2011 Hertford College Magazine (Issue 91)

Hertford report: Roger Van Noorden’s memorial celebration
silence is now final and forever, but he is
no less a presence in Hertford for we are – I
believe – still very much what he made us.
“ He knew what he loved and he
devoted himself to that ”
The same could not, of course, be said
of the University. Oxford is a very different
place today from what it was on that
December Saturday forty years ago. For
those who crossed swords with him in university
politics, Roger’s vision – centred as
it was on undergraduate teaching and on
colleges – was blind to much of what now
makes us great, the growing importance of
research, our role in postgraduate education
and the contribution of the many researchers
with only loose connections to
colleges – or none at all. This judgement
is understandable but, I think, mistaken. It
was not that Roger ignored these contributions,
it was simply that he knew what
he loved and he devoted himself to that.
We all, across the University, face
some very difficult times in the years
ahead. But the College that Roger loved,
and the college system to which he devoted
himself, will survive and thrive.
We will thrive because we can count on
the qualities – the generosity, the passion,
the commitment - which Roger manifested
in his long service to Hertford. I shall
not say that we will be able to count on
people like Roger – there are none such.
The Principal
R. G. Smethurst’s Address
When we are young small age differences
can seem like a whole generation.
Roger was one of the group of
highly talented economists in the year
ahead of me: although we later worked
together on various university commit-
tees through forty years I never quite got
over a feeling of gratitude that he, far
senior it seemed to me, was being kind
in carefully considering my views. (It
was therefore especially pleasing when,
rarely, he agreed with them!) The qualities
which suffused his teaching applied
equally to his professional relationships:
he showed patience, penetration, and
courtesy – a man of the utmost integrity.
By the time I entered Nuffield, in 1963,
Roger had already gone back to Hertford,
first as a junior research fellow and, after
“ The qualities that suffused his
teaching applied equally to his
professional relationships ”
only one further year, as the tutorial fellow
in Economics. Max Hartwell memorably
described the Nuffield of those days
as ‘a First Class waiting room with the
occupants eying each other to see whether
they wanted to get on the same train.’
But in reality there were lots of trains:
the departure of many tutors to be the
first professors of Economics at the new
universities meant that Oxbridge fellowships
were available to the graduate students
of those days without the long trail
of doctoral research and short-term postdoctoral
positions which must wearily
be followed by young academics nowadays.
Yet Roger’s generation (Marty Feldstein,
John Flemming, and John Helliwell
were his contemporaries) stands comparison
with any since. Of them, Roger
alone did not hold high public office: the
focus of his high service was his college.
I had first encountered this group the
previous year in a seminar on Transport
Economics, then one of the liveliest
areas of Economics. Roger and John
Flemming were very alike – quiet and
quietly-spoken. But when they did in-
34. HERTFORD COLLEGE MAGAZINE