tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/university-of-cambridge-5264/articlesUniversity of Cambridge – The Conversation2022-11-15T17:22:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1933592022-11-15T17:22:38Z2022-11-15T17:22:38ZStirling prize: why Cambridge’s Magdalene library was named the UK’s best new building<p>Each year the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) awards its <a href="https://theconversation.com/stirling-prize-2014-what-should-we-value-in-architecture-29413">Stirling Prize</a> to one of the UK’s best new buildings. For its 26th year, the prize in 2022 was awarded to the Irish architect Niall McLaughlin, for the new library he designed for Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.</p>
<p>A beautifully crafted building, McLaughlin’s library is a large box of books and the space in which to study them. But in housing an archive, a social space and a gallery, the building has a remit that is more expansive. With imagination, at the right moment, it has the potential to sing.</p>
<p>Set against the backdrop of the college garden, the natural materials (brick and wood) used throughout and the masterful way daylight has been introduced within its spaces evoke long-standing traditions of research. The award citation has duly acknowledged the building’s sensitive engagement with place and impressive sustainability credentials. </p>
<p>Contrary to, say, the <a href="https://placesjournal.org/article/seattle-central-library-civic-architecture-in-the-age-of-media/?cn-reloaded=1">urban-techno vision</a> of other contemporary libraries, including Seattle Central Library designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Seattle-based LMN Architects, McLaughlin’s design aspires to timelessness. </p>
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<h2>Architecture of line</h2>
<p>McLaughlin has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/oct/13/magdalene-college-cambridge-library-riba-stirling-prize">described</a> the library as a “thicket of books”. This chimes with what research <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/arq-architectural-research-quarterly/article/abs/combs-cages-and-thickets-niall-mclaughlin-and-an-architecture-of-line/043E1945BA2E444A4EDE88015696431E">has described</a> as McLaughlin’s “architecture of line”, wherein repeated linear forms are often worked into lattices or arrays. </p>
<p>The edifice stands beside the wide lawns of a large informal garden, graced by mature trees in central Cambridge. It features a rhythmical array of chimneys between square towers topped by roof lanterns. The towers at each corner are simple planar forms that give the box its solidity. Those between carry more complex, projecting timber windows that animate the south, east and west facades.</p>
<p>When it comes to designing for Oxford and Cambridge universities, McLaughlin’s firm has form. It has had 15 commissions from various colleges in total, including a <a href="https://www.rcc.ac.uk/about-us/edward-king-chapel">chapel</a>, an <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2018/08/02/niall-mclaughlin-architects-sultan-nazrin-shah-centre-stirling-prize-architecture/">auditorium</a> and award-winning <a href="https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/news/catherine-hughes-building-wins-riba-south-award/">student accomodation</a>.</p>
<p>This familiarity with the requirements of these historical places of study is on display in how the entrance to the Magdalene library is a discreet side entrance, a common mode of entry in older colleges. It is a judicious choice, in that it makes the building more approachable for daily use and less of a grand monument to learning. </p>
<p>The entrance hall within separates the building’s potentially noisier spaces –- its gallery and social space –- from the library itself. If study-bound, you must slip sideways again, to the left, where you encounter the capacious librarian’s desk. </p>
<p>The initial reading room is tall with a triple-height ceiling, meaning that as soon as you enter it, you can see all the way up to the roof. Natural light floods in through a large, deeply framed window to the west. A set of naturally lit reading rooms then daringly climbs the building. The effect is not unlike that of the Dutch graphic artist <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7515042/">MC Escher’s work</a>.</p>
<p>This complex tartan-grid arrangement of spaces allows readers to have access to the time of day – and view to the outside – that a window offers, whether it is close by or distant, deeply embrasured or a picture window. As a result, the library is afforded a general feeling of openness. </p>
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<h2>Where light and detail meet</h2>
<p>As I have shown in my book, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780203715505/architecture-light-mary-ann-steane">The Architecture of Light</a>, in a <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/libraries-and-light">library</a>, a strong understanding of solar geometry and the prevailing climate of light needs to be married to an awareness of readers’ varying needs for casual, focused and more distracted seeing. </p>
<p>Here, everywhere you look, the balance of enclosure and exposure is carefully handled to maintain a general openness while allowing certain areas to be more hidden away and others to have good access to natural light. Sunlight does enter in places, particularly on the top floor, either falling where no reader could sit or controlled through shutters or blinds. The glow on the upper timber surfaces enriches the user’s experience of the space. </p>
<p>McLaughlin’s attention to daylight brings to mind the UK Arts and Crafts movement and work by architects including <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297429692_The_internal_environment_of_the_Glasgow_School_of_Art_by_Charles_Rennie_Mackintosh">Charles Rennie Mackintosh</a>, <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/philip-webb-a-new-vision-for-domestic-space">Philip Speakman Webb</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14601176.1998.10435562">Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott</a>, which displays a similar focus on detailing and daylighting. </p>
<p>The windows vary in scale and form, depending on the facades they articulate, the needs of the interiors to which they give a view and the exteriors they observe. In this way, McLaughlin’s building is not closed off from its neighbours but in conversation with them. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/about-magdalen-college/the-history-of-magdalen-college/">Magdalene College</a> began life in the early 15th century and has been accommodating academic study on its riverside site for almost 600 years. McLaughlin’s addition has been <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2022/10/14/new-library-of-magdalene-college-in-cambridge-designed-by-niall-mclaughlin-architects-wins-stirling-prize/#:%7E:text=The%20Royal%20Institute%20of%20British,aim%20of%20lasting%20400%20years.">designed to last 400 years more</a>. This represents a welcome counterpoint to the poverty of <a href="https://c2cjournal.ca/2020/05/how-architecture-lost-its-way-in-the-modern-world/">short-term thinking</a> on which so much contemporary construction is predicated. </p>
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<p>The library aspires to <a href="https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/from-modern-to-timeless-niall-mclaughlins-magdalene-college-library">timelessness</a> through laudably resilient construction as well as an internal consistency of design, as if to imply a monument, or a temple like the Parthenon. </p>
