Cymrodyr 2007

Dydd Iau 26 Gorffennaf 2007
Cymrodyr 2007
Yr Arglwydd Livsey o Dalgarth

Cafodd Yr Arglwydd Livsey o Dalgarth MSc,cyn-aelod Seneddol dros Sir Frycheiniog a Maesyfed a chyn arweinydd y Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol yng Nghymru, ei gyflwyno gan yr Arglwydd Elystan Morgan, ddydd Gwener 13 Gorffennaf.

"Vice-Chancellor and friends,

Y mae'r Arglwydd Livsey o Dalgarth yn ŵr bonheddig o amrywiol ddoniau a gyfunodd wasanaeth clodwiw i'w fro a’i sir gyda chyfraniad sylweddol ac anrhydeddus i fywyd cyhoeddus Cymru a Phrydain. a

Lord Livsey of Talgarth is a person who has faced many daunting challenges in life but has triumphed over them all.  His quiet, determined, dogged perseverance has overcome all the odds ranged against him.

The first challenge came cruelly in his early life.  At the age of 3, he lost his Father who was a sea captain.  His Mother returned to her former profession as a teacher but on a peripatetic basis.  The young boy was blessed with a  primary education at an age younger than his peers but divided between Talgarth, Tal-y-bont and Hay-on-Wye.  Soon he came under the wing of a close friend of the family, a semi-retired farmer by the name of Jenkin Evans, whose land bordered the boy’s home.  Jenkin Evans took a deep interest in the boy and at the age of 4 the young Richard was inducted into the skills of lambing, calving and milking.  By the age of 10, he was droving cattle to market and to the railway cattle pens. Jenkin Evans was also Welsh-speaking and introduced the boy to the Welsh language.

Yn ei wyleidddra naturiol honna Richard Livsey nad yw ei Gymraeg yn hollol gryf, ond yn sicr yr oedd yn ddigon grymus iddo ganfasio yn yr iaith honno yn ardaloedd Cymraeg Brycheiniog a Maesyfed flynyddoedd yn ddiweddarach. 

After his secondary education he served his National Service in the army, attaining a commission in the Royal Army Service Corps.  Thereafter, he became a student at Seal Hayne Agricultural College, gaining diplomas in agriculture and in agricultural management. 

From there he took up his first appointment .as a Development Officer with ICI in Northumberland.  His work took him to Scotland where he encountered ‘the greatest blessing of his life’.  It was there that he met his wife Rene, who was a graduate of Glasgow University, and who has provided him with invaluable inspiration and support in every aspect of his life. 

In 1971 he took up a fresh challenge becoming a Senior Lecturer in the newly established Welsh Agricultural College.  In addition he served also for some years as Farm Manager to that institution.  At the same time he was allowed time off to study at Reading University and attained an MSc in Agricultural Management. 

But the challenges had not ceased.  A Liberal since his youth, he contested Brecon & Radnor in the general election of 1983 and was defeated by some 8,000 votes.  In 1985 in the ensuing by-election he won the seat by 559 votes.   In the next general election he held the seat with a majority of 56 votes.  From 1988 to 1992 he was the Leader of the Welsh Liberals but in 1992 he was defeated at the general election by a mere 130 votes.  Many a man would have retreated from the fray at that stage, but not Richard Livsey.  He stood again in 1997 and swept to victory with a majority in excess of 5,000.  In 2001 he retired as a Member of Parliament and was elevated to the peerage as Lord Livsey of Talgarth. 

In both Houses of Parliament he has been a front-bench spokesman on agriculture, rural matters and Welsh affairs for his party.  In each of these roles, he has earned enormous respect and affection which transcend every party boundary.

Yn fuan iawn yn ei yrfa yn nau dŷ y Senedd fe swynodd y mannau hynny gyda’i bersonoliaeth gynnes a didwyll a bu’n lladmerydd hynod effeithiol i’r materion hyn. 

Farmers are sometimes suspected of overstating their case and of complaining constantly about the vagaries of weather, and the vicissitudes of nature.  The poet Crabbe at the beginning of the nineteenth century put it this way

“and England’s farmers round with constant gain
like farmers elsewhere, prosper and complain”.

Richard Livsey was a very different advocate putting the agricultural case with balance and objectivity – a challenging task in a community where four-fifths of our people are urban dwellers who have little understanding of agriculture not only as a way of life in the countryside but as a repository of values, standards and attitudes that are of eternal and priceless value.  There is one other considerable contribution that he has made in the political arena and that was in the context of Welsh devolution.
 
Chwaraeodd ran flaenllaw yn ymgyrch refferendwm 1997. Yr oedd yn ddatganolwr ymhell cyn hynny ac wedi ymgyrchu yn galed i geisio sefydlu Confensiwn Cenedlaethol i Gymru ar yr un llinellau â’r Alban ond, yn anffodus, nid oedd hyn i fod.

His services to Welsh constitutional development have been well exhibited in the context of the Government of Wales Bill 2006.  He has led courageously from the Liberal Democrat front bench and has been steadfast in his support for a Welsh Parliament, the blueprint of which is now on the Statute Book.  Wales owes him a heavy debt of gratitude in this regard.

His contribution to the life of Wales and to his native county is borne out by the host of bodies in which he plays a leading part.  He is a keen fly-fisherman, cyclist and cricketer. 

In 1994 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Deputy Lieutenant of his county in 2004. 

He lives at Llanfihangel Tal-y-Llyn, Brecon with his Wife, Rene, and their lives are closely bound with those of their Daughter, Jennie, and his Sons, David and Douglas, their Daughter-in-Law Vee, and their grandchildren Luc and Leah, upon whom they lavish their affection.

