Praesento miserorum praesidium, tyrannorum terrorem, quae opem egenis vocem silentibus spem desperantibus reduxit, Helenam Bamber, Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptam, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili.
I present Mrs Helen Bamber, OBE, the defender of the helpless, the dread of tyrannical governments, the bringer of aid to the needy, of voice to the silent, and of hope to those in despair, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
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Praesento scaenae decus, spectantium delicias, et risus et lacrimarum magistram perfectissimam, Iuditham Dench, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
I present an ornament of the stage, a favourite of the public, equally powerful in evoking tears and laughter, Dame Judi Dench, DBE, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
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Praesento temporum nostrorum Apellem, coloris magistrum incomparabilem, Academiae amicum benevolentissimum, Howard Hodgkin, Equitem Auratum, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
I present the Apelles of our day, an incomparable master of colour, and a generous friend of the University, Sir Howard Hodgkin, CBE, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
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Praesento virum in scientia civili praeclarissimum, in vita publica eminentissimum, in utraque pariter admirabilem, Gualterum Garrison Vicecomitem Runciman de Doxford, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
I present a distinguished social scientist, an eminent public servant, equally admirable in both capacities, Viscount Runciman of Doxford, CBE, FBA, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
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Praesento historicum subtilissimum, philosophum eruditissimum, qui plurimis historiae provinciis peragratis ipsi Nicolao Machiavelli haud impar conscripsit elogium, Quentin Skinner, Historiae apud Cantabrigienses Professorem Regium, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
I present a most subtle historian and a most learned philosopher, at home in many periods of history, and one who has composed an elogium for Machiavelli which is not unworthy,[1] Quentin Skinner, FBA, Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
[1] Compare the epitaph on Machiavelli's grave: Tanto nomini nullum par elogium—No elogium can be equal to so great a name.
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Praesento Eudoxum [eudoxoteron], stellarum observatorem oculatissimum, ipsius mundi interpretem et sollertissimum et sagacissimum, Martinum Rees, Equitem Auratum, Astrologum Regium, Societatis Regiae Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia.
I present an astronomer who has raised the profile of his subject, a lynx-eyed observer of the stars, both ingenious and profound as a guide to the universe, Professor Sir Martin Rees, FRS, Astronomer Royal, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
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Praesento medicam beneficentissimam, quae patientia insigni, diligentia admirabili, ingenio acutissimo intima valetudinis humanae arcana et detexit et detegit, Janet Rowley, a plurimis Academiis Doctorem honoris causa creatam, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia.
I present a medical scientist who has benefited the world, and who by extraordinary patience, admirable application, and high intelligence, has revealed, and continues to reveal, some of the most intimate secrets of health, Professor Janet Rowley, the recipient of many honorary doctorates, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
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Honoratissime Domine Cancellarie: But no, the Orator displays again the full range of his talents by speaking not only in Latin but also in English. The original purpose of the Creweian Oration was commemoration of our benefactors; it has also long been the custom to include in it some reference to events of the past year. For many years it was in fact given in Latin.
This year I thought we might begin with Nathaniel, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, whose hard strawberries and harder peaches have been enjoyed over the centuries by the Nomenklatura of the University. The account of him in the DNB, from the pen of Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London and historian of the Papacy, is strikingly unfriendly. Its opening, or throat-clearing, statement is that `the barony conferred upon his father seems to have imbued Nathaniel's mind with a desire for the sweets of royal patronage'. It goes on with the pronouncement that when, as royal commissioner, he dismissed the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge for refusing to obey a royal command to admit to the degree of MA a person disqualified by the statutes of the University, his action `shows that his sycophancy was boundless'. The scorn of the Bishop of London for his brother of Durham is tempered only by the aside that `a man of such a time-serving spirit was in no way formidable'; and he sweeps on to the conclusion that `Crewe is a remarkable instance of a man whose posthumous munificence has done much to outweigh a discreditable career'. How these Christians love one another! But there is a moral here somewhere. If anyone present has an acquaintance whose career has been discreditable, it is worth reflecting that benefactions to Oxford University can do much to outweigh it.