<p>The significance of a library to a college can, of course, only be metaphorically sacred. But perhaps Magdalene felt the need to endow the building with <a href="https://www.ribaj.com/buildings/magdalene-college-cambridge-university-library-niall-mclaughlin">an institutional dignity</a> in order to assert a continuity of values in the face of historical change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193359/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Ann Steane received funding around twelve years ago from the AHRC for a research project 'Designing with light in Libraries' with a colleague at the University of Cambridge, Professor Koen Steemers. </span></em></p>Designed to last 400 years and embrace all styles of learning, the new Magdalene College library draws on a long history of light-filled British architecture.Mary Ann Steane, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/872792017-12-04T09:09:15Z2017-12-04T09:09:15ZBlack students on going to Oxbridge: ‘it’s not even asked or pushed for, it’s just assumed no one is applying’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196976/original/file-20171129-12072-1b58434.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just 1.5% of all offers from Oxford and Cambridge universities went to black British A-level students in 2015, recent data <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/19/oxford-accused-of-social-apartheid-as-colleges-admit-no-black-students">obtained by Labour MP David Lammy</a> revealed. The majority of places went to students in the south-east of England with professional parents. </p>
<p>This has sparked <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/oxford-cambridge-universities-black-ethnic-minorities-diversity-admissions-reform-mps-labour-a8018531.html">extensive debate</a> about the accessibility of elite higher education institutions for the socioeconomically disadvantaged and black, Asian and minority ethnic students. It has also led to calls for elite institutions to do more to improve their widening participation schemes and offer more places to students from different backgrounds.</p>
<p>In response to these debates, the Oxford African and Caribbean Society <a href="http://oxfordacs.com">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is true that the data reveals significant issues of institutionalised cultural and economic bias at Oxford; however it is also true that Oxford is a microcosm of the deep structural issues embedded in the British education system.</p>
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<h2>The Oxbridge battle</h2>
<p><a href="http://lntrg.education.ox.ac.uk/projects/understanding-widening-participation-in-elite-he-institutions/">Our recent research</a> focuses on understanding the experiences of ten students who are attending Oxford through an innovative widening participation approach. Of these students, six are also black, Asian or minority ethnic, while the other four are white.</p>
<p>In our research, the students described making the decision to apply to Oxford as a “fight” or a “battle”. They felt they had to overcome their educational backgrounds, particularly the limitations imposed on them by their state schools. These had given them the impression that Oxford was an unrealistic option. </p>
<p>The students felt there was an assumption by some school teachers that with their backgrounds, they would not want to, or be able to successfully apply to Oxford and would not “fit in”. As one student explained:</p>
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<p>It’s not even asked or pushed for, it’s just assumed that no one is applying to Oxbridge.“</p>
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<p>A recent report by the Sutton Trust similarly found 43% of state school teachers would <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/teachers-oxbridge-perceptions-polling/">rarely or never advise their bright pupils to apply to Oxbridge</a>. And in our research, some students felt their teachers were also limited by the wider education system. Time limitations meant they had to focus on maximising the number of passing grades in exams – at the expense of students who could achieve top marks. </p>
<h2>Strong self-belief needed</h2>
<p>The students we spoke to viewed their successes as being "in spite of” their schooling – rather than because of it. For many of these students, to actually apply to Oxford meant they had to overcome both a lack of support from their teachers as well as cultures that sometimes limited high academic attainment.</p>
<p>This meant that students required an enormous amount of self-belief to “fight” against these structural limitations. They described how this self-belief – often supported by family and friends outside school – was essential. It was vital to their desire to apply to Oxford.</p>
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<span class="caption">Education for all?</span>
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<p>In this way, our research highlights the impact schooling has on student aspiration. It shows that there is a need for deeper partnerships between schools and elite universities to support these students and encourage them to apply. </p>
<p>This would help to challenge negative perceptions of elite institutions as well as helping to diversify the student population at these universities. This is important because as these institutions becomes more diverse and welcoming, they will become places where all students feel valued – and negative perceptions will eventually recede. </p>
<p>Our research emphasises the need for elite institutions to take a more radical approach to their admissions processes and entry criteria. And although this is a microcosm of the deep structural limitations that exist within the education system as a whole, these institutions should engage with those wider limitations. This should be done by modelling real change and working with schools to support all students’ aspirations and attainment – not just those students from the wealthiest backgrounds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87279/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Robson is a member of the Labour Party and has received funding from the Royal Society, the British Academy, The Edge Foundation, HEFCW, and Culham St Gabriel's Trust</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katriona O'Sullivan receives funding from the Irish Research Council for Research for Policy and Society </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niall Winters has received funding from a number of organisation including ESRC-DFID and EU Horizon 2020. </span></em></p>New findings reveal only 1.5% of all offers from Oxford and Cambridge went to black British A-level students.James Robson, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of OxfordKatriona O'Sullivan, Lecturer, National University of Ireland MaynoothNiall Winters, Associate Professor of Learning and New Technologies, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/442502015-07-08T11:08:27Z2015-07-08T11:08:27ZAre Oxbridge tutorials still the best way to teach students how to think?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87624/original/image-20150707-1302-m97hm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the way to challenge some student thinking. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arne-halvorsen/10015319016/sizes/l">aha42 | tehaha/www.flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Special government funding given to Oxford and Cambridge to help pay for the universities’ undergraduate tutorial teaching system is <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/oxbridge-to-be-stripped-of-special-funding-feeding-the-tutorial-system">coming</a> to an end. Oxford will lose £4.2m and Cambridge £2.7m “institution-specific” funding from the Higher Education Funding Council, which is also used to help fund the universities’ undergraduate interview process. </p>
<p>A total of <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/lt/howfund/institution/">25 higher education institutions</a> have traditionally received the special funding. After a recent review, the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/2015/201510/HEFCE2015_10.pdf">rules have changed </a> so that only institutions where 60% of their activity comes from one <a href="https://www.hesa.ac.uk/content/view/102/143/1/2/">student cost centre</a> – a subject area such as art and design or clinical medicine – are eligible. This has ruled out less subject-specific institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge. The remaining eligible institutions, which still includes the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Royal Academy of Music, <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/2015/201510/HEFCE2015_10.pdf">will be able to</a> to apply for the funding. </p>
