Temple took his first degree as an evening student at Birkbeck College, London, between 1918 and 1922, and also worked there as a research assistant. In 1924 he moved to Imperial College as a demonstrator, where he worked under the direction of Sydney Chapman. After a period spent with Eddington at Cambridge, he returned to Imperial as reader in mathematics. He was appointed professor of mathematics at King's College London in 1932, where he returned after war service with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. In 1953 he was appointed Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford, a chair which he held until 1968, and in which he succeeded Chapman. He was also an honorary Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. During his time at Oxford he stated that he was 'a member of the most exclusive club in Oxford - which had no name or organisation but which met every Monday in the Eagle and Child to discourse with C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other great writers.' The group was The Inklings, but by the 1950s it was well past its literary peak, perhaps indicated by the fact that Temple was unaware that the group had a name. [4]
Mark McCartney, George Temple and Albert Green in Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy ed. C.D. Hollings and M. McCartney, Oxford University Press 2023
