I shall start, however, with the Commission of Inquiry. As you will be aware, a Framework Document was published early in this calendar year with the object of laying before the University and others what we, the members of the Commission, perceived to be the main items on our agenda. We invited comments on what had been included and on what had been omitted. Over 80 responses were received, for which the Commission has been most grateful. We have reflected on the suggestions made to us and those reflections were embodied in a notice in the Gazette on 8 June 1995, which also gave an indication of how we intend to proceed over the next twelve months. We propose to publish consultative papers on the six or so main areas of the Commission's work by the end of this year and during the first part of next year. As many of you will know, Coopers and Lybrand have been engaged to act as consultants to the Commission in looking at a range of matters concerning the governance of the University in its varied facets. They have been talking to a wide range of people within the University, in colleges, faculties, departments and the central administration, and will continue to do so for some time yet. We hope to have their report before the end of this year. In the light of that report, and of our reflections on it, a consultative paper will be published on the whole question of governance of the University, and at about the same time a similar paper will consider what might be the future size and shape of the University. The purpose of these consultation papers, and of the others which will follow, is to enable anyone in the University (and indeed others involved in British higher education) who wish to do so to let us have views on the issues which have been raised, and on any possible changes which have been adumbrated. It is in the light of that consultation that we aim to produce the final report of the Commission and its recommendations, ideally by the end of 1996. We have, however, made it clear that we would be happy to receive written comments on any of the matters within the scope of our work at any time, whether or not these matters have yet been addressed in a consultation paper. The Commission is concerned to ensure that all in the University have, and feel that they have, the fullest opportunity to put their views before the Commission. We shall look forward to receiving and considering those views.
One concern that the members of the Commission and others have had is that the existence of the Commission might create some form of `planning blight' on the other activities of the University, and in particular on the speedy review of matters which require investigation without delay. I think that the past year indicates that the fears of `planning blight' have, to a large extent, not been realised, and indeed the occasion of my Oration provides a good opportunity for me to remind you of, and to reflect upon, some of the major reviews with which the University has been concerned over the last year. The full list is both long and varied and on this occasion I shall have to be selective in those to which I refer. The President of Wolfson College chaired a Working Party to review the whole range of the University's activities in the development of intellectual property. The report of the Working Party makes important recommendations for the way in which our technology transfer arrangements are organised, and indeed raises questions which relate to the whole structure of the organisation of science policy within the University, and which it may well be for the Commission of Inquiry to address. Meanwhile we shall have further to examine our technology transfer arrangements in the light of concerns expressed by the Charity Commissioners that the public good requires charities to be confident that adequate development arrangements are in place either within the body that receives the grant or directly under the auspices of the charity itself. This is particularly significant in the biomedical field and we look forward, over the next few months, to discussions on these issues with the Wellcome Trust and the other leading charities whose support is so fundamental to our research work in these areas. Consultation on the Working Party's report is proceeding.
In a quite different field, while the imposition by the University Commissioners of a draft model statute on matters concerning the tenure of academic posts has caused the colleges a great deal of work (much of which may have been regarded by many as unproductive) the University centrally has turned its attention to the whole structure of its own disciplinary procedures relating to junior members. The Principal of St Hilda's is chairing a Working Party on this topic. She and her colleagues have consulted widely on these matters and we await their conclusions with interest. Student disciplinary matters lead one almost inevitably to think of the Proctors, and concerns have arisen over the arrangements which are made for their support. The number of appeals to the Proctors in a wide range of areas, not least decisions over graduate degrees, has increased markedly in recent times. This has a significant impact both on the proportion of time that Proctors are having to devote to these `quasi-judicial' issues and on the organisation and resources of their office. Furthermore, it may not be widely known within the University that there has been a substantial growth over the past few years in the resources which have had to be allocated to matters of security. The creation of a new office to deal with these security matters has inevitably placed further pressure on the administration of the Proctors' Office and on the University Marshal. To address this problem, a Working Party, chaired by the Master of St Cross and with significant proctorial representation, has recommended a division of responsibilities, with enhanced administrative support for the Proctors in their traditional work, while at the same time ensuring that the Marshal continues as head of the security service, reporting to the Security Committee. In this way, the important role of the Proctors within the University will be sustained and appropriate resources will be provided for security matters.
