School when the family moved to Grahamstown in 1921. When matriculating in 1925 Blackman gained the only scholarship to nearby Rhodes University, where he concentrated on physics, mathematics, applied mathematics and German. He achieved firsts in maths, physics and German. He continued with an MSc in physics, again being awarded a first. He then spent a year as a demonstrator, building up his funds, before following his teachers’ advice and moving to the University of Göttingen in March 1931. Max Born took him on as a research student. By March 1933 he had written up his work on the Raman spectrum of rock salt, just as Hitler was coming to power, and was awarded the DPhil degree by his external examiner, Werner Heisenberg.