Essex Mathematics in her hour of need

Context: The University of Essex mathematics department was facing closure. It had first class staff but the department was small. If I remember the details correctly, in order to compete for funding each department had to send at least five people to an examination. The mathematics department had two mathematicians, so they borrowed staff from other numerate departments; I seem to remember that there was an economist and an engineer among the borrowed three. The team did impressively well given that only two of them were professional mathematicians but still scored only four out of five points and the accountants at the university decided to shut down the department.

This is all by memory, having visited the department for a mathematics conference in the year that this all happened (yup, it might have been small but the department was active!). That was a good long while ago. If you have better information please let me know. My address is m at this domain.

The poem was written by one of the mathematicians, a man well known and respected in his field.

A poem for Essex Mathematics in her hour of need

With forty years' hard energies spent,
We go the way of Luton and Trent,
Places where no maths is found,
Save tiny pieces scattered round.

E = m c², we know,
But who's to show us why it's so?
And can we wish to make the choice
That Gauss and Newton have no voice?

Will no one remain who can recall,
Why the rolling penny does not fall?
Or that Euler knew a thing or two,
And why Pythagoras is true?

What kind of progress leaves us so poor,
We lose the things we had before?
Precious things, so hard to find,
So carelessly now left behind.

Maths barely matters, so they tell,
Take as you need and all is well.
Alas, I fear, that cannot be,
For plums never ripened without the tree.