Oxford's library system is one of our enormously important intellectual resources. It is the richness of the material which attracts many scholars to Oxford; but much anxiety has been expressed in the last year about library services. The University is in a way the victim of its own success. The computerisation of the catalogues in the Bodleian Library has made the rich resources of that library more obviously available to more people and consequently they have wanted to read the books! This has brought real stress to a library system which operates to a very large degree on a closed stack basis. The General Board addressed the immediate problem by making funds available to the Bodleian to deal with the particular difficulties in the stacks which had caused such concern, but this was really the emergency application of elastoplast to a problem which needs more fundamental review. The first concern was an immediate one: David Vaisey, Bodley's Librarian, having decided to retire at the end of 1996 and other senior library posts being due to fall vacant at much the same time, Council took the opportunity to set up a review of the structure of the major library posts and of the underlying structure of the University libraries themselves. Council asked the President of Corpus Christi to chair a small committee, with members from outside Oxford, to look at both of these issues. With great determination and speed that Committee reported at the beginning of the Long Vacation. This report has now been published in the Gazette and Council is seeking views on it by the middle of Michaelmas Term. As the covering note to the Report published in the Gazette on 21 September 1995 indicated, Council has expressed strong support for the main thrust of the Report but wishes now to consider any views to be expressed over the next few weeks and, in the light of those views, may put a motion to Congregation before the end of Michaelmas Term addressing the conclusions of the report. I have no doubt that the organisation and structure of our libraries is a very important issue for the University to address and I believe that there is an opportunity now before us which, if grasped, will enable the University to make significant improvements to the library system as a whole.
That is the immediate library issue. Following on behind is the second and, in a way, broader question of what sort of library and information strategy the University should adopt in an age of multi-media materials. That issue has also been addressed during the course of the year, by a Working Party chaired by the Warden of Wadham. Active consideration is now being given to its recommendations, which are of a medium-term nature.
There is a third major libraries question, perhaps for the longer term. There is no doubt that users of open stack libraries (and as a lawyer I am one) tend to find them more user-friendly than closed stack libraries. However, more open stacks means a need for more space. Bodley's Librarian, in his speech at the Bodleian Founder's Luncheon last Hilary Term, warned that Oxford would have to face the fact that `huge closed-access libraries on central sites are now not sensible or efficient'—a challenging statement to make from Broad Street! He has also noted that, if and when the Radcliffe Infirmary site came into the possession of the University—as we all hope it will with the move to Headington of hospital and medical research facilities in the Woodstock Road—a good case could be made for part of that site being devoted to library purposes. Meanwhile the meeting of library space needs forms a significant part of the planned developments on the St Cross site and to the rear of the Ashmolean Museum.
Looking more broadly at space issues, there is no doubt that there are others within the University already casting covetous eyes on the Radcliffe Infirmary site, reflecting the ever increasing need for space within the University. Again, we are victims of our success, pressure on space being evidence of the vibrant research and teaching activity going on in so many areas. It is now over 30 years since a fundamental review was undertaken of space demands within the University and of the opportunities to meet them. That review, with advice from Lord Holford and his colleagues, led to the current developments in the South Parks Road area, the development of the Keble Road triangle and the acquisition of houses in the Banbury Road, though it has not been possible to develop the last site in the way originally planned, not least because of increasing concern over conservation in the ensuing years. The time is now ripe (notwithstanding the work of the Commission of Inquiry) for another major review of space needs and opportunities. To that end, the Master of Balliol, the Vice-Chancellor-Elect, has agreed to chair a small space strategy group to look at these matters and their work is under way. I understand that the Master hopes to complete the work of the review within some eighteen months and it has been made clear that, if it is thought appropriate, external consultants might again be employed to provide advice. This might be an opportune point for me to congratulate the Master on his election as my successor, whilst noting that, as Vice-Chancellor-Elect, he will be in the happy position of reading his own report once in office and having to decide what to do about it!
