One of Warwick's first students

In connection with the 60th Anniversary I was reminded that in fact I started at Warwick a year earlier in 1964.

I was one of the seven graduate students in mathematics, mentioned by Chris Zeeman in his account of the early days of the Maths Department. We originally had desks at 12 Gibbet Hill Road, until Chris, with his infectious enthusiasm and golden tongue, arranged to take on the building at the corner of Stoneleigh Road and the main road to Kenilworth.

This was a great move as far as the department was concerned, as we were sufficiently far from all the ongoing building activity.

For the first year, before any undergraduates were around, we had a very protected and close little social and working community. The picture taken by the local paper in June 1965 shows the extent of the group. I think that the original is still on the wall in the Maths building. The back row, together with Elizabeth Guy (Anne Scott), are the seven graduate students. Two of us, myself and Mike Mather, were already students of David Epstein and came with him from Cambridge (hence I am not an official graduate of Warwick.) On the front row, besides David Epstein and Chris Zeeman, were two visitors, Friedhelm Waldhausen visiting briefly from Germany, and Garth Thomas from Canada, as well as Mike Boardman, a research fellow. I think that all continued in academia in one way or another. I retired from the University of Liverpool in 2008, but continue some mathematical activity from home in South Devon.

Hugh Morton

BA Mathematics, 1966