Now for some more recent incomings and benefactions. The research income of the University last year was £179,000,000. It sounds like a lot; but, of course, it does not compare with the incomes available to the great universities of North America. And, of course, the state persists in its now traditional stinginess, and the grant for next year from HEFCE is again increased by an amount below the rate of inflation. The idea, it seems, is the interesting one---`vibrant' is, I think the term of the moment---that we can compete on the international level without spending as much money as our competitors do; just as, for example, one might very reasonably hope to run a top-level international tennis tournament, attracting all the top international stars, while giving a top prize of £5,000. The reluctance of the state to pay the rate for the job in higher education, either to individuals or to institutions, does not, of course, mean that politicians are inhibited in their criticisms. Criticism of universities, by ancient custom, does not have to be accurate or well informed. That, after all, is our job.
The state, which has lost so many of its toys---to privatisation or to globalisation, to loss of Empire or to membership of multinational bodies---and which therefore plays ever more obsessively with the few that it still possesses, is confident that it could run the nation's universities very differently from the tiresome academic persons who are making such a hash of it at the moment. And in a way one does share its confidence. More complete control by the political establishment no doubt would indeed have the effect of transforming our performance and the value we give for money. We need only look at the contrast between Tate Modern, where those who knew were left alone to get on with it, and the Dome, sticky with the fingerprints of politicians of both parties, to see the kind of difference that we should expect to see.
Meanwhile, our expenses are great. Apart from the costs of teaching and research, the massive and very important Millennium Buildings Project, which both restores old buildings and pays for new ones, will in total cost £150,000,000. It has for instance already put a new roof on Duke Humfrey's Library.
It was especially welcome that last autumn eleven new members were admitted to the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors. The Court is now so firmly established in the heart of the University that it is hard to remember that its inception was so recent. How did we manage without it?
The Bodleian Library is grateful to its old friend the Oxford Historic Buildings Fund for a generous contribution to the Bodleian Old Library Development Project, BOLD for short; to Lincoln PLC for generous support, again, for the Blind Recording Centre; to the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, for partnership funding for the Library's application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a Visitor Programme: it is good news that this application has received Stage One approval; to Lovells for continuing to help the Law Library stay open longer; to Rosemary Sprague for generous support for the Vaisey Fund; and to the estate of the late Margaret Sowers, of Santa Cruz, for a contribution to the general income of the Library. And, for a donation to support the Science Library, to Dr David Holmes (no relation).
A devoted friend of the Library, and a Distinguished Friend of the University, steps down as Chairman of the Bodleian's Development Board: Mr Jonathan Taylor, formerly Chairman of Booker PLC. In more than ten years of service he has been outstandingly successful in this vitally important post. A retirement dinner was held for him in the dream setting of the Divinity School. A sadder loss still, this time by death, is that of Professor Colin Matthew, for many years (in addition to being Editor of the New DNB) the Chairman of the Friends of the Bodleian. He brought in many gifts and benefactions. We also greet the generous endowment by Mr and Mrs John Griffiths of a studentship in the field of the history of the book before 1625.
The Bate Collection of old instruments, to which the Orator seldom looks in vain, reports the sad news of the death, at the age of ninety, of Philip Bate. The Collection has received this year a magnificent assembly of instruments from the collection of M.Jean Henry, who was moved to make it by his admiration for the role of the Bate Collection in playing and teaching within the University. It includes nine flutes, six flageolets, four violins, and other interesting items, including a banduria, a zither, an epinette de Vosges, and a psaltery. Another remarkable gift is that of a special flute made for a player who had lost the tip of his right index finger, which is designed to be played with the thumb. It may point the way, says the Bate, for other digitally challenged flautists.
