school) an AS level in French. Again, she obtained A grades in all these subjects, and won a place to study Engineering at Clare College, Cambridge.
After the first two years of general engineering that Cambridge Engineering students are required to study, she decided to specialise in Structural Engineering. However, she had also re-discovered a love of computers that she had originally discovered at the age of six when I brought home a BBC B computer from the University and she taught herself to program in Basic. During her second year at Cambridge, she taught herself the C and C++ languages, and the Tcl/Tk scripting tools to produce attractive interfaces to her programs.
At the end of her third year, she was rather disappointed only to get a II.1, but was enthused by the fourth year project that she had devised for herself to do: introducing shell elements and the Riks algorithm into the finite element code ZéBuLoN produced by the École des Mines. She had worked for their Centre des Matériaux, and for its spin-off company Zétra (based in Châteaudun in the Loire Valley), the previous summer, validating this finite element code against experimental and theoretical results, and doing some programming in C and Xlib for the post-processor package. The summer before that, she had worked for my colleague Alain Combescure at the Commisariat à l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, using their finite element code CASTEM to investigate the behaviour of cracked tubes subjected to three-point bending. By now, her French was fluent; she greatly enjoyed all three of her summer placements in France during her undergraduate time. For her third year project (in French) on the use of computational analysis in the design of the Airbus, she won an Engineering Department prize.
Also during her third year, she and I collaborated on a paper on the buckling of toroidal shells which was presented at the Euromech 347 Colloquium, held at the old site of the École Polytechnique in the centre of the Left Bank in Paris. This paper was later expanded into a paper which appeared in the Journal "Thin Walled Structures".
In the fourth year she studied a variety of subjects: Geotechnical Modelling, Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Thin-Walled Structures, Structural Steel, Designing with Composites, Finite Element Analysis, Linear Algebra and Optimisation, and French. She also continued with the project working with ZéBuLoN previously mentioned, which she had worked intensively on over the previous summer. This required a fifty-page dissertation, as well as the production of a paper as would be suitable for a conference, and an associated presentation. When the results came out she was delighted (and relieved) to discovered that she had been awarded the degree of Master of Engineering with Distinction. This guaranteed her EPSRC Quota Award funding for the PhD on which she had decided during the year that she wished to embark. She also won the Pressed Steel prize from her college, Clare, for this result.
After a summer mainly spent working for the Engineering Department at Cambridge using the finite element analysis package ABAQUS to analyse the deformations of space reflectors, she began her PhD work in earnest. When she had been contemplating where to do her PhD, and on what, she had considered projects suggested by the ETHZ (in Zürich), the École des Mines, the École Normale Supérieure in Cachan, and Cambridge. A project proposed by Cambridge, working in conjunction with an inventor and his small start-up company RolaTube Technology Ltd, had captured her imagination and so she had decided to work on that.
The project involved trying to come up with models (theoretical and/or finite element analysis) to explain the behaviour of a novel cylindrical structure made from fibre-reinforced composite materials, which exhibited two stable equilibrium states. Previous experimental work had enabled the more common of these materials to be characterised; the challenge was to determine what layups of laminæ would exhibit this behaviour, and what the radii of the cylinder would be in each of the stable states. Progress was reasonably rapid, although it took her a little longer than intended to finish her PhD and write her dissertation than initially intended, as she married and had a daughter, Loïs, during this time. However, by September 2001 she had completed the work and finished writing her dissertation. She had her viva in December 2001, and was awarded her PhD at a ceremony in the Senate House of Cambridge University in March 2002.
Throughout her time as a student, both undergraduate and graduate, she spent much time on the Staff Student Joint Committee and on the Faculty Board, attempting to improve conditions for students, pointing out ways in which the system was failing, and attempting to lobby for improvements. She instituted an online scheme of "Best Lecturer Awards" (for which she and a friend wrote the computer code) and conducted a review of accommodation for fourth-year students at a time when many colleges were attempting to abdicate their responsibilities in this area.
After her PhD, she went to work for the company whose project she had been working on, RolaTube Technology Ltd, as their Research and Development Manager. The job was challenging, and she enjoyed it a lot; notable among her achievements during that time was the discovery of a way to eliminate the twisting effects that developed on cooling the composite tubes from the temperature at which they were formed to room temperature.
Unfortunately, this job came to an end in June 2003, when the company experienced a period of financial difficulty from which it is only now (in 2006) recovering. Shortly thereafter, her marriage broke down irretrievably and she moved in with friends.
She then went back to work for the Engineering Department at Cambridge University, this time working for the Cambridge-MIT Institute on teaching and learning methods in engineering and technology. This was a fascinating project, which allowed her the opportunity of visiting my alma mater, MIT, to investigate the way they did things there, and to speak with some of the more innovative and dedicated professors. She also became increasingly interested in online learning technologies.
By the time this project ended, she had secured a post as Lecturer in the Architecture department of Oxford Brookes University. This was, unfortunately, not as enjoyable or productive as she had hoped it would have been, and she left in December 2005, never once having had the opportunity to deliver a lecture! This was not, however, all bad; while in Oxford she formed many contacts, with whom she is still in touch.
Since December 2005 she has been living once again in Cambridge, where she currently works as a freelance web designer and software developer. She spends much time singing in the choir of Little St Mary's church, an Anglo-Catholic church into which she was converted in January 2004, and helping out in many other ways with that church. She is also still strongly connected with its sister church, St Mary Magdalen Oxford, which she discovered while she was working at Oxford Brookes, and has been involved in the increasing link between the two churches.
She is also becoming increasingly interested in photography, particularly the possibilities offered by the advent of digital photography; she had her first solo exhibition in Little St Mary's in June 2006. She enjoys writing: poetry, short stories, and is currently working on two novels. Other interests include politics, theology, electoral reform, logic puzzles and number theory.