Exhibition: PhD Pioneers

The Graduates

Professor Max Bramer

Max’s remarkably titled PhD “Representation of Knowledge for Chess Endgames: Towards a Self-Improving System” in 1977 was a testament to the excitement he felt at being around at the ground-breaking, if chequered, start of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Applications of AI are now all-pervasive but at the time the entire field was viewed with great suspicion. 

Max is part of the generation born shortly after WW2 into a country devastated by war, still with bomb sites and air-raid shelters on display, inadequate housing for many and rationing of food, clothing and more. Like many of his contemporaries he was able to take advantage of the expansion of grammar schools following the 1944 Education Act and the expansion of the Universities after the 1963 Robbins report, with the opportunities for social mobility they gave. Like many of his generation, he was the first in his family ever to attend a university. After gaining a degree in mathematics from the new University of Southampton in 1970 he got a job at the Central Electricity Generating Board in London which had the country’s biggest computer at the time- with a whole megabyte of memory! In 1972, he gave up this secure career for a post as the junior member of a team of two producing one of the OU’s first computing courses, following his fiancée, Dawn, who had been working at the OU as a research assistant since 1969. As a staff member he could register for a PhD free of charge and with his interest in chess and computing, this early AI research topic was exciting and leading edge. However, disaster struck the AI industry in 1973 with the publication of the Lighthill report which singlehandedly destroyed its reputation and those working in it. It was impossible to get research grants and the term “artificial Intelligence” could not be used in an academic setting for many years. Those still working in the field in Britain formed a small if endangered community and Max was able to meet the leading experts and establish a reputation for himself in a way that might have been impossible if the field had been booming.  

Max was one of the few in this cohort who was able to attend his graduation, where he was presented by Walter Perry, the OU's first and founding Vice Chancellor, which he found to be an incredibly proud and emotional moment for him. 

In 1980, there was a resurgence in the field of AI, and, as one of the few people expert in this area, Max’s career flourished and in 1989 he became Digital Professor of Information Technology and Head of the Department of Information Science at the, now, University of Portsmouth and is now an Emeritus Professor. He has around 200 publications in the field of AI, including an important textbook on Data Mining, and has given lectures in all parts of the world. He has been the chair of the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Information Processing and was its Vice President for six years. He looks back at the challenging times for AI in the past with some sadness but also with positivity and fondness and remains a strong supporter of the Open University and its pioneering work in university education. 

 

 

Professor Julia Goodfellow

Julia was the youngest to gain her PhD in this cohort, graduating in 1975 in Biophysics with her PhD “Structural Studies of the Corneal Stroma”. Moving around the country a few times as a child, she attended a variety of schools and, despite this, passed her 11+ and, in her words, this “opened a lot of doors for her”. Her father’s engineering studies were an example to her of the importance of careers that allowed part time study whilst working. This may have impacted some of the future choices she made to study at the OU and work at Birkbeck college, both institutions where remote learning were their signature. Although her mother died when Julia was 13, her mother’s pre-marriage career in the tax office, and two aunts who were doctors, were examples to her of career women at a time when it was unusual. Academically, Julia was a high achiever in science and went on to study Physics at Bristol University and, having been highly motivated by a third-year undergraduate research project, gained a scholarship to study for a PhD for the OU at the Oxford Research Unit. Straight after completing her PhD, Julia flew to a job in Stanford University, California in January 1976 with her geneticist husband, Peter, returning to Birkbeck College in London becoming Professor of Biomolecular Sciences in 1995 and then Vice-Master 1998-2002. Her next move was as Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), becoming the first woman to run any research council. She became Vice Chancellor and President of Kent University until her retirement in 2017. She also served as President of Universities UK from 2015-2017 and has been a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology from 2011 to 2019 and much more.  Of the many honours she has received, the pinnacle was being promoted from her 2001 CBE, to Dame Commander of the order of the British Empire in 2010.

As with many of our PhD graduates, Julia has not actually retired in reality. She is President of the Royal Society of Biology, Chair of Public Health England, on the board of the University of Hertfordshire, a trustee of the Institute for Research in Schools and on the advisory board of the Higher education Policy Institute. She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Society of Biology and the Institute of Physics. 

 

Professor Jeff Haywood 

Jeff was one of the OU’s first PhD graduates in 1974 with his Life Science PhD “The Effects Of Early Visual Experience On Cerebral RNA Metabolism In The Young Chick.” From a working-class family and born in a deprived area of Bradford, he started on the route to an academic career by passing the 11+ and attending Bradford Grammar School. He was the first member of his immediate family to go to university. Following his childhood obsession with science fiction, he chose to study the then emerging new science discipline of biochemistry at Edinburgh University. His fascination with the cutting-edge area of neuroscience led him to Professor Steven Rose at Imperial College, London, the leading academic and researcher in the area, who became his PhD supervisor. Professor Rose then moved to the OU and Jeff followed.  

His experiences of working with OU staff on writing and teaching of new OU courses whilst doing his PhD left a lasting impression on him, so much so that after a 25-year career in the Faculty of Medicine, firstly at Leeds University and then Edinburgh, he changed direction to the Faculty of Education to work on incorporating the use of digital technology in higher education.  

As well as being a prolific and respected author, he later became Vice Principal with responsibility for IT, library and digital education. In a synchronistic circle, Jeff collaborated with the OU late in his career through his involvement with the Future Learn program.