Family
Bernal had two children (Mike, b.1926 and Egan, b.1930) with his wife Agnes Eileen Sprague (referred to as Eileen), who was a secretary. He married Sprague on 21 June 1922, the day after having been awarded his BA degree. Bernal was 21, Sprague 23. Sprague was described as an active socialist and their marriage 'open' which they both lived up to 'with great gusto'.
In the 1930s he became involved in a long-term relationship with the artist Margaret Gardiner, with whom he had a son Martin Bernal, (born 1937) who became a professor of philosophy and author of the controversial Afrocentric work Black Athena. She had had a brief relationship about 1920 with Solly Zuckerman. Gardiner referred to herself as "Mrs. Bernal", though the two never married. Eileen is mentioned as his widow in 1990.
He also had a child (Jane, b.1953) with Margot Heinemann and had a brief intimate relationship with Dorothy Hodgkin, whose scientific research work he mentored.
Read more about this topic: John Desmond Bernal
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