Exhibition: PhD Pioneers

Being There

The 1970s was an exciting time for academic study. The combination of ground-breaking discoveries in many areas and the “go getting” attitude of the OU to research, to many students it felt like they were in on the ground floor of these new discoveries and the future felt unknown and exciting.

In the field of geology, plate tectonics had recently been discovered and two from our cohort, Michael Baker (1977 graduate) and Don Aldiss (1978 graduate) travelled internationally to research their pioneering PhDs, both starting out on the tail of military revolutions, Michael in Chile and Don in Cyprus. Their video clips opposite describe the, sometimes, dramatic detail of their study trips. Michael explains that "all cooking had to be done on a pressure cooker which we had in the back of the Land Rover", whilst Don describes a feeling that the sky was the limit in relating that his supervisor "he... basically told me to buy myself a plane ticket and head off to California". Altogether there were seven Earth and Environmental Science PhD graduates amongst the 55 of our cohort and the OU was an ideal place to enable them to take advantage of the “new frontier” feel in their areas of study.

In the field of biology, Professor Steven Rose was leading his PhD students in building the newly expanding field of neuroscience with his ground-breaking Brain Research Group and six of the OU's 1970s PhD graduates took part. Two of our interviewees, Jeff Haywood and Ken Richardson, were part of this group and describe the thrill of being part of this cutting-edge science.   

Neil Wynn went to New York for 6 months during his studies on the 'Afro-American' and the Second World War, seeing first-hand student race demonstrations, including being locked in the university library by the police. 

The field of New Town study, where Professor Ray Thomas was the director of the New Town Study Unit, was particularly apposite for a university built in the high-profile new town of Milton Keynes, and Stephen Potter’s studies were integral to the university’s close association with the environmental and transport development of Milton Keynes then, and continues to be so today. His video clip describes the way the New Town Study Unit influenced the development of Milton Keynes and how they were seen as an independent source of information; "there was even a Dutch/Belgian TV crew who came along at one point".

With the OU’s encouragement and its positive attitude to new opportunities, most of the PhD students were able to make contacts and work with industry-leading academics and practitioners with whom they would not have otherwise met, which enhanced their studies and their PhD experience.