Dr Wilson realises his father's pipe dream

Peter Taylor-Whiffen
Tuesday 01 June 2004 00:00 BST
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OU history comes full circle this weekend when Dr Robin Wilson receives a degree he has earned from the university founded by his father.

Dr Wilson, son of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, will collect his BA Hons in Humanities with Music 17 years after he began his studies. And the Ely Cathedral ceremony will be a real family occasion, as his wife, daughter and mother - Lady Mary Wilson - will all be in attendance.

It's a fitting reward for a man who has helped thousands of students earn their own degrees - Dr Wilson joined the OU's Maths faculty in 1972, became Dean in 1996 and is now Head of Pure Maths. He has also just been appointed the Gresham Professor of Geometry, the oldest maths professorship in the country, through which he will give free public lectures at London's Gresham College on the history of mathematics.

"It's taken me 17 years to achieve my degree because my OU teaching career forced me to take a break from my own studies for seven years," he says. "I'm delighted to have achieved it."

But Dr Wilson didn't begin his studies with the intention of gaining a degree. "Since I was a child I have been fascinated by music," he says. "I have performed as an enthusiastic amateur - mainly as a singer - in a wide range of productions and I wanted to learn more about harmony, so I thought, 'If anyone can teach me, the OU can'."

Dr Wilson, who as a student and lecturer has chalked up attendance at 65 summer schools, says his degree helped him as a tutor to appreciate the difficulties students face.

"I used to be exasperated by students who would ignore instructions to read a whole topic before doing an assignment, and instead would read the assignment first and then try to find only the passages that enabled them to answer the questions," he says. "But of course when I studied, I did exactly the same."

Dr Wilson believes his famous father would be proud of what he - and the OU - has achieved. "By the end of the Seventies he was amazed at how much and how quickly the university had expanded," he said. "I remember the beginnings of the OU in my father's mind, as far back as 1963. We were on holiday in the Scilly Isles, and on Easter Day, just after church, I recall him writing out the details of this crazy idea."

Dr Wilson studied at Oxford while "my father and Jennie Lee were putting the plan together" and after gaining a PhD, joined the OU staff a year after the University was launched.

"I always used to be a bit sensitive about my father's link with the OU, especially when I was trying to build my own career," he adds. "When I applied for the job I was worried people might suspect nepotism, and the university took up twice as many of my references as they did for other applicants.

"But I had no intention of following my father into politics," he says. "I wanted to be a university tutor from the age of about 11. I'm interested in politics, but no more so than anyone else."

Dr Wilson is due to retire in five years' time and says he will have no time for further study until then. But in the meantime he's happy to uphold a family tradition. "I've studied music, my brother has an OU maths degree and my cousin graduated in geology. That shows the range of what this university does."

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