<p>The cut will come as no surprise to either Oxford or Cambridge. The subsidy has been threatened before, <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/queries-over-special-funding-for-oxbridge/420748.article">amid calls for more transparency</a> over its use. But it looks unlikely that this will spell the end of the Oxbridge tutorial. </p>
<p>Despite the financial burden this teaching system places on colleges, the tutorial (or supervision, as it is known in Cambridge) system is deeply embedded in both universities’ intellectual psyche. Oxford’s <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/strategic-plan">current strategic plan</a> describes it as a “cornerstone” of its undergraduate education. </p>
<p>Key to the tutorial’s resilience is its adaptability. The only constant is the presence of a few people in a room for an hour, with a tutor leading a conversation, and usually giving feedback on the written work (anything from essays to maths problems) that students have prepared beforehand. Beyond that, the permutations are endless. </p>
<h2>Stimulating debate</h2>
<p>Over the course of an eight-week term, Oxbridge students are likely to have between 12 and 16 tutorials, spending an average of 13 to 15 hours preparing for each. Their individual reading, thinking and writing is where much of the learning is meant to take place. Along the way, students gain academic self confidence and the ability to organise their ideas. The tutorial’s history and changing purpose is usefully reviewed by contributors to a 2008 collection, <a href="http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk/Publications/Resources/OxCHEPS_OP1_08.pdf">Thanks you taught me how to think</a>, edited by the bursar of New College Oxford, David Palfreyman. Most of the authors reflect on their own experiences of tutorial teaching to defend its role in fostering critical and independent analysis. </p>
<p>Research by <a href="http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/27328/1/Variation_in_students'_experiences_of_tutorials.pdf">Paul Ashwin</a> at Oxford has highlighted that in the best tutorials, knowledge is seen as contested. Topics are opened up for debate, tutors admit to gaps in their own knowledge, and students are treated as academic equals. But Ashwin’s interviews also highlight that many students, fresh from the prescriptive approaches and high-stakes testing of secondary education, are uncertain about their role. Some felt the purpose of the tutorial was to clarify misunderstandings, while others felt it was to gain new knowledge. By the same token, tutors are also increasingly uncertain about the academic skills to expect of their students.</p>
<p>His findings show that the best tutorials remain demanding, stimulating and thought-provoking, for student and tutor alike. The weekly discussions feed into the learning that takes place for the next essay, and the tutorial becomes one link in a chain of learning, dialogue, feedback and academic development. </p>
<h2>Not for everyone</h2>
<p>For all these strengths, the tutorial system does have its weaknesses. Some feel that its highly accelerated timescale (can you really read and digest three or four books in a week?) places unrealistic expectations on the students and is detrimental to the quality of the finished product. Even in the 1960s, the <a href="http://www.oua.ox.ac.uk/enquiries/congandconvsix.html">Oxford University Franks Commission</a> worried that the tutorial was being both misused (to convey more information than was necessary) and overused (to improve exam results). </p>
<p>Critics <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13562510020029590#.VZzpGrcb4TU">such as Lewis Elton</a>, writing in 2001, have argued that Oxford tutorials continue to be a didactic and teacher-centred experience. The Oxford University Students’ Union has highlighted a risk that tutorials <a href="http://oxfordstudent.com/2012/11/29/blagging-vs-thinking/">foster a culture of “blagging”</a>. Social class, gender and educational background all impact on a student’s academic confidence. Not everyone has the independence to relish the “sink-or-swim” tutorial environment. Increasingly, the colleges are responding by providing study skills advice for students. </p>
<p>The tutorial has other downsides. The commitment to employing a large fellowship to provide this model of teaching places a significant financial commitment on colleges. While the precise costs are <a href="http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk/MainSite%20pages/Resources/OxCHEPS_OP13.pdf">politically sensitive</a> and hard to calculate, the richer colleges can rely on their endowment incomes, while the poorer colleges are much more vulnerable. One <a href="http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk/MainSite%20pages/Resources/OxCHEPS_OP13.pdf">analysis</a> at Oxford put the annual cost of running tutorials for an undergraduate’s education at just over £4,000 a year. </p>
<p>Tutorials also make heavy demands on the time of established academics, many of whom are juggling a range of research responsibilities. Some pass on their tutorial responsibilities to doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom are keen to get mentored teaching experience. But their abilities vary, and assuring the quality of provision is tricky. And no matter who is teaching, it is difficult for students to raise concerns anonymously. </p>
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<span class="caption">Prepared for the real world?</span>
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<p>Recently, Jonathan Black, the head of Oxford’s careers service <a href="http://www.cherwell.org/news/uk/2015/04/08/head-of-oxford-careers-service-defends-tutorial-comments">admitted</a> that the tutorial was not always the best way to nurture the team-working skills demanded by employers. Recognising this, some tutors experiment with a mixture of different group sizes and small group teaching techniques.</p>
<p>Despite these challenges, the <a href="https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Small_group_teaching_1.pdf">tutorial continues to evolve</a>. New generations of tutors introduce fresh ideas, creative approaches and new technologies. They bring to the table a more nuanced understanding of the academic challenges that face students when they leave secondary school. Some mix one-on-on tutorials with larger classes, or individual essays with group-projects. Others incorporate social media and other online resources. If the strength of the tutorial is its adaptability, reports of its likely demise are greatly exaggerated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Oxford and Cambridge are to lose special funding for their undergraduate tutorial teaching system.David Mills, Lecturer in Pedagogy and the Social Sciences, University of OxfordPatrick Alexander, Senior Lecturer (Education) Oxford Brookes University; College Lecturer in Social Anthropology, St. Hugh's College, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409672015-06-18T20:10:28Z2015-06-18T20:10:28ZFrom Newton to Hawking and beyond: a short history of the Lucasian Chair<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85484/original/image-20150618-23256-bqqg2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=216%2C281%2C1762%2C1474&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Isaac Newton was the most famous Lucasian Professor, but many other colourful figures have also occupied 'Newton's Chair'.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_Newton,_English_School,_1715-20.jpg#/media/File:Isaac_Newton,_English_School,_1715-20.jpg">Bonhams/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 1 physicist <a href="http://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/%7Emec/">Michael Cates</a> will be the 19th person to sit in what is perhaps the most <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/general-science/history-science/newton-hawking-history-cambridge-universitys-lucasian-professors-mathematics">prestigious “chair” in science</a> when he assumes the post of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathematics">Lucasian Professor of Mathematics</a> at Cambridge University. </p>
