As the century draws to a close we examine the candidates for the greatest ever Bradfordian. There are many worthy people to choose from. T&A writer Jim Appleby weighs up the candidates and makes his choice. Will he choose an artist, an author, an inventor or a scientist?

WHO IS the greatest ever Bradfordian? It's not an easy question.

It's easier to list those who weren't - not because they weren't great, but because they weren't born here.

William Edward Forster, architect of universal education in Britain, could be said to have had more impact than any other politician of his time on our national life.

As Liberal MP for Bradford, he steered through Parliament, against religious and political opposition, his education Bill, criticised by many for being too heavily pro-Anglican - ironic, because Forster was a Quaker. This could have been a shrewd move on his part, because it was support from Anglican Tories which helped the Bill on its way.

But Forster, though involved in textiles in Yorkshire, was a Dorset man, educated in London. It is right that we should have a square named after him, but he can't be the Greatest Bradfordian.

There are a number of men who had an enormous impact on our city, but can't win the title because in some cases they never even set foot in the place.

Edmund Cartwright, a country parson from Derbyshire, built the first effective power looms for weaving. Our art gallery is named after him - but he's not a native.

Margaret McMillan, educationist and pioneer, came to Bradford in 1893. She set up nurseries and prepared to fight what she called the Battle of the Slum Child. She didn't always win,but she made a huge impact, remembered a century later by a number of educational establishments which still bear her name. But she was born in New York of Scots parentage.

So what of the native Bradfordians who made an impact on the world?

Samuel Cunliffe Lister qualifies by birth. He built the mills once described as 'a cathedral of Victorian capitalism', which bear his name, in Manningham. He gave the city its finest park (actually he sold it to Bradford, but at a knock-down price) and footed most of the bill for Cartwright Hall. But he could be a flinty-faced man when it came to business, and was far from a model employer.

That title goes to Titus Salt, philanthropic creator of Saltaire - but he was from Morley.

In the field of the arts, Bradford has produced three major names.

Frederick Delius remains a composer of world status. He left the city as a young man and professed not to like it. However, when he was given the Freedom of the City in 1932, he was pleased. It came a while after he had been created a Companion of Honour by King George V - Bradford doesn't chuck its honours around! Delius is definitely a contender.

So, too, is J B Priestley, author, essayist, critic, playwright and broadcaster. His play When We Are Married had a revival in London a few years ago and was greeted with delight. Here was a masterpiece which had lain neglected for too long, announced the West End critics. Priestley also wrote The Good Companions, a tale of wandering performers and of Jess Oakroyd, the archetypal Bradfordian - blunt, kindly and enterprising. Yes - Priestley, with his Order of Merit coming years before his Freedom of the City - is definitely a contender.

As is David Hockney, another Companion of Honour, who has added a hard-headed approach typical of his birthplace to the business of being the world's best-known living artist. He is not always appreciated here - his cover for the Bradford telephone directory caused a few grimaces, mainly from the sort of people who don't know much about art and aren't too sure they like it anyway.

Yes - a definite contender.

But the winner, in this wholly subjective contest, is not an artist but a scientist. Sir Edward Victor Appleton is our only Nobel Prize winner. He won it in the same year he became a Freeman of Bradford. For once, the civic fathers were up to speed.

He won it for physics, for his work on radio waves and the way they travel through space. He still has a region of space named after him - The Appleton-Heaviside layer is a belt of radiation which acts like an invisible mirror, reflecting radio waves back to earth.

It was this idea that radio waves would bounce off things they struck which led to the development of radar. Although Robert Watson-Watt is credited with the invention of radar, it was not a one-man operation. Watson-Watt was a born self-publicist with a primadonna-ish ego; but Vic Appleton did much of the donkey work.

The Battle of Britain was a key campaign and the winning of it was down to radar as much as raw courage. For this reason - and the fact that he played Bradford League cricket - Vic Appleton has got to rank as the Greatest Bradfordian. But for him, I wouldn't be writing these words. You probably wouldn't be reading them. And they might even have been written in German.

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