Some of the activities to which I have just referred look some way into the future. There are, however, several very important matters which have reached fruition during the course of the last academic year, some of which have had substantial gestation periods (to mix metaphors). Furthermore, the two that I have particularly in mind have not had easy births either. Much of the non-routine work of the General Board during the past two years or so has been taken up with these very important matters. The first has been to devise a new mechanism for determining departmental grants. These have been determined for a considerable period on what has been essentially an historic basis, with routine changes each year. The Board has for some time thought that greater transparency as to sources of funds and the basis of distribution was needed, while at the same time stoutly preserving the block grant system of public funding for the University. The devising of a formula which will be seen as justifiable and fair has, I know, occupied much of the energy of the former Chairman and other members of the General Board, the Secretary of Faculties and other officers of the University. It has not been an easy task. It never is when there could be losers as well as winners, but I have no doubt that it was a job that needed to be done. I have little doubt either that further adjustments of the formulae and of the system of grants are likely to be necessary over the next year or two as experience is gained of the new system in practice.
My second example of a fundamental review by the General Board is one which may be thought to have had even wider impact on the University at large, namely the examination of the difficult issue of promotions and recognition of distinction. This is a matter on which clear and strongly differing views have been held right across the University. Indeed, this was manifest in the debate in Congregation on the matter last Hilary Term, and in the very high postal vote by members of Congregation which followed. The decision has been taken to change the University's system of titles of distinction and to enable all those who are deemed, by peer review, to merit the title of Professor or Reader to assume it. A central aspect of the change—welcomed by some but not by all—is that the new system addresses the issue of titles but not of duties or of pay. The General Board is currently consulting over the whole question of duties and that is a matter which also touches on the work of the Commission of Inquiry. There have, however, been those who have seen a threat in the new system for conferring titles of distinction, a threat which could subvert the tutorial system. I have to say, as Vice-Chancellor and thus as Chairman of the Hebdomadal Council, that no evidence of such a threat has surfaced in our deliberations: I do not see a slippery slope from title to duties to pay. To be honest, the University, with its present resources, could not afford to change fundamentally its appointments system in such a way. As you will be aware, the new system for awarding the title of professor or reader will come into operation during the course of the coming academic year, with the new titles being assumed one year from now. I know that this has not been an easy decision within the University but I also know how much care and attention has been given to it, by all the members of the General Board in particular, and especially by the former Chairman and the Secretary of Faculties. I do think that the University owes them a real debt of gratitude for the time, effort and patience which they have devoted to both these major issues.
A further matter to which careful attention has been paid over the year is that of the financial position of University lecturers who have no tutorial fellowship. A Working Party addressing the complex issues involved reported at the end of Trinity Term. What was proposed was an interim solution pending further examination of the whole structure of University and college appointments by the Commission of Inquiry. Council and the General Board have accepted that there is a serious problem of inequity to be addressed, and as a matter of urgency. Colleges' views are now being sought on the scheme proposed by the Working Party and colleges are also being invited to submit any alternative proposals they may have for addressing this very real problem.
