[5] During his time at Oxford, Ubbelohde spent a year (1931–32) in the laboratory of Professor Arnold Eucken at the Institut für physikalische Chemie, Göttingen.
Here he met many talented scientists, including Kathleen Lonsdale, John Monteath Robertson and Hermann Arthur Jahn.
Ubbelohde joined him in June 1940; he was Principal Experimental Officer in charge of a group working on the theory and practice of explosion and detonation.
In 1945, shortly after VE Day, Ubbohde’s war work came to an end, and he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Queen's University Belfast.
[6] In 1954 Ubbelohde moved from Belfast to take up the position of Professor of Thermodynamics at Imperial College London, accompanied by a number of junior colleagues and students from Queen’s.
[2] The Times obituary[7] noted that: Ubbelohde was a man of wide interests, gifted with the ability to absorb and retain volumes of written information.
[9] He needed “a secretary or personal assistant who firmly controls access and rations unexpected intrusions […] Miss Georgina Greene acquired world-wide renown for her effectiveness in that role during Ubbelohde’s period at Imperial College.
[2] One scientist who knew her reported that “Ubbelohde’s dazzling and formidable secretary Georgina Greene became a dominating influence in the Department.
In February 1957 Lord Worsley (John Edward Pelham, the 7th Earl of Yarborough) announced his forthcoming marriage to Georgina,“secretary to a professor in London”.
[13] On 12 December of that year Lord Worsley married Florence Ann Petronel Duffin (née Upton) at Caxton Hall.
The 17th century Platts Farm[15] nestles in the beautiful rolling Sussex countryside with Rudyard Kipling’s house just visible on the horizon.
[She] was left to bid for the farm during one of Professor Ubbelohde’s absences in South America and was so confident of his approval that she exceeded the previously agreed maximum by a generous margin”.
Miss Georgina Mary Greene died on 9 April 2015 at the White Lodge Care Home in Braydon, Wiltshire; she left an estate with a net worth of £1,480,000.