<p>Although sometimes called “Newton’s chair” after its most famous holder, Sir Isaac was not the only brilliant mind, nor the most colourful individual, to occupy the post.</p>
<p>The Lucasian Chair was founded in 1663 at the bequest of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lucas_(died_1663)">Henry Lucas</a> (1640-1648), who was a member of Parliament for Cambridge University. In his will, he <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/general-science/history-science/newton-hawking-history-cambridge-universitys-lucasian-professors-mathematics">provided</a> “a yearly stipend and salarie for a professor […] of mathematicall sciences in the said Vniversitie” to “honor that greate body” and assist “that parte of learning which hitherto hath not bin provided for”. </p>
<p>The Lucasian Chair has been held by a fascinating procession of scientists, including</p>
<ul>
<li>Physicist and mathematician <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/isaac-newton-9422656">Issac Newton</a> (who held the chair from 1669 to 1702)</li>
<li>Astronomer <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Biddell-Airy">George Biddell Airy</a> (1826 to 1828)</li>
<li>Mathematician and computing pioneer <a href="http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/babbage.html">Charles Babbage</a> (1828 to 1839)</li>
<li>Physicist and mathematician <a href="http://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/george-gabriel-stokes">George Stokes</a> (1849 to 1903)</li>
<li>Physicist <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1933/dirac-bio.html">Paul Dirac</a> (1932 to 1969)</li>
<li>Theoretical physicist <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-W-Hawking">Stephen Hawking</a> (1979 to 2009) and most recently, </li>
<li>Theoretical physicist <a href="http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/m.b.green/">Michael Green</a> (2009 to 2015). </li>
</ul>
<p>It also has the unusual distinction of having been held by a famous – though fictitious and wholly artificial person – Star Trek: The Next Generation’s <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Data">Data</a>, in the series’ final episode, “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111281/">All Good Things…</a>”. But that is another quantum timeline.</p>
<h2>Smart seat</h2>
<p>The first Lucasian Professor, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Isaac-Barrow">Isaac Barrow</a>, held both the Regius Professorship of Greek and Gresham Chair in geometry. </p>
<p>Sadly, Barrow’s early ardour for mathematics had waned by the time he took up the Chair in 1663. His “method of tangents”, though, was seen as ground breaking at the time. This proto-calculus set the scene for his brilliant successor: Isaac Newton.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.biography.com/people/isaac-newton-9422656">Newton</a> was elected to the Chair after his <em>anni mirabiles</em> of 1666. According to <a href="https://royalsociety.org/library/moments/newton-apple/">William Stukeley’s 1752 biography</a>, that is the year Newton inferred the law of gravity by observing an apple falling in his orchard as he “sat in contemplative mood”. </p>
<p>While Lucasian Professor, Newton developed his most important contributions to science, in particular the masterpieces <a href="http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/1">Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica</a> (1687) and <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33504/33504-h/33504-h.htm">Opticks</a> (1704).</p>
<p>At the time of Newton’s election in 1669, the Lucasian Chair was one of eight <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professorships_at_the_University_of_Cambridge">Chairs at Cambridge</a>. The Lucasian Professor is elected, then as now. The election is made by the masters of the Colleges at Cambridge, with the vice chancellor able to break a deadlock if required.</p>
<h2>An uneven history</h2>
<p>Despite its prestige, the history of the Chair is not one of undiluted greatness. </p>
<p>The stories of the post-Newtonian Chairs of William Whiston (from 1702 to 1710), Nicholas Saunderson (1711 to 1739), John Colson (1739 to 1760), Edward Waring (1760 to 1798) and Isaac Milner (1798 to 1820) was largely one of translating, teaching, expanding and developing the great works of former Chair-holder, Newton.</p>
<p>In the latter half of the 19th century, as science became the arena of professional scientists rather than dilettante gentlemen, the Lucasian Chair was sometimes used as a stepping stone to more lucrative or important positions. </p>
<p>Robert Woodhouse (Chair from 1820 to 1822) lasted only two years in the post. He was rewarded for his “conformity” by securing the <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1911Obs....34..341L">Plumian Chair of mathematics</a> and the directorship of the Cambridge astronomical observatory. </p>
<p>His successor, Thomas Turton (from 1822 to 1826), described as “mathematically inert and utterly reliable”, departed to the more prestigious Regius Chair of Divinity (founded in 1540 by Henry VIII) and better paid dean-ships, eventually becoming the Bishop of Ely.</p>
<h2>Dirac and the quantum age</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, while the term might not apply to all holders of the Chair, Paul Dirac (from 1932 to 1969), was indisputably brilliant. In fact, Dirac personified the stereotype of the lone genius. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85495/original/image-20150618-23217-1e60wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Dirac was one of the more brilliant Lucasian Professors. He predicted the existence of antimatter before it was first detected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1933/dirac-facts.html">Nobel Foundation</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Einstein <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zXm1Bso1VREC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=Einstein+Dirac+his+balancing+on+the+dizzying+path+between+genius+and&source=bl&ots=OKhIznXMDa&sig=ySmItECFnf8EzVFModWB4g4rLXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAmoVChMI-MHji6-OxgIVU328Ch38FwCQ#v=onepage&q=Einstein%20Dirac%20his%20balancing%20on%20the%20dizzying%20path%20between%20genius%20and&f=false">said of him</a>: “This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful.”</p>
<p>By the age of 26, Dirac had, in the period from 1925 to 1928, developed his own theory of quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum theory of the electron, as well as predicted the existence of antimatter. </p>
<p><a href="http://dragonlaughing.tumblr.com/post/120042169749/tale-of-a-strange-man-the-biography-of-physicist">Dirac</a>, like Newton, also made significant contributions to science in his tenure as Lucasian Professor. According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polkinghorne">John Polkinghorne</a>, Dirac was once asked about his most fundamental belief, upon which, “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=dzALOdPG-CAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">he strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations</a>”.</p>
<h2>Hawking: the stopgap professor?</h2>
<p>Of the more recent holders of the Lucasian Chair, it is the name of Stephen Hawking, who held the Professorship for three decades from 1979 to 2009, that has become most synonymous with the post – and a household name at that. </p>
<p>In an interview with <a href="https://ucdavis.academia.edu/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8neMialet">Hélène Mialet</a>, Hawking said he always assumed he was elected as a stopgap professor because he was not expected to live a long time and his “<a href="http://www.academia.edu/2336920/Reading_Hawking_s_Presence_An_Interview_with_a_Self_Effacing_Man">work would not disgrace the standards expected of the Lucasian chair</a>”. </p>