At the beginning of this Oration, I adopted a rather low key approach to fund-raising and development issues. However, I would not like anyone to assume that generosity to the University has diminished over the course of the past year or that the energies of the Development Office in Oxford and abroad have in any way diminished either. Indeed, nearly £10 million has come to the University through the Development Office during the ten months following the end of the Campaign, and over £1 million of this came to colleges. Continuing support for Oxford can be evidenced in a wide variety of ways and I will have to be selective. It is noteworthy that during the course of the past year we have been able to fill, or to decide to establish, the Drue Heinz Professorship of American Literature, the Lester Pearson Professorship of International Relations, the Cookson Professorship of Materials, the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science, the Professorship of Portuguese and new posts at the professorial and other levels in Law and in Management. An enormously generous bequest of some £7 million from the late Mrs Jane Ledig-Rowohlt has enabled us to expand the Scatcherd Scholarship Scheme established in her lifetime to enable at least 12 Oxford graduate students to study elsewhere in Europe and 12 graduates from elsewhere in Europe to come to Oxford to do graduate work. The Kobe Scholarships have been established by a generous benefaction to enable the University to complement the New Century Scholarships and thus to increase the number of Japanese graduate students here. I could provide a wide variety of other examples. Nor must we forget the massive income which the University receives, through the operations of the Research Services Office, to support its research activity. In 1993–4 our external research income was some £83m, as in the past the largest of any university in the country and an increase on the previous year of about 14 per cent; for last year, 1994–5, the figure was some £94 million, a further increase of about 13 per cent. That is a remarkable record and I congratulate all concerned, heads of departments, heads of research teams and the researchers themselves on this continuing evidence of the research excellence of the University. There are, of course, many yardsticks of scholarly achievement, but I would like, today, to take two of significance in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It should not go unrecorded that no fewer than fourteen new Fellows of the British Academy elected last summer came from Oxford, whether as Ordinary Fellows, Senior Fellows or, in one case, a Corresponding Fellow. I do congratulate them all as I do Professor David Hendry and Professor Christopher Peacocke who have been appointed to Leverhulme Trust Personal Research Professorships, out of a national total of only six awards, the competition for which was intense.
There is one particular aspect of the development scene on which I would like to pause—namely the relations between the colleges and the central University. When Campaign for Oxford was launched, colleges provided great help by, for example, making available lists of names and addresses of old members. For its part the Campaign, whether through mass mailings or in other ways, was concerned to ensure that those who wished to support their college were given every opportunity to do so—whether that support was exclusively for the college or was shared with the central University. In that way, some £26 million was contributed to colleges through the Campaign.
Now that we have moved on to review our development activity after the Campaign, there is a number of further factors to be addressed in re- examining college/university fund-raising arrangements. Far more colleges are actively involved in fund-raising than when the Campaign began. Their investment in people and resources is considerable whether looked at on a college by college basis or, especially, looked at on the basis of total collegiate investment. Pressures on colleges to raise funds for posts and building, especially for student accommodation, do not abate. In the latter context, though much has been achieved, and the last decade must have seen more college building than any in our history, the desire to house more of our junior members in high quality accommodation remains strong—and I applaud both the aims and the achievement. Financial pressures abound. They come in varied forms. Most striking is the continuing reduction in the real value of college fees as cuts in the unit funding per student are applied to such fees as they are applied to Funding Council grants. Not to be forgotten, however, are, first, the increasing financial difficulties faced by junior members and their concerns, shared by many, over student hardship and, second, the fact that a depressed economy has a noticeable impact on college investment finances.
It is against this background that colleges have become increasingly concerned over the relationship between their fund-raising activities and those undertaken by the Development Office on behalf of the University at large. Colleges have discussed these concerns in the Conference of Colleges and I have had the opportunity to do so not only in my termly meetings with Heads of House but also last summer on a more individual basis. What has emerged is the establishment of a Working Group, a substantial part of whose membership consists of Heads of House, and chaired by me, which has as its objective the addressing not only of a number of immediate practical concerns but also the development of a broader university/college development strategy taking full account of the interlocking and different needs and aspirations of the whole University. The Group began its task during the summer. I have no doubt that close cooperation is essential to ensure the realisation of the greatest opportunities for us all.
Looking to the wider education and research scene, I can offer no greater prospect of quiet continuity than I could last year. First, the Department for Education has now become the Department for Education and Employment. An immediate anxiety is that higher education will command a lower priority within a larger department. I hope that this is wrong but I fear it may be right. Then there is the removal of the Office of Science and Technology from the responsibilities of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to the Department of Trade and Industry. Not only does this indicate more upheaval, it has sent shudders through parts of the scientific and research community right across the country. I am well aware of the wide- ranging expressions of protest and concern that have been made about this. The fear is that the case for basic scientific research will be lost in the demand for short-term commercial gain. In the long-term the nation would be bound to be the loser. One can but express the hope that claims by ministers and others that support for fundamental scientific research will continue as before will in fact be seen to be a statement of reality. In the forefront of discussions of these issues will be Professor Robert May, having just taken up office as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, an appointment on which I congratulate him warmly.