Another kind of challenge: the Designated Challenge Fund has given a total of nearly £420,000 to the support of the University's museums. The University Museum has received a grant from the Museum and Galleries Commission, for electronic access to collection data; and another, both to the University Museum and to the Pitt Rivers Museum, from the Heritage Lottery Access Fund, for improving public access to the museums. The Museum has also launched a CD, played by the European Union Baroque Orchestra.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, too, has given a generous challenge grant to establish a new lectureship at the Centre for Refugee Studies, and for the Centre's library. That Centre has received a generous grant from the Ford Foundation for a number of valuable projects, including a visiting fellowship and a workshop.
Hans and Maerit Rausing and Joseph and Lisbet Koerner have given a munificent endowment, via the Michael Aris Trust, to endow a University Lecturership in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. The Michael Aris Trust has also made a generous donation to support for three years a Librarian in Tibetan at the Bodleian.
Sir Martin Wood has given a splendid donation for the new Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, with a complete conference centre, including seminar and exhibition space. An anonymous donor has given a munificent gift for the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences, for the library of the Queen's College, for undergraduate scholarships both at the University and at Queen's, and for the Museum of the History of Science.
Large contributions have been received on the various medical fronts from many donors. The Imperial Cancer Research Fund is expanding its research in Oxford and planning further investments of several million pounds. The Medical Research Council has made a very substantial grant to a group in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology for research into the workings of the immune system; and the BBSRC has made a very significant grant to another group for research into bacterial cell division. In that School a generous donation from an anonymous source has been received for a Chair in Molecular Biology. The Wellcome Trust is giving support which is both important and, I am obliged by Oratorical precedent to add, welcome, to the Oxford Tropical Network, for research into tropical diseases; and it has made a generous grant to a group at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine for research into the HIV virus. The James Knott Family Trust is to make a substantial endowment for postgraduate medical scholarships at St Cross College. And the E.P. Abraham Research Fund has made a generous grant to the Chemistry Research Laboratory.
Other benefactions have not been lacking. Mr Jack Friedman has handsomely endowed the annual Mendel Friedman Conference on Yiddish Studies of the European Humanities Research Centre. Mr Francis Finlay has made a substantial gift to Merton for a new building. Mr Philip Wetton has generously endowed the Wetton Chair of Astrophysics. And a very substantial grant has been received from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council for Astrophysics and for the Gemini Telescope Project.
Ten groups in the University have been awarded grants under the 1999 Joint Research Equipment Initiative: including the purchase of a mass spectrometer for use in the development of a mass spectrometry technique, described as non-destructive, which is a relief, and help with the BEOWULF supercomputer project, which will model the formation of galaxies. Four bids have been successful to the Joint Infrastructure Fund. Five of our colleagues have been successful in getting Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships. Ten research groups in the University won grants under the 1999 Joint Research Equipment Initiative. Like the man says, the joint is jumpin'. Congratulations to them all.
It has been a good year for Institutes. The Environmental Change Unit has advanced to the status of an Institute. An Institute for Particle Physics is to be established with a generous grant from the Leverhulme Trust, to investigate `dark matter'. A new Institute of Orthopaedic Research is to be established, in a fine new building of vaguely Tibetan appearance: as we launch an appeal for Tibetan and Himalayan studies. And an Institute for the Advancement of University Learning will be launched in October.
Not an Institute but a Unit: a Stroke Prevention Unit has been set up in Oxford with money from the MRC and the Stroke Prevention Council (nothing to do with stopping sexual harassment). They are preventing strokes; but in another part of the forest strokes are being actively encouraged. A dream is to become a reality. Yes, the Swimming Pool, a phrase kept permanently set up in type by all Orators of recent decades, is to descend from Plato's ideal sphere and find physical form. Gipsy violins, please! We thank Mr Lief D. Rosenblatt, who has made a munificent benefaction; Mr and Mrs Michael G. McCafferty, who have made a very generous gift via the San Francisco Foundation; the Rhodes Trust, which has given a splendid challenge grant; and Lady Kenny, lately chatelaine of Rhodes House, who nobly led the successful fund-raising team. In fund-raising the crawling must precede the splash; in the pool, of course, it will be the other way round. To keep us in a more metaphorical swim, an electronic archive of more than 20,000 articles on modern affairs has been donated to the University by Oxford Analytica.
