I was very sad when Roger Walker announced Arnold’s death to me by mail. I understood how important these news were specially for the “people of Bradford” but also for all the archaeological community. I know from Roger that “many old faces from the past” had come to pay their respect to Arnold on the 23rd of April. From the other side of the channel, Bradford and his leader Arnold are seen as the “Mecca” of archaeological geophysics.
When in 1989 I was invited to finish my PhD at Bradford, this was and still is a key time in my career. Even if I knew the publications of Arnold, the geographical position of Bradford was “somewhere” in a remote place near the North of England and I was a bit afraid with my little car. After 5 months, I have discovered what means
Yorkshire and his accent (isn’t is Chris?), the curries, but more seriously the Department of Archaeological Sciences and his boss.
My first impression was “so british” but I am french and I do not know if british understand what I mean… My second impression was: somebody able to hear, understand and help, whatever are your questions. Arnold followed our experiments with John Skinner about Time-domain magnetisation of soils, as he was doing at the same time with Susan Ovenden’s tank experiments. This was a great time and I am indebted to him for all these reasons. When I came back in 1995 for the first International Conference on Archaeological Prospection in Bradford, this was like coming back for a family party!
Additionnal note by Albert Hesse:
In addition to his considerable and recognized kindness, Arnold played an important part in the survival of our laboratory of Garchy (Centre de Recherches Géophysiques du CNRS, France). Coming from a british laboratory, the international aspect of his unfailing scientific support helped us very much, being a real guarantee in the eyes of our administration. In this respect, he welcomed us (Alain Tabbagh, Michel Dabas and me) several times in Bradford and was confident enough in our work to send at Garchy several students for a long stay during many years: all of them still are among our best colleagues and friends in the discipline.
From a scientific point of view, we must remember that we had with him very fruitfull discussions especially in the matter of resistivity prospection and his so clever idea of the twin electrodes configuration. He will remain for future times an example of human and scientific merit.