<p>Nonetheless he confounded his doctors and held the chair until the retirement age of 67.</p>
<p>Hawking had, at the time of his election, hoped the Chair might go to a brilliant scientist who was not already affiliated with or educated at Cambridge. This would have been a remarkable change. </p>
<p>Holders of the Lucasian Chair have all been Cambridge graduates, in addition to being male and British. Only Dirac and Hawking have undergraduate degrees from a university other than Cambridge (Bristol and Oxford, respectively). Dirac alone was not of British birth – he was a Swiss national, though born in England in 1902 and acquiring British nationality in 1919.</p>
<p>The quality of Hawking’s scientific output puts this “stopgap professor” in the Lucasian top-three league, along with Newton and Dirac. </p>
<p>Incidentally, Stephen Hawking played a game of poker with Star Trek’s Data – the fictitious future Lucasian Chair – along with fellow Chair Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein (the latter played by actors, of course) in Star Trek: the Next Generation’s episode “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708700/">Descent</a>”.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>Hawking was succeeded by <a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2009/oct/20/string-theorist-takes-over-from-hawking">Michael Green</a>, who was Lucasian Professor from 2009 to this year. Green made long-term contributions to mathematics, including pioneering string theory in 1984. </p>
<h2>What does the future of the chair hold?</h2>
<p>Michael Cates is certainly no stopgap professor. Cates is an expert in the statistical mechanics of “soft materials”, examples of which are: colloids (paint); emulsions (mayonnaise); foams (shaving cream); surfactant solutions (shampoo); and liquid crystals (flat screen TVs). </p>
<p>His models capture the essential physics without including all the, at times confounding, chemical detail. </p>
<p>Prior to his election as Lucasian Professor, Cates held a <a href="https://royalsociety.org/grants/case-studies/michael-cates/">Royal Society Research Professorship</a> at Edinburgh. At age 54, he will likely hold the Chair for more than a decade. It will be fascinating to see what he contributes to mathematics and the ongoing Lucasian history during his tenure.</p>
<p>As for future chairs? If Star Trek is any indication, it will continue to be populated by some of the most brilliant minds in the known universe – although one wonders when it might be finally held by a brilliant woman.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some of history’s most brilliant scientists have occupied the Lucasian Chair, including Newton, Dirac and Hawking. Others were not so stellar.Kevin Orrman-Rossiter, PhD Research Student, History & Philosophy of Science, The University of MelbourneMorgan Saletta, Adjunct Faculty, History and Philosophy of Science and Department of Management and Marketing, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134422013-04-12T03:12:13Z2013-04-12T03:12:13ZLeszek Borysiewicz and Lynn Meek In Conversation – full transcript<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22373/original/bb2hdpyb-1365727859.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C558%2C315&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz talks with one of our academic experts about the changing role of universities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cambridge University</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>To listen to the conversation between Leszek Borysiewicz and Lynn Meek, please see the link below. An edited transcript is <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-cambridge-vc-urges-unis-to-help-third-world-13453">available here</a>.</em></p>
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F87486013"></iframe>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> Hello, I’m Professor Lynn Meek from the LH Martin Institute of the University of Melbourne and I’m talking today with the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, for The Conversation. On behalf of the Martin Institute I’d like to welcome you here to Australia and taking the time to talk to me today, and also I must apologise for mispronouncing your name. </p>
<p>To get started, I saw in a <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120509134452129&query=Borysiewicz+">recent article</a> in the University World News, you wrote that universities hold the key to economic growth. </p>
<p>Would you explain your argument in a bit more detail? Is this the case for all universities? And is there a danger in too closely tying the mission of the university to that of economic utilitarianism?</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> I think that is really a very important and multi-faceted question. Is there a danger of tying it too closely to universities’ missions? I think the answer is yes. </p>
<p>There’s a primacy of mission within universities, which has to focus on excellence and quality in relationship to education and research. This is enshrined in Cambridge in the <a href="http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/mission.html">mission statement</a> of the university, which is actually one of the shortest mission statements I’ve ever read. </p>
<p>You might think for an 800 year-old institution it would read like twenty pages of a book but it’s very short. It merely says “to serve society through education, learning and research at the highest standards of international excellence”. It may be short but it actually encompasses a number of elements. </p>
<p>The issue within Cambridge is the exploitation of discovery is part of that serving society element and therefore, it’s a perfectly valid and important part of the mission but it can’t substitute for the other parts themselves. So we don’t divorce it, we actually link it very firmly. </p>
<p>Now, at Cambridge, what we don’t try and do is to set up a system whereby the university forces exploitation on anyone. It’s a personal decision by academic staff. Secondly, we have structures which are geared towards building a local ecosystem around Cambridge rather than worrying about a line in the accounts of the university which says so much came in from intellectual property. </p>
<p>The truth is the intellectual property, unlike many institutions in Britain, we let go to the individual academics. And we use an office, called <a href="http://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/">Cambridge Enterprise</a>, to help them exploit it, but we don’t force them to use that particular office - it’s just we believe we can offer a provision that’s second-to-none to the individual investigator to help them exploit that activity.</p>
<p>We have probably the most generous benefits in the United Kingdom to investigators who do this, and we support them through a variety of angel and other funding. </p>
<p>But then something else has happened, and it’s an element of that structure which it doesn’t try to hang on to that enterprise but gives the freedom to individuals to develop, has resulted in this explosion which we call the “Cambridge Phenomenon” but which euphemistically - particularly around Europe - is known as “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/30/hi-tech-cluster-cambridge-business">Silicon Fen</a>” to separate it from Silicon Valley. </p>
<p>In fact, some of us might argue it’s just as successful as Silicon Valley if you take it as a fraction of GDP or a fraction of the economy.</p>
<p>To understand this, just ponder for a moment - Cambridge has a population of 100,000 people, and with the local region it’s a population of around 600-650,000: roughly 1% of the UK population. Within that population, through the sort of methodologies that I’ve adopted and this sort of laissez-faire approach to intellectual property, 1,500 companies have been created. We now know we’ve created around 53,000 jobs in that area. We have nine £1 billion companies; two £10 billion companies in that territory. We have a population that has changed dramatically, in as much as 25% of the working population is now employed in knowledge-intensive industries. </p>