Thoroughly modern, indeed; but in sharp contrast, Neolithic bread has been found at Yarnton, 5,000 years old. The railway companies are reported to be keenly interested. At the Institute of Plant Sciences the team of the aptly named Dr Juniper (can this be an accident?) has tracked down the origins of the apple: in the high valleys of the eastern Tien Sha, in the north western part of the Xinjiang province of China. That presumably implies the discovery also of the site of the Garden of Eden. And Dr Stephanie Dalley has identified two skeletons discovered in northern Iraq as those of Hebrew women of royal birth who married the father and the grandfather of Sennacherib. In those days, it appears, `JAP' stood for `Jewish Assyrian Princess': a truly intimidating conception.
Meanwhile, Professor Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics, has proved by a survey of the Y-chromosomes of 250 men of his name that `99 per cent of Mrs Sykeses have been well behaved for the past 700 years'. We always knew that Bill Sikes---of a cadet branch only, of course---was wrong to be so jealous of poor Nancy. But: what vistas open up of posthumous prurience, what bumper numbers of Ye News of Ye World (Medieval edition). But we can only imagine what Chaucer would have given us as the Geneticist's Tale.
Nor is even that all. An Ancient Biomolecules Centre is to be set up in Oxford, to work on the DNA of extinct animals and proto-humans. A team which includes members from Oxford has finally proved that Neanderthal Man was carnivorous, that he was in fact, in their slightly unexpected phrase, `a top carnivore'; `in terms of carnivory they were up with the wolves and hyenas'. As the lady said to the optician, when she asked for glasses and he sat her down to read off a chart of letters of different sizes, I hadn't realised it was a competition. We await demands for access to Oxford for Neanderthals. Putting even that antiquity into perspective, we have had £300,000 from Viridor Waste Management, the Greenbank Trust, and the Museum of Natural History, for a more realistic display of dinosaurs, including a Tyrannosaurus. Some people thought it unkind of the University Gazette to announce this, two weeks ago, with the headline `Dinosaur and dodo collection unveiled', and illustrate it with a photograph of the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar.
All that gives an almost vulgar look of modernity to the generous research grant received over five years by the Archive for the History of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. And, to come right up to date, the Ashmolean mounted an exhibition, called `In the Red: a History of Debt, 2000 BC--2000 AD'. It was opened, I see, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But that, of course, was in the first half of the year.
It is a pleasure to record that this year again the Botanic Garden has won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, for an educational exhibit on the reasons why plants produce smells. Among its exhibits was a dragon arum, which attracts flies by imitating the odours of rotting flesh. The Botanic Garden is not just a pretty face, or a delicious aroma. The University has opened a fine new Business and Science Park at Begbroke. And: the Humanities Computing Development Team has been launched, with all sorts of vibrant applications and implications; and, no doubt, duplications and complications, too.
The administration of the University has been reformed and reshaped. I am in a position to reveal that, after agonising debate and much heart-searching, it has been agreed that its new aims include excellence, vibrance, and transparency; unless indeed I am confused, and those are not its aims but its goals, or possibly its mission statement. Some more modern titles seem in order: his Serene Transparency, the Chancellor; his Harassed Transparency, the Vice-Chancellor; their Vibrancies, the Heads of the Academic Divisions... As for excellence, one remembers Groucho Marx, when by some shady deal he had become a head of state and was addressed as `Your Excellency', replying with a jaunty `You're pretty good yourself!' The Heads of the five new Academic Divisions have been named. So have the four Pro-Vice-Chancellors. You know who you are; we know where you live. Greetings, congratulations, and commiserations to you all. It's the first time for us: be gentle with us!
