DR RICHARD DAWKINS'S SRI LANKAN CONNECTION WITH THE SRI LANKAN BORN MOTHER DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR BY HEMANTHA SITUGE

                                          Dr Richard Dawkins with his mother Jean Mary Vyvyan Ladner

The Sri Lankan born Jean Mary Vyvyan Ladner the mother of the well-known Oxford Scientist, an indefatigable champion of Darwinism, Richard Dawkins’s turned hundred years latter part of 2016. She lives the eve of her life, in Chipping Norton near Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Richard Dawkins has many salient connections with Sri Lanka. His Cornish maternal grandfather Alan Wilfred Ladner fondly known as ‘Bill’ was a wireless Engineer employed by Guglielmo Marconi , who arrived Ceylon (as it was known now Sri Lanka) in 1914 at the First World War.

As Richard Dawkins recounts in the first chapter : ‘Genes and pith helmets’ of his memoir “An Appetite For Wonder. The Making of a Scientist” that :

“Bill Ladner’s skills as a radio engineer were in demand, and he was sent to the Royal Navy as a smart young officer to the southern tip of what was then Ceylon to build a radio station at that strategically vital staging post in the empire’s shipping lines” The southern tip mentioned by Richard Dawkins is Matara where he was stationed in Ceylon for 4 years. Connie Wearne grandmother, of Richard or the fiancée of ‘Bill’ followed him out ‘where she stayed in a local vicarage, from which they were married’.

Richard Dawkins also asserts that : “My mother, Jean Mary Vyvyan Ladner, was born in Colombo in 1916” Dawkins mother was born in Cinnamon gardens, Colombo 07 and spent her first two years of her life at Matara.

Whilst their sojourn in Matara Richard’s mother was looked after by a Sinhalese nanny by the name of Hinne Hami Wickramaratne. 100 year old, Richard’s mother Jean still pines for her nanny.

Richard’s grandfather ‘Bill’ is acclaimed as one of the early photographers in Ceylon. Bill capture many photographs of the Southern Ceylon. Richard Dawkins sister Sarah Kettlewell possesses an album of about forty rare photographs of the war-torn picture prohibited Southern Ceylon of the by-gone days. Coincidentally Sarah’s husband Michael Kettlewell was a distinguished Surgeon and an Oxford academic who supervised many post graduate students from Sri Lanka. During the war his father Dick Kettlewell served in Anuradhapura.

Did Richard Dawkins’s grandfather ‘Bill’ Ladner was assigned by the British government to install the earliest known radio station in Ceylon at the southern tip of Ceylon – Matara ?

Richard Dawkins memoir publishes a rare photograph of a group of naval officers sent to Ceylon where his maternal grandfather ‘Bill’ Ladner seated third from the left, assists to build a wireless station during the First World War, together with turbaned bearded Indian Seikh gurkha regiment in the background in an identified location under an unknown banyan tree.

Richard also carries a photograph of his grandmother Connie together with the dog, who is found in the same group photograph. Richard poses the querry that : “Was the dog station mascot? It seems to be the same dog my grandmother is petting.” When the war was over in 1919 the Dawkins memoir also states that : “The family returned to England when my mother was three”, publishes a photograph when she was three years of age.

Coincidentally Sri Lankan born 100 year old mother Jean’s son legendary Richard Dawkins was honoured by well-famed Sri Lankan ichthyologist Rohan Pethiyagoda who created Dawkinsia as a new genus name, ‘in recognition of his contribution to the public understanding of evolutionary science.’