It's time to start a new portrait collection. I was feeling a bit short of…
Professor Frank Kelly CBE FRS
Last up in the Christ’s College Maths Fellows 1982-86 collection is Frank Kelly. He may have been lecturer for my course on Markov Chains: I’m struggling to remember. But what I do remember his supervisions on probability, statistics and optimisation. He explained everything well and he would drive us really hard. When we submitted answers to questions on example sheets, he expected us to answer every single question when other supervisors turned a blind (blinder anyway) eye to any laziness. Academically he’s into random processes, networks and optimisation, which I think means he’s the go to guy when road, rail or telecom networks are being developed.
Frank was born in 1950, meaning he was in his very early 30s when I came up to Christ’s for an open day. He looked and talked more like a 25-year old, though, and seemed really cool and chill. It was meeting him that confirmed to me that I’d be applying to Christ’s. And he’s always been cool and ridiculously young looking. He’s now over 70 and looks like he’s in his 40s. Not only that but he looks like a really cool guy in his 40s. He was Master of Christ’s college from 2006 to 2016. What a time that must have been, being a student at the college with the coolest master in Cambridge. I still, by the way, have a couple of handwritten notes from Frank filed away, one congratulating me on my first in my finals and the other thanking me and a friend for inviting him and his wife Jackie to our (premature) joint 21st birthday party.
Although I gave up on the probability and statistics after year 2, I did, of course, end up as an actuary, so diverting back towards Frank’s areas of expertise.
This portrait gave me real problems. I had two really unsuccessful attempts at a portrait from a different source photo before changing. Even with third third attempt, the likeness is pretty bad. At times this one looked more like Frank Lampard or Tony Curtis. In the end I finally settled for this one though. If you cover up the mouth (again!), the likeness improves. Maybe I just struggle with people smiling, which explains why I can’t draw a guy who always likes to smile for photos.
There were some small hints of blue on one side of Frank’s face in my source photo and green on the other, and I needed no encouragement to include some blue and green in his hair and skin tones.
This one’s not going up for sale as an individual work but will instead be included in the Christ’s Maths Fellows 1982-86 collection. I’m also going to put this one up on the Christ’s alumni Facebook page and am looking forward to seeing what the reaction is.
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