I think that many of us are suspicious of these recent changes because of the very serious damage already done to the funding of scientific research by the abandonment of a significant part of the dual support funding system by requiring the `well-found laboratory' to be funded through an addition to the research grant to provide a contribution to research costs, rather than through the central funding of the University. The `DR-shift' has proved to be little short of disastrous for all the major research universities, not least this one, and is the subject of a current review by Coopers & Lybrand, shortly to be completed. My understanding is that it has at last been realised that the problem is what we have always said it was, namely that the same amount of funds is coming to universities but in the form of a larger number of grants, each of which tends to be inadequately funded. The consequence is that there is a real danger that the more grants a university gets, the less well-off it becomes. We can only hope and urge that that mistake will now be corrected. I doubt whether this will be done retrospectively; this University has lost millions of pounds irretrievably as a consequence. It is the fear of repetition of mistakes like that which cause the unease which universities feel when faced with other substantial changes in governmental organisation of higher education and research.
One of the major tasks with which the University will be faced in the coming year is the next Research Assessment Exercise. I cannot underestimate the financial importance of this to the University, as can be seen from the fact that some two thirds of our funding from HEFCE comes, under the formula basis, in relation to research activities as compared with that based on numbers of students to be taught. A particular source of concern about the exercise this year is the way in which it has engendered what I can only described as a `football-transfer frenzy'. One of the rules of the exercise is that a university which has a particular person in post on 31 March 1996 can include the whole of that person's research activity and output over the past 4 years even if he or she only arrived in that university the day before. This has led to a movement of productive researchers round the university system in order that they can be in post in their new institution on the operative date, thus ensuring that that institution will take the benefit of the work supported by their former institution for most of the preceding four years. This merry-go-round is oiled by salary increases for those who move. I have to say that this does not seem to me to be a particularly productive expenditure of public money and I am convinced that this aspect of the assessment exercise must be changed fundamentally for future exercises.
Whilst the current pattern of Research Assessment Exercises is such that they come round every four years, the process of dealing with teaching assessments is for the University centrally, if not for individual faculties, a continuous one. The past year has seen assessments in six areas, with the judgment of the assessors being that teaching quality in five was excellent, whilst that in Music was judged merely satisfactory. Careful attention will of course have to be paid to areas of concern to the assessors, and with particular energy in the case of Music, although changes were already in train here as a result of the General Board's own review in 1993–4. I do, however, congratulate all those involved in the areas adjudged excellent, namely Anthropology, Geography, Computing Science, Earth Sciences and English. The continuous process rolls on. The whole of Modern Languages and Linguistics will be assessed this year, and we have just received the programme for the coverage of all remaining subject areas. This would take us under the present system to the year 2001.
Many will be aware that there has been a vigorous debate on the future organisation and structure of this whole `quality' assessment exercise with differing views put to the Department for Education and Employment by the Funding Councils, the CVCP and the HEQC. At one stage there was a risk that each was expressing views without attention being paid to the concerns of the other. We seem now to be in a more constructive phase but my concern, shared by many, is that we should strive to produce a system which, whilst it ensures that it meets the legitimate concerns of the Funding Councils and others to reassure the public as to the quality of teaching in our universities, does so in a way which minimises the very real costs and upheaval that the current dual track system of assessment and audit involves—all at the cost of time and resources much of which might better be devoted to teaching and research. It is certainly encouraging that, following an initiative from the CVCP, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment agreed some two weeks ago to the establishment of a Joint Planning Group for a new national body to oversee arrangements to ensure the maintenance of the quality of teaching in higher education. The timetable for the Group's work is tight but the importance of the task is clear. We need a single, effective streamlined system.