It would seem absurd to ignore, but affected to dilate upon, the renewal of the Vice-Chancellor, from 2001 to 2004, to see through the reforms in the `governance' of the University. That was a setback for Balliol College, which had been able to boast that it produced the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, and the Orator; and, this year, the Senior Proctor, too. Fortunately, Balliol is not the sort of place that boasts. We have always emphasised that. The Vice- Chancellor made a powerful speech at the beginning of the year, full of weighty matter. Connoisseurs of University oratory, if they exist, will detect much overlap with this one. The Recognition of Distinction exercise was abandoned, not without a regretful official statement that it was not achieving its purpose. Well, well, Sir. A new scheme was unveiled, to applause less than unanimous, for allowing University Lecturers and CUFs to compete with each other for small financial increments. There occurred to irreverent minds an image applied by Cyril Connolly to some critical writing about modern poetry, but now more and more replacing the fuddy-duddy image which we used to have of collegiality: jackals snarling round a dried-up well.
The OED is now online. It runs to 60,000,000 words and has 9,000 new entries; its revision cost £35,000,000; it can keep up with `vibrant and colourful varieties of English'. Vibrant, of course; but not (fortunately) transparent, or I suppose there would be no need for a Dictionary. And now accessible online are the works of Robert Grosseteste, the University's first big-headed Chancellor, known to more trendy students of scholasticism as the Vibrant Doctor.
In the Clarendon Laboratory a fine new superconducting magnet has set a world record by generating a continuous field of twenty teslas at the atmospheric boiling point of liquid helium. And I don't need to remind anyone here what that means.
An Oxford scientist is a member of the international team which is trying to conserve the Raratonga and the Tahiti flycatchers. The University is also well represented in the struggle to save the painted hunting dog of Zimbabwe, and in that to rescue the lions of the Kalahari; and, less exotically, but suitably for that underprivileged minority of scientists who get air-sick on long journeys to exotic and expensive places, in the quest to preserve the British water vole.
Interesting lectures were given during the year. On 28 June 1999 Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, came and lectured us on `The Dialogue of Civilisations and the Need for a World Ethic'. He is to receive an honorary degree some time next year.
The Prime Minister gave the Romanes Lecture in Michaelmas Term on `Education and Human Capital in the Next Century'. His message was that education has two points: one is the advancement which a good c.v. brings to the career and the earning power of its fortunate possessor; the other is that education enriches the country economically. In his striking phrase, `Universities are wealth creators in their own right'. So that's all right, then.
Ms Beryl Bainbridge gave the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture on the theme: `What makes a writer'. Yet again we saw the importance to the artist of an unhappy childhood. Lord Melchett, Director of Greenpeace UK, gave a lecture on `Campaigning for Environmental Solutions'. Mr Rupert Murdoch gave a lecture at University College on his vision of the future. It was refreshing to hear him state his view that increasing choice of media is empowering the consumer to an unprecedented extent, and that the media will be swiftly punished if they `misjudge public taste or morals'. Mr Jeremy Paxman lectured on `Surviving Spin'. In a more innocent day, I suppose, that would have suggested something about cricket.
New this year is the Public Interest Disclosure Act (1999), and the consequent issuing of a code of Academic Integrity in Research. `At last!' we academics murmur gratefully. Misconduct includes `failure to follow an agreed protocol if this failure results in unreasonable risk of harm to humans, other vertebrates or the environment'---a curious list; but it is a comfort to feel that the only invertebrates at risk from my own current researches on Attic Tragedy are a few colleagues in the subject at certain other universities.
There have been some significant comings and goings. The new Rector of Lincoln, in succession to Dr Eric Anderson, who returns from the academic hurly-burly to Elysium, as Provost of Eton (in the phrase of Horace, `adscribi quietis ordinibus deorum'), is to be Professor Paul Langford, Chief Executive of the AHRB.
The new President of Wolfson, in succession to the eminent biologist Sir David Smith, who continues as President of the Linnaean Society, is Sir Gareth Roberts, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University and a distinguished scientist, who has in his time served as Chairman of the CVCP and is a member of the Board of HEFCE.