<p>The UK average is only 11 per cent, so we’ve actually changed the nature of the workforce by the fact that we’ve ceded to this ecosystem. </p>
<p>And lastly, it attracts the big players in. So around us, we just recently had the announcement that AstraZeneca is moving its headquarters <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/31/astra-zeneca-move-south-north-west-vital-element">from London to Cambridge</a> in this area together with a major development. </p>
<p>GlaxoSmithKline are there, Microsoft are there, all of these players are coming in and building on a large number of small companies that owe to a greater or lesser extent, but are increasingly also interacting together and creating an ecosystem where Cambridge is there but supporting their entrepreneurial activity. </p>
<p>So it doesn’t deviate or change us as a university - we still are very fortunate in the number of Noble Prizes that we have won and everything else; it doesn’t change the primacy of our mission, but it enables something very special to start happening in a region and engages us very closely with the regional population as well.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> I suppose looking at that too and considering the degree to which that model can be replicated elsewhere, leads me to my next question. </p>
<p>I understand that in your <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-and-the-poorest-billion-13449">Richard Larkins Oration</a> will explore the potential of the global research university enhancing research and innovation for development in low and middle income countries. </p>
<p>What do you see as the main barriers that need to be overcome to fully realise this potential and to what degree is the Cambridge model a movable feast?</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> That always is a good question because we all find solutions – the question is always, are these solutions local or are these solutions to a systemic problem and therefore, are there systemic answers to that problem? </p>
<p>At this point I think I would probably say that it’s a local solution and therefore individuals trying to emulate it should look at it in-the-round and then extract from it what is actually going to work in their own ecosystems. I mean everything is in a cultural context that is different at different settings. </p>
<p>In relation to the developing world, there are three major elements where I’ve always felt that universities will have a major role to play. </p>
<p>First, I think it’s our multi-disciplinarity, so many of the problems facing resource-poor countries at the present time are large scale problems and you’re going to find some local solutions but you’re going to need a huge amount of interdisciplinary to actually to being to try to tackle the problem. </p>
<p>Now I’ve always held the premise that the last great integrators of research activity are universities. It’s the only place - I’ve worked at the Medical Research Council and headed it in the United Kingdom, and that’s fine for biomedicine - but actually universities are the only place where you will find those in sociology, economics, business studies working alongside medics, molecular biologists, physicists and engineers and it’s therefore in the university that offers an integrating activity. </p>
<p>Secondly, there’s something special about the nature of that university interaction - we’re trusted. Because unlike many organisations, sometimes if you’re trying to help with the US dollar, many countries in the developing world will just not accept that US dollar from the US government, whereas we’re an important and respected interlocutor. </p>
<p>The challenge though if you’re trying to develop the local economy is how far you can get sufficient peer group engagement and, therefore, do we have to play a role as universities in building up local capacity to ensure that you can get engagement in a commercial sense between spin-outs in Cambridge and in that country and perhaps one of the biggest challenges - and certainly one that I’ve often found when you sit and assess grants coming in for major overseas programs - is how infrequently you’ll find the small and medium enterprise sector in the developing country being actually engaged: usually it’s a major external supplier. </p>
<p>So I think the big problems are to ensure that there is equivalent quality and peer capacity to have that engagement in country that you can establish meaningful partnerships and then allowing those partnerships to thrive by the recognition of the local ecosystem to see how far you can get those commercial interactions happening.</p>
<p>So if you can only deliver a part of that equation you will have made a difference I believe, and an important difference, and universities are ideally placed to do that. But you should aspire for rather more and it is possible that some of those interactions would develop, and you might be able to catalyse them from a university-to-university interactions rather than trying to direct them from that end, which I think is a real danger if you try to over-manage these situations. Allow them to happen by organic interaction.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> One of the things that has become very evident now is that the research networks, and particular international research networks, is where the real action has been in terms of producing results, and there’s the potential there for the developing countries to benefit from those networks coming in. </p>
<p>But at the same time we also know that, in terms of higher education and research, that the core isn’t a few global countries, and I suppose, the next question is, realistically, do you think the present systems can and should evolve so as to better include the developing countries? Or will the dominance of the western research university continue, with “brain drain” being the norm rather than brain circulation? I think there’s a tension there between the two and potential in one way, and continuing dominance in an other.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> I think you’re getting to one of the core questions of the problem. </p>
<p>You know we’re seeing this drain from countries in the developing world: we see it in the health services, we’re short in many countries, and I suspect Australia is the same for nursing staff and elsewhere, and we’re recruiting mercilessly from the Philippines and from poorer countries, and offering very good job security to individuals from those countries, but actually were denuding their capacity. </p>
<p>And that can only be countered by helping to develop that capacity locally. I do worry about this idea of almost like a colonial way of “send us your good people and we will educate them” - it isn’t the way forward.</p>
<p>It’s about helping that country develop its capacity because otherwise, as the <a href="http://www.interacademycouncil.net/">InterAcademy</a> report showed earlier on, if you don’t develop that capacity you cannot develop your own intellectual property and in the absence of that intellectual property the chance of getting small companies to really develop in that area, to build up a system whereby that country can begin to operate on an equivalent peer-to-peer basis, is always going to be restricted. </p>
<p>Now as in most industries I suspect the universities are always going to have a global elite. Obviously my job, day job, is making absolutely certain that Cambridge remains part of that grouping. </p>
<p>The question is going to be how that grouping behaves towards those other countries, and that’s a cultural context. What I’m trying to call for in the Larkins Oration is actually that universities recognise their responsibility for engagement and help these institutions to actually gain that access to some of those networks that you talked about that are so critical. </p>