On a happier note, any year in the life of a Vice-Chancellor brings the most extraordinary range of opportunities and experiences and I would like to look back on one or two of the more striking or unusual experiences of the past 12 months. I recall the ground breaking ceremony for the new graduate accommodation at Rewley Abbey, accommodation now occupied. That ceremony involved me in operating the pedals and levers of a mighty excavator. I have to confess that whilst I was very good at digging a hole in the ground, I was incapable of operating the bucket so as to keep any soil in it. Another of my faltering attempts at things mechanical occurred only a few weeks ago, when I was taking steps to sustain good relations between the University and the Royal Air Force. This occasion found me at the controls of a Wessex helicopter, attempting to keep it hovering at a steady 50ft above Abingdon airfield. Happily for all concerned, the airfield was completely deserted at the time and there was an experienced Squadron Leader at my side to avoid disaster to him, as well as to me.
In a quite different vein, a memorable day in the life of the University this last academic year was the visit of President Àrpàd Göncz, President of the Republic of Hungary, upon whom the Chancellor conferred the degree of Doctor of Civil Law by diploma. It was a great pleasure to welcome to the University such a staunch defender of freedom in his country, and to be able to do this now that those dark days are over. It was also a pleasure to be able to show the President copies of his own books in the Bodleian Library, and indeed the works of Tolkien which the President has translated into Hungarian from English, a language which he had perfected whilst in prison. Further afield, I had the pleasure in New Delhi of meeting and being entertained to dinner by the President of India, a particularly kind gesture from a Cambridge man. That was during the second part of a memorable visit last December to India and Pakistan, meeting fellow Oxonians and friends of the University, as well as colleagues in the Press, seeking to sustain our high profile there and to increase scholarship opportunities. The visit started with my calling upon the President of Pakistan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Chairman of the Pakistan Senate, all in the course of the same morning, all being Oxonians though not all of the same political party. Indeed I was struck by a comment made to me by another Pakistani Oxonian, that country's Foreign Minister, who pointed out that, at the time of my visit, there were more Oxonians in the Pakistan Cabinet than there were in the British one— though this summer's reshuffle of our Government has rather changed that. Another memorable event of the last year—and one which sadly I missed through being stricken with influenza—was the meeting of the Delegates of the University Press in New York last July. This was the first meeting of the delegates outside Oxford, and indeed their first meeting outside the Clarendon Building for some centuries. The purpose of the New York meeting was to mark the hundredth year of the activities of the Press in the United States and the opening of its new offices in New York. One highlight of the occasion was a long procession, down Madison Avenue, of delegates and others in full academic dress, led in my place by the President of Corpus Christi, no doubt to the bemusement of busy New Yorkers. More seriously, this is a happy opportunity to pay tribute to that particular milestone in the life of the Press.
As my final example of the variety of the past year, I recall the occasion of the award to the University of one of the new Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher Education. Both the Chancellor and I, with other representatives of the University, were at Buckingham Palace last February to receive the prize from Her Majesty the Queen, and most of us were able to attend a dinner for the Prize winners at the Guildhall that evening at which the Prime Minister spoke encouragingly about the achievements of higher education—a speech which sadly but perhaps significantly attracted no public or media attention. I do congratulate all those within the University, including our own company Isis Innovation, whose endeavours led to the award to Oxford of one of the first of these prizes, given for our work in technology transfer, described as `Exploitation of intellectual property for wealth creation'. As the citation for the Prize stated: `This is a world class programme to make available to industry and commerce the University's full array of intellectual skills'.
It must in the history of the University be quite some time since in the space of one year two new colleges came into being and a third changed its name. Mansfield College, which has had a long and distinguished history as a Permanent Private Hall, received its Royal Charter this summer and became a full member of the collegiate University. At the same time, Templeton College received its Royal Charter after an existence very much shorter than that of Mansfield and without going through any intermediate stage as a Permanent Private Hall, though through a rather different process of evolution from its origins in the Oxford Centre for Management Studies. We welcome them both. One of the newest Permanent Private Halls, itself moving rapidly towards full collegiate status, is Manchester College, and in recognition of the major benefaction which it received from the Harris Foundation, its formal title has now become Manchester Academy and Harris College. Again, we congratulate it on its progress.