A new President of Corpus succeeds Sir Keith Thomas, a great figure in the writing of history, and a dynamic Chairman of the University Press. He is Sir Tim Lankester, Director of the School of African and Oriental Studies, London University, and formerly Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education. At St John's the new President, in succession to Dr Bill Hayes, scientist, ex-Bursar, and central figure in university finance, is to be a Scholar; in fact, Sir Michael Scholar: who made his career mostly in the Treasury, including tax and public expenditure; and who ended as Permanent Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry.
One begins to see something like a pattern in some of these appointments. There was a time, thirty years ago, when colleges felt that the most urgent menace was from their own revolting young. As their Heads they elected lawyers and philosophers. Now they see it as coming from the Government and the civil service, and they look to the ranks of those who know, and can presumably handle, that dark and alarming world. Perhaps the BEOWULF supercomputer could come in handy here, too, to deal with the monsters that emerge from the mere.
At St Catherine's a new Master succeeds Lord Plant, whose retirement was announced last year. The new man is Sir Peter Williams, currently Chairman of Oxford Instruments Group PLC; and Chairman of Isis Innovation Ltd.; and of the Trustees of the National Museum of Science and Technology. He is President elect of the Institute of Physics. He works closely with the University and its spin-off companies.
And now we come very close to that rarest of journalistic events, a world scoop for the Creweian Oration, with the news, announced to the world today, that Balliol has pre-elected its Acting Master, Mr Andrew Graham, to succeed in 2001 to Dr Colin Lucas, the Vice-Chancellor, whose merits have just been so signally recognised by the University. Mr Graham is an economist and, we note without all that much surprise, a former adviser to the Government.
We turn to honours awarded in the year. And here there should surely be a flourish of trumpets before each honoured name; but you must imagine that. You will want me, I am sure, to give special prominence to the fact that in May Sir Roger Penrose, formerly Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, was appointed to the Order of Merit. It also gives great pleasure that the High Steward, Lord Goff, has been awarded the Grand Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In the two Honours Lists of the year five of us were knighted: the Warden of Nuffield, Dr Anthony Atkinson, for services to economics; Professor Royston Goode, lately Norton Rose Professor of English Law, for services to academic law; Professor Charles Hoare, lately James Martin Professor of Computing, for services to education and computer science; Professor George Radda, Professorial Fellow of Merton, for services to biomedical science; Professor John Rowlinson, lately Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry, for services to chemistry, chemical engineering, and education. It also gave general pleasure that two of our recent Encaenia honorands received knighthoods; Laurence Whistler, Honorary Fellow of Balliol, was knighted for services to art, and Professor Andrew Wiles, Honorary Fellow of Merton, whom the University honoured last year, was made KBE for services to science. And Mrs Vivien Duffield, Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Member of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors, was created DBE.
Mr Timothy Garton Ash, fellow of St Antony's, was created CMG. Professor Susan Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology; Professor Christopher Leaver, Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Sciences; the Reverend John McManners, Fellow and Chaplain of All Souls; Professor Richard McCrory, Fellow of Linacre; Dr Ann McPherson, Fellow of Green College; Professor Patricia Nuttall, Director of the Institute of Virology; and Ms Barbara Stocking, of the Faculty of Clinical Medicine, were created CBE; Dr Gerald Draper, Director of the Childhood Cancer Research Group Office, and Dr Sian Meryl Griffiths, Senior Clinical Lecturer, were created OBE; Dr Rosemary Hails, Lecturer of St Anne's; Miss Sybil Ovenstone, of University College; Mrs Barbara Paxman, of Hertford College; Mr Ronald Watson, custodian at Christ Church; and Professor Colin Webb, Professor of Laser Physics, were created MBE.
Three of our number were elected this year to Fellowships of the Royal Society: Professor James Binney, Professor of Physics; Dr Peter Somogyi, Director of the MRC Anatomical Unit; and Professor John Woodhouse, Professor of Geophysics. Sir Robert May, Royal Society Research Professor of Zoology and currently Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, is to be the next President of the Royal Society. And this year's George Eastman Visiting Professor, Professor Martin Karplus, was elected a Foreign Member.
