Fibrous Studies at Leeds
Astbury was introduced to fibre studies at the Royal Institution by Sir William Bragg, who, according to J. D. Bernal, had an extremely subtle technique of directing research, simply asking for assistance in preparing some photographs or material for a lecture. Thus, whilst preparing for his 1926 lecture on ‘The imperfect crystallisation of common things’, Bragg asked Astbury to obtain some photographs of fibres similar to wool. Unlike previous fibre photographs of silk and ramie (mostly obtained at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute), the wool-like substances produced blurry pictures. Fortunately, Astbury was not deterred by this departure from the clear crystal pictures he was used to, soon choosing fibres over regular crystals as his main field of research.
Shortly after his introduction to fibres, there was an opening at Leeds, Bragg’s former University, for a Lecturer in Textile Physics. Astbury was recommended and, after persuasion from Bragg, took up the post in 1928, with the understanding that he would have the entire field of fibrous X-ray studies to himself. A number of his colleagues at the Royal Institution were surprised, viewing these studies as both complex and mundane, whilst also feeling that sufficient achievements had not yet been made in the structure of regular substances to necessitate moving onto the irregular. Bernal believes that Astbury, in his departure to Leeds and fibres, ‘showed his essentially pioneering spirit, moved by an impulse to wander into the unknown and not to give a very precise account of what he does because he is in so much of a hurry to get on to the next place.’ Thus, Astbury set about building a Textile Physics Research Laboratory based on X-ray diffraction studies of wool, with the help of J. B. Speakman’s findings on physical and chemical properties. He and his assistants, in particular H. J. Woods, constructed all of their own apparatus, with little funding, although some financial help would later come from The Rockefeller Foundation.