Three Heads of House have just retired. Sir Patrick Neill has been Warden of All Souls for 18 years. His service to the University has been immense over a long period of years, not least during his term of office as Vice-Chancellor, being the architect of the Campaign for Oxford and the cutter of the Gordian knot of entitlement. I personally am most grateful to him for his wise advice over the past two years, as well as for his service as a Pro- Vice-Chancellor. In his place as Warden we welcome John Davis, formerly Professor of Social Anthropology. Duncan Stewart retires as Principal of Lady Margaret Hall after long service both to his college, and to the University as a former Vice-Chairman of the General Board and a long-serving member of Hebdomadal Council. He has been succeeded by Sir Brian Fall fresh from the British Embassy in Moscow. Finally, we bid farewell to Sir Christopher Zeeman as Principal of Hertford College, who should have been succeeded by Angus McIntyre, tragically killed last Christmas; but now we know that next year we shall be able to welcome Sir Walter Bodmer back to Oxford as the next Principal.
I wish to record our gratitude for the lives and service of our colleagues who have died in office during the past year. We salute the memory of Professor Brooke Benjamin, Dr Jennifer Loach, a member of the Hebdomadal Council, Dr Angus Macintyre, Dr Michael Mahony, Dr John Rollett, Dr Alan Tayler, Dr Michael Meenaghan and Mr Bryan Kershaw. No less a loss is that of our former colleagues who have died in retirement, amongst whom are numbered Professor C.G. Phillips, Professor Sir Rudolph Peierls, Mr J.I.M. Stewart, Miss Marjorie Sweeting, Dr H.M.V. Smith, Lady Florey, Mr A.D.M. Cox, Miss K.M. Lee, Lady Macdougall and Mr E.H.F. Smith.
Over the past year a number of our colleagues have retired from major academic posts which they have held with distinction: Professor D.S. Smith from the Hope Professorship of Zoology (Entomology), Professor J.H. Edwards from the Professorship of Genetics, Professor F.J.H. Haskell from the Professorship of the History of the Art, Professor I.M. James from the Savilian Professorship of Geometry, Professor J.D.C. McConnell from the Professorship of the Physics and Chemistry of Materials, Professor C.A. Mango from the Bywater and Sotheby Professorship of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature and Professor J.G.G. Ledingham from the May Readership in Medicine. The list is substantial of those others who have retired from their academic posts after long and loyal service: Dr P.T.H. Beckett, Dr M.J. Coe, Miss T.C. Cooper, Mr H.R. Harré, Dr A.M Howatson, Mrs N.V Jones, Mr J.P.S. Montagu, Mr J.M. Prest, Mrs E.A. Smart and Dr A.G. Taylor. The number of retirements from academic-related, administrative and similar posts has also been substantial over the past year: included in that number are Mrs H.W. Brown, Miss G.M. Ledger, Sir John Johnson, Mr H.P.B. Atyeo, Mr A.F.W. Mattingley, Mrs C.M. Robinson and Dr C.M. Mould. To them all we give our thanks for their service to the University.
The support which the Vice-Chancellor receives is wide-ranging and substantial and for that I am most grateful. Today, however, I would like to express particular gratitude to two people. The first is Ian Thompson, former Secretary of the Chest, who has left the University for the wetter pastures of the University of Manchester; his has been a wise voice in the counsels of the University and we shall miss his robust financial advice. Finally, Dr John Peach has now served his two years as Chairman of the General Board. I have admired his tact, determination, industry and efficiency, and not least his continual good humour. He has been a tower of strength to me during the first half of my Vice-Chancellorship and I thank him warmly for that. I look forward to the prospect of working closely with his successor, Dr Paul Slack. And I look forward to the year ahead with enthusiasm, confident in the continuing excellence of the University in both teaching and research.
3 October 1995