Funding needed for Nobel success

A former Oxford Classics student has been awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work outside of the UK, contributing to Oxford-based calls to promote research within the UK. Professor Anthony Leggett shares the £800,000 prize, awarded for his work on quantum physics, with two Russian scientists. In gaining the honour he becomes the 25th Oxford-educated Nobel Prize winner. Prof Leggett’s work, on the interaction of atoms, bears little relation to his three degrees in Classics and Philosophy – a fact which he attributes to the need to “do something to earn my living for the rest of my life”. However, Colin Blakemore, eminent Oxford Physiology professor and new head of the Medical Research Council, has criticised the poor funding of British university research departments as the major cause of the UK’s lack of competitiveness in the Nobel Prize race. Professor Blakemore, cited the fact that the UK has halved its contributions per student to university tuition since the 1980s. This, he suggests, is the reason why the UK, which used to receive a fifth of the scientific Nobel Prizes, now takes barely one tenth. Colin Blakemore told Cherwell, “we have to bite the bullet and admit that British universities need more funding”.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003