The British Academy has elected to Fellowships five of us: Dr Anthony Hunt, Professor Wendy James, Professor Paul Klemperer, Dr Ross McKibbin, and Professor Wilferd Madelung.
Other distinctions follow, in alphabetical order of recipient, as the Orator will not attempt to rank them in order of distinction or eminence. All are distinguished, all are eminent, all (doubtless) are vibrant. I make no claim to be exhaustive: who can list the stars in the Milky Way?
Sir Jack Baldwin, Wayneflete Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the Leverhulme Medal. Professor Mike Brody, Professor of Information Engineering, has been awarded the Faraday Medal. Professor John Cardy, Professor of Physics, has been awarded the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize. Sir John Elliott, lately Regius Professor of Modern History, has been awarded the Balzan Prize for his contribution to Spanish History. Dr Niall Ferguson has been awarded the Wadsworth Prize for Business History for his book on the Rothschilds. Dr Michael Freeman has won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year award for his Railways and the Victorian Imagination. Professor Paul Harvey has been appointed Secretary of the Royal Zoological Society. Professor Guy Houlsby has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Sir Peter Morris, Nuffield Professor of Surgery, has been chosen as President of the International Surgical Society. Professor David Pettifor, Isaac Wolfson Professor of Metallurgy, has received the 1999 Award of the Royal Society and Brasiers' Company. Professor Peter Sleight has been awarded the Galen Medal in Therapeutics by the Society of Apothecaries. Dr Andrew Steane has been awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize. Professor James Woodhouse, Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian, has been awarded the D'Annunzio literary prize. Two of us were awarded silver medals by the Royal Society of Chemistry: Professor Richard Compton and Professor Richard Wayne.
A couple of interesting appointments: Professor John Krebs has become head of the new Food Standards Agency, and Dr Gordon Marshall, of Nuffield, has become Chief Executive of the ESRC.
The Senior Proctor made a departing Oration of especial elegance. He is (as it happens) a pupil of my own. He recorded his conviction that `Yes, these Proctors are quite something after all'; tempering it somewhat with the concluding throwaway remark that the most famous of all Proctors (in Latin, Procurators) was---of course---Pontius Pilate. An original closing sentence seems somehow to have been omitted from the published version; I believe it identified the modern successor of Judas Iscariot. He dwelt on the increasing age of university grandees, Heads of Houses, and members of the new Council of the University. We need to be aware of this. Despite Shakespeare, ripeness is not all.
It is about now that the Orator attempts to remind the company that the University does not consist only of the great, the good, and the grey-haired. There are also the junior members. A few rather random glances, then, into their characteristic activities. First, a couple of swots. Our junior members took three of the six top places in this year's Times Law Awards competition; and Mr Mark Tito, a research student in the Centre for Molecular Sciences, has received the first ever Science Graduate of the Year Award. As for their political life, there were allegations of irregularities in the election of the President of OUSU, and allegations of secrecy and of corruption at the Oxford Union. A typical year, in fact.
This was, to change the focus again, a spectacular year of success in sport. We beat Cambridge in the Boat Race, and in the twenty-eighth Varsity Games, which include Ultimate Frisbee. The Varsity Rugger Match was won, 16- -13, in the last four minutes; and the Rugby League match; the Under-21s and the Greyhounds also won their matches; while the women's match was won 52- -0. The senior University was also victorious in Soccer; and Boxing; and Dancesport; and Darts; and Oxford won the Varsity Baked Bean Eating Competition by the convincing margin of forty beans. A new OU Sports Federation has been launched, as has a new range of `Dark Blue' sporting clothes, fetchingly illustrated on p. 1152 of the Gazette, and billed as `classic yet trendy'. That phrase may yet replace, as our motto, the rather antiquated Dominus Illuminatio Mea. And there has been an exciting Soccer-style transfer: our new Head of the Development Office is Mr Mike Smithson, Development Director of Cambridge. What can it mean?
