Awards

The Gold Medal is awarded by Trinity College, Dublin, to outstanding students. The front depicts Queen Elizabeth the 1st. The reverse shows the arms of Trinity College and the name & year of the winner.

Another Leiden Physics alumnus was awarded a Gold Medal – In the 1930s a Gold Medal was awarded to Willem Jacob van Stockum. Van Stockum gained a BA from Trinity College Dublin and went on to make an important contribution to the early development of General Relativity. Anxious to join the fight against Hitler, van Stockum joined the Dutch Air Force, and died in 1944 in Laval, France.

There is only one reason why a man will throw himself into mortal combat and that is because there is nothing else to do and doing nothing is more intolerable than the fear of death. I could stand idly by and see every painting by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo thrown into a bonfire and feel no more than a deep regret, but throw one small, insignificant Polish urchin on the same bonfire and, by God, I’d pull him out or else. I fight quite simply for that and I cannot see what other reasons there are. At least, I can see there are reasons, but they are not the reasons that motivate me.

A soldier’s creed by a bomber pilot, Willem Jacob van Stockum (1910-1944).