<p>You know we create them and we get together with scholars from Melbourne and Cambridge and London and New York or elsewhere. But do we actually invite those from those countries, and until they’re seen by all of us as equivalent peer with their own experts, it’s going to be very difficult for them to break into those systems. </p>
<p>So there’s a responsibility on us to help them get to that level, whether it’s just by capacity building, but it’s by engaging them in projects and programs that we deal with, and not just trying to see them ceded as colonial projects in countries.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> And in policy terms, it seems to be - at least over the last few years - a real shift from international policy about the developing countries where the emphasis from UNESCO and World Bank and other international bodies was on education for all and certainly let the universities languish particular what we see now in Africa: they were more productive two decades ago than they are currently.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> And that to me that’s the real problem because the question is, in times of need when your resources are small, are universities the element to sacrifice - it is the easy one to see in those settings. </p>
<p>I mean in some countries, remember universities globally are always the place where criticism mostly arises, academic staff are never going to be staff that are going to be “yes men” for any government, and some governments find that very uncomfortable to have a university that’s always being critical of them. </p>
<p>That’s our nature as academics; that’s what we do, we’re trained to ask the question “why?” all the time and some people find that uncomfortable. </p>
<p>But until that recognition occurs it’s going to be very difficult to sustain it. As far as I’m concerned, I think a university - one or two major universities in these countries - are going to be absolutely vital to make sure that they are considered on a peer basis as these activities develop. </p>
<p>That must not remove from the development of primary education and the increase in development to secondary education. But if the net outcome of secondary education is a loss of your best manpower to overseas universities because you have no provision available to you, I don’t see that that is actually a way in which you’re ever going to be able to have the capacity to build in country’s strengths.</p>
<p>So I’m very much in favour that the operative word has got to move from “grants” and “aid” and all the rest, to “meaningful partnerships”. </p>
<p>And there’s self-interest in that, too, that we’ve got to remember. The self-interest is very simply that if you can build up strength in such a country you end up with a good trading partner at the end of the day. </p>
<p>And the problem with the previous model is sustainability. Once you bring that word into it, if you don’t develop that capacity locally, I mean how long can you keep on pouring resources into it without any sustainability locally for that activity? </p>
<p>So I think for me, “sustainability” and “partnership” are the two words that should really drive those agendas, and that maybe we were wrong with the way those agendas were being pursued previously. </p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> And I suppose in terms of self-interest, stability would be another factor.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> If you have a country that has got sustainability and has got economic growth, then I think security, stability, food security all follow. </p>
<p>And there’s a very interesting paradox because of our worries about global demography elsewhere, there’s also this wonderful paradox that actually you start having improvement in health, improvement in productivity; family size tends to start falling and that’s going to be an important consideration when we consider there will be nine billion people on the planet. </p>
<p>So, all of those factors seem to point to a betterment in those countries, that’s actually a global betterment for all of us as well.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> I suppose within that context, too, that it’s not only the natural sciences and medicine that were talking about; social sciences and humanities have a role to play.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> You couldn’t be more right. I mean to me you cannot solve the grand challenge problem by science alone.</p>
<p>Take my own world of vaccines, you remember the issues that arose in the United Kingdom over the MMR vaccine. Technologically that vaccine was safe, it was very effective at delivering protection against these areas. </p>
<p>Back in my home country of Wales we’ve got an outbreak of measles at th present time, 600 cases in the city of Swansea. Why? Because of the scares that occurred around the MMR vaccine about 15-16 years ago. </p>
<p>Now there was no rational reason, but people do not always behave rationally, and therefore, if you have a technological advance, vaccine failure, the technology in many vaccines as we see in SARS and elsewhere, we can develop vaccines quite quickly, but the real trick is will they be publicly acceptable. </p>
<p>So just ask yourself: those aren’t disciplines that are held by technologists, or molecular biologists, or immunologists; those are techniques that are known by social scientists, those involved in political studies, those involved in anthropology. And we need all of them to come together to decide on these very big programs. </p>
<p>It’s no good running a national vaccination campaign if half the country isn’t going to accept the vaccine. You’ve got to have buy-in and in today’s population, which is more and more informed, will question more and more, it is even more important that we bring more disciplines to play as these decisions are taken. </p>
<p>So I can’t see any grand challenge, be that energy, whatever, just being solved by technology alone. It’s going to require that very important component of understanding the cultural and social context into which you’re trying to bring those changes. </p>
<p>Maybe if you want a prediction, I think that will become more and more important, and it’s why I will argue that universities are the ideal places to do this, because we are the integrators that allow that sort of interaction to happen day to day. </p>
<p>I’m sure the LH Martin School interacts closely with scientists here in other domains, even quite basic domains, and I know that happens with the <a href="http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/">Judge Business School</a>, sociology and other domains in Cambridge. </p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> We still have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows-Two-Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html">CP Snow’s “Two Cultures”</a>, but I agree with you that we’re trying to move to overcome those.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> And I think we’ve got to overcome CP Snow. Maybe that’s a strange thing for Vice Chancellor at Cambridge to say, it’s a wonderful read and a great book. </p>
<p>But the very nature of what that book did, and does in the modern mind, it actually cements an idea that we are operating in two cultures. Its title is the most pernicious thing because most of us recognise that there is only one culture which is actually to try to progress to work together towards the best research outcomes and the best evidence base, and that implementation in policy. </p>
<p>And so I do hope that one day we will be able to have an anti-CP Snow lecture in Cambridge that could be just as successful.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> There must be a catchy title there …</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> I’m sure there will be one.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> There’s much speculation that this is the “Asian century” and Australia is part of the Asian region, although I think it’s only recently realised that, and there’s still some debate. </p>