Plays put on during the year included Antony and Cleopatra and Fred and Madge; and ranged from The Revenger's Tragedy to Pillow Talk, and from Little Shop of Horrors to HMS Pinafore. We could choose between Right Ho, Jeeves, and Class Enemy (unless indeed they are the same play); we could follow She Stoops to Conquer with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (which does sound disconcertingly like the next step); Tickle Soup rubbed shoulders with Shallow Grave, and Under Milk Wood with Ben Jonson's Sejanus: his Fall, in which the passionate denunciations of informers and their ever growing power in the terrified Rome of Tiberius Caesar reminded an academic audience all too pointedly of the world of the TQA and the RAE.
This year we direct a glance at the world of the undergraduate clubs and societies. As one peruses the list (courtesy of the Proctors' Office), the eye falls on the Alternative Singing Society, a most suggestive name; I suspect that alternative singing is what is sometimes practised on my staircase in the evening; and the Beer Appreciation Society (Secretary and Treasurer, I observe, both members of St Catherine's). There is a Belly Dancing Society--- be still, my beating heart---but no sign of the merger that might produce two great missing organisations: the Beer Belly Dancing Society, and that rarest of tastes, the Beer Belly Appreciation Society. Another tempting merger might be between the Oxford Belles and the Oxford Gargoyles; tempting, at least, for the Gargoyles. More inscrutable are the activities of the Broom Cupboard Society, or of the Babylon 5 Society; opaque also the aims, and indeed the goals, of the Constructive Loonery Organisation Type Society (Senior Member: Dr Washington of Keble), not---of course---to be confused with its bitter rival, the Official Monster Raving Loony Society (Senior Member: Dr Davidson of St Edmund Hall). Neither of their mission statements was available. Let me not fail to mention the Nirvana Appreciation Society. There one might indeed feel at home.
Less amusing was an occupation of the Development Office, to protest against government policy on fees. It struck the trained minds of some of our young people that it if the University was damagingly short of money, then it would be a sensible contribution to paralyse our fund-raising. Among the demands of the occupiers was the charming one `that the University stop taking action against those who cannot (sic) pay their fees... through disagreement with the principle of an ‚litist educational system'. The logic of that cannot is interesting. A court order got them out. Damage done is reported to have cost £30,000. `This was an unwelcome episode' (the Senior Proctor). Hardly more welcome was the custard pie flung, by another vibrant young thinker, into the face of Ms Ann Widdecombe, MP.
Somehow Death always has the last word, and this year as usual the University has not been spared its ravages. John Ruskin died a hundred years ago; the centenary was marked by two exhibitions. This year we mourned the death of Cardinal Basil Hume, formerly of St Benet's Hall. From our own number we lost valued colleagues and loved friends. I record the names of Donald Boalch, Fellow of Corpus Christi; Margery Booth, Fellow of St Anne's; Brian Bower, Fellow of Green College; Vera Daniel, Fellow of St Hugh's; Richard Fargher, Fellow of St Edmund Hall; Don Fowler, Fellow of Jesus; John Hale, Fellow of Jesus; Bernard Halstead, Fellow of St Anne's; Francis Haskell, Fellow of Trinity; Janet Hiddleston, Fellow of St Hilda's; John Michael Hinton, Fellow of Worcester; Peter Levi, Fellow of St Catherine's and sometime Professor of Poetry; John Lloyd, Fellow of Wolfson; Colin Matthew, Fellow of St Hugh's; William McHardy, Member of the Governing Body of Christ Church; Catherine Middleton, Fellow of Mansfield; Harry Pitt, Fellow of Worcester; Richard Popplewell, Fellow of Trinity; Francis Price, Fellow of Keble; Patrick Reilly, Fellow of All Souls; Leighton Reynolds, Fellow of Brasenose; Ronald Robinson, Fellow of Balliol; Geoffrey de Ste Croix, Fellow of New College; Dennis Sciama, Fellow of All Souls; Rachel Trickett, Principal of St Hugh's; Robert Turner, Fellow of Green College; Anne Whiteman, Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall; Vincent Wright, Fellow of Nuffield. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
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