Long-Servers Dinner

Emeritus Professor Tom Kibble (Physics), who has worked at the College for 50 years, shares his experience of attending the long-servers dinner.

Emeritus Professor Tom Kibble (Physics), who has worked at the College for 50 years, shares his experience of attending the long-servers dinner on 19 March for staff who celebrated milestones of 35, 40 or 50 years of service to Imperial in 2011.

“Attending the long-servers dinner on Monday evening at 170 Queen’s Gate was a daunting, though pleasurable, experience. I was there by virtue of having been on the Imperial staff for more than 50 years (including 13 years since I “retired”). Others had completed 35, 40 or 45 years. As the only representative of the 50-year cohort, I was asked by the Rector to say a few words at the start. All I could do was to offer a few random impromptu thoughts about how the College has changed since I arrived as a young postdoc in 1959. And indeed the changes have been great. Heads of Department are no longer the powerful barons they were — Patrick (PMS) Blackett, as a formal naval officer, ran the Physics Department as a very tight ship, though he was also both sympathetic and inspiring. But there was less bureaucracy, and we were free to pursue any research we chose and teach as we saw fit. When I was first put in front of a class, I was given a one-page summary of the syllabus and a few words of advice and told to get on with it. The huge increase in size of the College has made it harder to get to know people in other departments, or even other groups in the same department. That is perhaps what I most regret. But I have to say that it has been a most enjoyable fifty years, and this was an excellent dinner and a memo