Bradford to Beijing: a story of love, science and service
Professor Phil Coates has been at the University of Bradford for nearly half a century. In those 47 years, he has built one of the strongest international reputations in polymer engineering, bridging scientific communities in China, Europe, and the UK. He has published more than 120 papers with Chinese authors, secured millions of pounds in research funding, and brought distinction to the University with collaborations that stretch across continents. But if you ask him how it was all possible, he unflinchingly points to his late wife Jane.
Jane Coates was a wife, mother, grandmother, social worker, teacher, volunteer, pastoral carer and writer. She was also Phil’s lifelong love and – according to him – the power behind his career.
Married for almost 54 years, they shared a sense of service, faith, and adventure. When Jane died on 28 April this year, aged 74, after a year-long struggle with an aggressive form of breast cancer, it was not only a devastating personal loss to Phil, their children and grandchildren, but to friends, colleagues and communities touched by her life.
“We were married for 54 years,” says Phil. “She supported me in my career, especially with forging the links to China. And, of course, she went there herself, independently of me, to teach English. We both had a deep love for China. She was selfless, even during her chemotherapy, caring for others and working on her second book.”
Final chapter
That book was completed the day she died (and published posthumously on her birthday), as Phil recalls. “She had seen the final draft on computer, and she got me to send the final article out from her hospital room on the day she died.”
Her two books, Encounters and Journeys (2023) and More Encounters and Journeys (2025), had their genesis at the start of the Covid lockdowns and were born of Jane’s desire to help people caring for others, offering them hope and inspiration.
“As everyone will remember, it was such an uncertain time but Jane was adamant she wanted to do something to help. She would even put a stool in the back of the car and then drive out to meet people outside. It was a small gesture but it gave people hope in a time of need.”
Family at the centre
The Coates family has known grief before. In 2014, Phil and Jane’s daughter Charlotte died during a medical procedure at the age of 36 a year after her husband Richard died from a brain tumour.. Charlotte's son, Sam, who is now 17, came to live with Phil and Jane when he was just six years old. The couple stepped in to raise him, and Jane poured herself into parenting again, becoming a daily anchor in his life. Phil notes that Jane's investment in raising Sam "shows enormously," and she was "desperate to stay alive" when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer so she could help him get ready for university.
The family also includes their children Emma, 50, Laura, 41, and John, 39 and grandchildren Amy, Adam, Maddie, Ryker, Rosie and Elias. That sense of family and purpose is reflected in Phil’s own career.
Pictured above: In 2018, Prof Coates received China’s top scientific award for overseas academics presented by President Xi Jinping at a ceremony in Beijing.
Heart of science
Phil arrived at Bradford in the late 1970s. Over nearly five decades he has grown to become the University’s longest-serving academic, establishing world-leading expertise in advanced materials and securing partnerships with industry and research institutes around the world.
Those achievements, he insists at 77-years-old, were not his alone. “I am a better person for this – I could not have achieved what I have done in my own career without the love and support of Jane,” he has said. “I am so grateful for being married to this extra special person.”
Jane’s support was practical as well as emotional. She travelled with Phil to conferences, opened their home to international guests, and, most significantly, helped to create the personal and cultural bridges that underpinned scientific collaboration.
Polymer pioneer
Phil is known for inventing a specialised dye-drawing process that transforms ordinary polymers into super-materials. A former Pro Vice-Chancellor, his standing in China is second-to-none, being given the prestigious title of ‘academician’ as he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
In China especially, where Phil has built four Joint International Research Labs and developed 18 collaborative research projects worth tens of millions of pounds, Jane was a vital presence. While Phil received the International Cooperation Award of the People’s Republic of China in 2017 - China’s highest honour for a foreign scientist, presented by President Xi Jinping - Jane was remembered with equal warmth for her own 11 summers spent teaching English to rural teachers with the highly respected Chinese Christian NGO, the Amity Foundation.
She was given a Chinese name, Chen Jing - “calm, still, quiet” - which friends there said captured not just her personality but the depth of her faith.
Jane’s own story was remarkable in its breadth. Born in Beeston, Leeds in 1950, she was the first in her family to go to university, studying psychology with theology before training in social work. She worked with the NSPCC as a child protection officer, and later as a psychiatric social worker, specializing in vulnerable women and families.
When her own family grew, Jane retrained again, becoming a primary school teacher in some of Leeds’s toughest inner-city schools. Her classrooms were full of children facing complex challenges, and Jane brought to them the same mixture of compassion and organisation that defined her life. She never stopped looking for ways to serve, traveling with mission groups to Bangladesh, Angola, and Afghanistan before her extended commitments in China each summer.
Act of devotion
Jane’s diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer came in spring 2024. She endured a year of treatment with extraordinary resilience, still caring for others. Phil recalls that she was doing "really well until about three days before she died" and that she even insisted on sending out her final weekly piece, which was about teenage cancer, from her hospital ward just hours before she passed.
What began as a weekly “thoughts and prayers” email of encouragement to her pastoral team at Moortown Baptist Church grew locally, then through the book reached across the UK and overseas and has now become part of her legacy.
Phil notes: “The books embody so much of Jane as a person and how she helped people.”
Projects are already underway to honour her: a bursary to support young people volunteering overseas, a “calm space” at Wheatfields Hospice where Charlotte worked, and new healthcare outreach for women through the University of Bradford.
Legacy of purpose
Phil's commitment to his late wife is perhaps mirrored – and honoured –in his commitment to the career he has forged at Bradford. He has opened many doors, forged prestigious international partnerships, led pioneering research that has – and is – changing health-tech, from bioresorbable implants and heart stents to super durable eco-friendly pipes and structures.
For a man who has spent his career working with polymers, substances that bind together to form something stronger than their parts, it feels a fitting metaphor. Phil’s achievements and Jane’s life of service were distinct, but together they created something greater: a bond that stretched across continents, across generations, and across disciplines of a deep Christian faith, family, and science.
As the University of Bradford’s longest-serving academic, as a stalwart advocate of research and innovation, of “giving invention light” (the University’s motto), it seems fitting that at the heart of it all is a love of his late wife Jane, the woman who gave him strength, support and inspiration. He is now on a mission to honour her, and in doing so, to ensure her legacy lives on.