Professor Peter Landshoff

It’s time to start a new portrait collection.  I was feeling a bit short of ideas and a bit out of form so thought I’d do portraits of the four maths fellows from my days at Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1982-86.  The idea is to just get a bit better at portraits without the pressure of having to come up with something that I can sell.  Because, let’s face it, nobody’s likely to want to buy this collection even if it comes out perfectly.

First up is Professor Peter Landshoff.  Doctor Landshoff (as he was, back in the day) was the only one of those four fellows to be into applied maths, let alone mathematical physics.  So he was the one whose interests most overlapped with mine.  Unfortunately, though, he was the only one of the four not to be a supervisor (that means the only one not to provide tutorials to two students at a time).  My only real contact with him was to ask whether he’d be prepared to put his student entertainment budget towards the Christ’s mathy dinner, and he was always willing to do this.  And while I never had any Landshoff supervisions, I did enjoy his lecture course on Electrodynamics in my first year.  Oh, and he co-wrote the go to book on quantum electronics.  A top guy.

I tried to continue the good work from the Bond villains collection by including some unorthodox skin tones.  Today it was pink and lime green, although the impact of them has been damped down by greys and flesh tones.  Likeness-wise, there’s definitely something if him there and I think he’ll be easily recognisable once grouped with the rest of the squad.  There’s a little bit of my Knights Templar headmaster coming through as well though.  This also happened in my Doctor No.

Anyway, Professor Landshoff’s not for sale.  The Christ’s Maths Fellows collection may go up for sale at some point but without any expectation of being sold.