People

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Retirement

Terry de Castro celebrated 25 years as Audio Visual Technician with the University upon his retirement in July. FORTRAN, Anatomy and Law featured in the schedule of productions in the embryonic Audio Visual Aids Unit including the Director
of Public Prosecution and Lord Devlin being interviewed by Professor Glanville Williams and our current Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir David Williams, in 1971.

In 1972 the University installed a black and white Eidophor video projector in the Babbage Lecture Theatre, which took careful setting up by Terry. Many Cambridge notables have been helped by Terry over the years through his operation of the Babbage Lecture Theatre and studio. The Chancellor lectured in the Babbage Lecture Theatre in 1985. Terry was there to control the sound levels and presentations for Home Secretaries Whitelaw, Lawson and Baker in Royal Television Society conferences, and for entertainer/educators such as Sir David Attenborough and Angela Rippon, the newspresenter.

Terry has had a real sense of service to members of the University and pride in his work, helping wherever possible: nothing has been too much trouble for him. His contribution to the Unit and the University have been remarkable and we wish him well in his retirement.

Martin Gienke
Audio Visual Aids Unit

Tribute

Sir Alastair Pilkington, Chairman of the Cambridge Foundation, died earlier this year aged 75. Sir Alastair was described by the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Professor Sir David Williams, 'as the most influential lay man in the history of the University since the Middle Ages'.

One of the great industrial inventors, he devised a new way of making flat glass, called the Float process, which transformed the industry and became the universal method of making flat glass. He was not a member of the glass-making family but he spent his entire career with Pilkington Brothers Ltd, joining in 1947 as a technical assistant and serving as Chairman from 1973-80 and subsequently as President.

Sir Alastair believed in the importance of teaching and it was through a generous donation from him that the Cambridge Foundation was able to establish annual Teaching Prizes last year. This year, five members of staff were recognized for the excellence of their teaching on the nomination of their colleagues within departments. The prizes were awarded by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and Sir Alastair's widow, Lady Kathleen, was present at the ceremony.

This year's winners were Dr Nick Davies of the Department of Zoology; Dr Jeremy Edwards, Faculty of Economics and Politics; Professor Malcolm Longair of the Department of Physics; Dr Colin Sparrow of the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, and Dr Robin Porter Goff of the Department of Engineering.

JP

Mr Paul Heavens, who is a technician in the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour at Madingley, part of the Department of Zoology, has recently been appointed a Justice of the Peace by the Lord Chancellor.

The Aoi Pavilion

A prominent Japanese business man and owner of a chain of department stores in Tokyo, Mr Tadao Aoi, has donated three million pounds from his own personal resources to the University. The Aoi fund will be used to build an East Asian wing in the University Library, housing one of Europe's finest collections of Japanese material.

Boost for Engineering

Hamid Jafar, chairman and chief executive of Crescent petroleum,. and a Cambridge engineering graduate, has donated $1 million to be split equally between Churchill College, his old college, and the University's engineering department.

Summer School

GEEMA - Cambridge University's group to encourage ethnic minority applicants - held its first ever summer school in the University at the end of August for young Blacks and Asians. The aim of the five-day course was to break down some of the prejudices that these bright students have about applying to Cambridge, whilst boosting their confidence and raising their expectations of pursuing a professional career.

GEEMA, the group for encouraging ethnic minorities, held its first summer school this year for 19 Black and Asian youngsters

Students, all aged 15 or 16, were nominated by teachers and then submitted an essay. Simone Ellis, liaison officer for GEEMA, was involved in selecting the lucky 19, who were mainly drawn from inner-city schools in London and the Midlands:

"It was important not just to go for the high achievers from good schools and middle-class backgrounds, who were really all set up for applying to Cambridge anyway. The people we are really trying to reach are those who get straight A's from inner-city comprehensives, but who may never have been given much encouragement to apply to Cambridge. We also look out for those who have left school altogether, but now decided that they really do want to study, and are trying desperately for a second chance."

All colleges in Cambridge are affiliated to GEEMA. The summer school is a small step towards encouraging talented pupils to apply to an institution they might otherwise have dismissed automatically.

80th Birthday

Sir Fred Hoyle founded the Institute of Astronomy in 1967 and was Plumian Professor from 1957 to 1972. His 80th birthday celebrations at the Institute on earlier in the summer were attended by over 150 people including all Institute staff, Sir Fred's close friends and distinguished colleagues from all over the world. He gave a most entertaining lecture in the afternoon to a packed audience entitled "An Unusual Scientific Adventure" in which he described simulations he has been carrying out on his home computer to understand the varied forms that tree leaves can take.

Richard Ellis
Institute of Astronomy

Sustainable Development

"Knowledge is the root of choice" insisted Sr Domingo Jimenez Beltran in a recent lecture at Cambridge University. The Executive Director of the European Environment Agency gave a summary of the Agency's planned role in the process of sustainable development within Europe, emphasizing the central importance of wide access to authoritative information on the state of the environment.

Beltran argued that such information serves to reduce the costs of complexity and facilitate decision-making and public participation processes, during the first University of Cambridge/Générale des Eaux Cambridge Environmental Lecture. He stressed that the EEA will seek not to produce new data and add to the mass of supply of information. Rather it will assess and respond to demands from the range of actors, including academics, administrators, businesses, NGOs and the public.

The saga of the Brent Spar serves as an important reminder that environmental 'facts' are often contestable, and that public values are a significant and unpredictable component of environmental decision-making.