<p>Do you have any advice for Australian universities as to how they can ensure that they are part-and-parcel of the massive socioeconomic development taking place around them?</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> Wow. Firstly, I think I’d hesitate to give Australian universities advice - they’re very successful institutions in their own right. </p>
<p>But I think Australia’s very lucky to be part of the Asian complex at the present time and the huge economic growth that is going to happen in this region. I think everybody recognises - in Europe and I’m sure in North America as well - that we’re going to see a burgeoning development of skills and activities in the Asian area. </p>
<p>One of the reasons I visit this region so much is that I’m learning so much about new activities and directions that are happening. It’s a vibrant society that’s really moving forward quite dramatically, and the opportunities for Australian universities are absolutely fantastic. </p>
<p>I happen to think that in this region those opportunities are also extremely good for collaborations from Cambridge as well, and these meeting points in a global world are going to be very important, but there is an added value that you’re at a shorter time flight to much of Asia than I would be from Heathrow in London.</p>
<p>So I think you should be taking advantage of it - I know many institutions already are. It’s a great opportunity.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> Yes, and the scale of development is amazing, when you can go to Shanghai or Singapore - there’s nothing developing about them at all…</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> Not at all, but what’s also interesting is that there are opportunities and new questions arising. </p>
<p>So as academics, you know we are voracious for anything which has actually got an interesting question or an interesting angle. The opportunity to study this development for economists, for historians, for those involved in business or elsewhere - these are fascinating case studies in their own right, because we have an enormous amount to learn, making sure that reiterations of mistakes of former centuries in other approaches are not reiterated. </p>
<p>So I think academics in this region have got a great role to play in actually ensuring that that development actually happens in the most effective and efficient way, and we’d all benefit from that. The bottom line is that it’s such a small place that you can now get pretty quickly around the whole world - and when we get the new stratospheric aeroplanes it’s going to be faster still. </p>
<p>So it’s a shrinking planet, we communicate electronically, and we can all work together to the benefit of rapid resolutions of these issues.</p>
<p>What are the barriers? Mostly political and historic I suspect, maybe a few economic ones as well, but it’s a matter of getting a new mindset to stop thinking of national boundaries stopping the bounds of academic interaction. </p>
<p>I think those times are rapidly disappearing and the internet has led the way in showing how those boundaries are really relatively artificial when we think the end goal is shared knowledge, and the exploitation of that knowledge for the public benefit.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> Yes, and as you say that small world is getting smaller by the day. </p>
<p>My last question - and I think you probably have already answered it, but you might want to elaborate a bit more - though an 800 year old institution, the Western university has gone through numerous stages of evolution over the centuries. </p>
<p>People talk about the university as a staid institution, but when you look back over the years it certainly has evolved and changed - even Cambridge I think. But what do you see as the next major stage of development of what is this paradoxically enduring institution?</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> It’s an interesting question. For me, I’m a biologist, so therefore if you believe in natural selection, if you fail to evolve, you die out. So I think the fact is if you’ve been around for 800 years in the current climate you actually have evolved and evolved very successfully, and I think the university will continue to do that. </p>
<p>But there are going to be serious questions with how we actually broaden the scope of education - maybe it’s going to be through technology to get greater involvement to those who may not have access to the brick-and-mortar university. And I think there’s going to be real challenges in that aspect of pedagogy in the future. I mean all of us are going to look at different solutions to that, and there’s no doubt that that is going to be an important element.</p>
<p>I think the way in which we do research is going to change. We have to think very hard about the sheer cost of infrastructure in some disciplines - in particle physics at the moment you talk in billions of dollars for the facilities that are now going to be needed. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-large-hadron-collider-a-time-machine-447">Large Hadron Collider</a> is going to be very large indeed. </p>
<p>So I think all of these are going to make us work in a more interactive way and make better use of resources, and that means international collaboration around major programs is going to grow. So universities are going to have to adapt to the fact that we’ll be working more and more in partnership as time goes on.</p>
<p>Funding is changing, moving much more from my experience at the medical research councils, we look at research funding more and more large scale projects because they’re administratively more efficient for funders. But that has to give a lot of responsibility for developing large-scale teams which will probably be interdisciplinary and more than one institution. </p>
<p>No matter how large your institution, you’re not going to solve the problems of energy in one institution, and it’s going to mean multiple partners coming in - the corporate sector, private enterprises, public sector, charities, NGOs - a whole series of individuals are going to have to be involved in that interdisciplinarity.</p>
<p>And lastly I think the student population will change. I think we’ll have a student population that will be getting a lot of the facts and information from an ever-burgeoning internet with a lot of material available rapidly to them. </p>
<p>So our whole way of publishing and getting outcomes is going to move away from the conventional, so how we appraise performance - how we appraise outcomes - is going to be a very different issue. </p>
<p>But what we cannot stop, from my point of view, is that Cambridge is still that old age mission statement that we started with - “to serve society through teaching, learning and research at the highest levels of international excellence”. </p>
<p>And I think what will distinguish us is that we sustain quality and excellence above all else in what we do and to make sure that it is put to the service of society - society in this context being global, and not local.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> So despite all of these changes and despite the comments of the doomsayers, there is a future for the university?</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> I’m quite confident there will be, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I am now.</p>
<p><strong>Lynn Meek:</strong> So Leszek, thank you very much for your time and those answers to those questions. It was very interesting for me and I think it will be for our audience on The Conversation indeed. Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Leszek Borysiewicz:</strong> Thank you very much indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynn Meek has received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).</span></em></p>To listen to the conversation between Leszek Borysiewicz and Lynn Meek, please see the link below. An edited transcript is available here. Lynn Meek: Hello, I’m Professor Lynn Meek from the LH Martin Institute…Lynn Meek, Foundation Director and Professorial Fellow, LH Martin Institute, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.