My colleague, mentor and friend Tom Addiscott, who has died aged 79, was an agricultural research scientist who helped to determine the benefits and the environmental consequences of using fertiliser on the soil.
Born in Brocket Hall, near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, which was then being used as a maternity hospital, to Dorothy (nee May), who died when Tom was eight, and Martin Addiscott, a second lieutenant in the second world war then manager of a fur factory, Tom was educated at Berkhamsted school before studying chemistry at Hertford College, Oxford, graduating in 1963.