Barchus Is-Ganghellor, cyflwynaf i ti yr Arglwydd Livsey o Dalgarth  i‘w urddo fel Cymrawd Er Anrhydedd."

Yr Athro Keith Mason
Cafodd yr Athro Keith Mason, Prif Weithredwr a Dirprwy Gadeirydd Cyngor Ymchwil Ffiseg Gronynnau a Seryddiaeth Prydain, a Prif Weithredwr y Cyngor Cyfleusterau Mawr, ei gyflwyno gan yr Athro Noel Lloyd, Is-Ganghellor Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth, dydd Gwener 13 Gorffennaf.


"Braint a phleser yw cyflwyno’r Athro Keith Mason yn Gymrawd.  It is a great pleasure to present Professor Keith Mason as a Fellow of the university.

Professor Mason is one of the country’s leading Space Scientists and is currently the Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.  Having been appointed Chief Executive of PPARC (the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council) in 2005, he transferred to his present role when PPARC was merged with CCLRC (the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils) in April of this year.  He is now engaged in establishing the new arrangements.  The STFC is responsible for ‘big science’ in the United Kingdom and has a budget of over £300m per year - making it one of Europe’s largest multidisciplinary research organisations.   It operates large scale research facilities and provides advice to the UK Government on their development.  Its facilities include the Central Laser Facility, for example, the synchrotron radiation source which uses high-speed X-rays to study materials, ranging from protein structures to engineering components, the Isaac Newton group of telescopes in La Palma and the joint astronomy centre in Hawaii.  All these - and others - are concerned with scientific questions at the cutting edge of scientific endeavour and instrumentation.
 
Cafodd yr Athro Mason ei fagu yn Llandudno yng Ngogledd Cymru, ac mae ganddo gysylltiadau â Phenllyn.  Rydym yn falch iawn i groesawu nifer o’i deulu yma heddi.

Professor Mason was brought up in Llandudno in North Wales and has close connections with Llŷn Peninsula.  He says that he was drawn to space science by following every step of the Apollo 11 mission on short wave radio and by learning his way around the stars on clear summer nights from his home (presumably free of light pollution!).

 He took his first degree in University College London and continued there with his doctoral studies.  He then worked at the University of California at Berkeley, researching high energy sources such as quasars using x-ray astronomy.  At that time optical astronomy meant sitting in the cold at night looking through telescopes, tracking stars.  He relates interesting experiences of those long vigils in Australia and in Chile: one certainly needed patience and good powers of concentration.

Professor Mason returned to the UK to the Mullard Research Laboratory at UCL.  He held a Royal Society Fellowship for 10 years and became Assistant Director, and then in 2003 Director, of the Mullard Laboratory.  He led the United Kingdom team which developed the Optical Monitor for the European Space Agency X-ray Observatory.  He was later the UK’s lead investigator for the ultraviolet/optical telescope on the NASA orbiting space mission Swift which studied explosive gamma-ray bursts.

The Swift Spacecraft enabled scientists to detect explosions in the distant universe, with the aim of gradually creating a map of the universe to understand where, when and how these brilliant bursts of energy are created.  Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known and it is thought that they may signal the birth of a black hole, either by the explosion of a massive star or possibly through stellar collisions.  They occur randomly at any point of the sky and often last for no more than a minute. The technological challenge for the Swift Satellite was to detect these bursts and then very rapidly train the X-ray and optical/ultraviolet telescopes on the detected source.  It is a salutary thought that these observed events occurred well before the sun and earth were formed and are at distances of 10/12 billion light years.  It was Professor Mason’s task to coordinate and lead the work of various groups involved.  Modern science is very much a collaborative venture, bringing together expertise of different kinds to bear on a problem.

PPARC, and now STFC, provides researchers with access to world class facilities, funds UK membership of international bodies such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN in Geneva, the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory, and contributes to UK telescopes overseas in exotic locations such as  La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and Chile. 

The Science and Technology Facilities Council have developed a road map of the major issues facing astronomy.  Research Councils must engage in strategic planning in order to ensure the availability of state-of-the-art facilities and these require several years forward planning.  Consequently, in association with the scientific communities concerned, these major issues are assessed and updated, so that the Councils can approach their investment decisions in a transparent and structured way.  Gone are the times when individual scientists decide what they want to do and hope that somebody will fund them.  It is essential now to identify the major problems and identify the capacity required to attack them.  At the same time funders have to be responsive to new ideas – one cannot predict when startling new ideas arise and indeed from where.  Nevertheless, a high degree of planning is essential, certainly in Particle Physics and Astronomy.  The road map to which I referred include questions such as ‘What is the universe made of?  What is the origin of mass?  Why is there more matter than anti-matter?   Is there a unified theory of all particle interactions?’  I will not get drawn in to discuss the possibility of a unified theory of everything but the theorising of mathematicians and cosmologists must be based on evidence gathered and the conclusions tested by experiment.  That is the importance of the work which is handled and managed by the Research Council of which Professor Keith Mason is Chief Executive.

Rydym yn gwerthfawrogi cyfraniad yr Athro Mason fel gwyddonydd ac fel rhywun sydd â chyfrifoldebau pwysig i arwain buddsoddiad mewn meysydd gwyddonol sylfaenol.

We acknowledge Professor Mason’s accomplishments, both as a research scientist and for his leadership in science policy.

Pleser o’r mwyaf yw cyflwyno’r Athro Keith Mason yn Gymrawd o Brifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth."

Rhannu