Richard Henry Tizard (25 June 1917 – 5 September 2005) was a distinguished
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...
and founding Fellow of
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but retains a strong interest in the arts ...
.
Life
Dick Tizard was the son of
Sir Henry Tizard. He was chosen by Sir
John Cockcroft
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was an English nuclear physicist who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ernest Walton for their splitting of the atomic nucleus, which was instrumental in the developmen ...
as a founding Fellow of
Churchill College
Churchill College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but retains a strong interest in the arts ...
, a new science-focused college at the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
.
He offered a fellowship to
John Arundel Barnes.
The 1960s were a period of student unrest and turbulence in academic governance.
Tizard came from a family of high achievers with a productive stubborn streak. He used his political skills to marshal his grammar, state and public school intake behind a programme of historic renewal and reform in the University. In 1969, he led his colleagues to accept students into membership of the College Council and to admit women, the first Cambridge men's college to do so.
The same year, the Labour government's
Representation of the People Act 1969
The Representation of the People Act 1969 (c. 15) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that lowered the voting age to 18 years. This statute is sometimes called the Sixth Reform Act.
Background
The 1960s were a period of grow ...
reduced the
voting age
A legal voting age is the minimum age that a person is allowed to Voting, vote in a democracy, democratic process. For General election, general elections around the world, the right to vote is restricted to adults, and most nations use 18 year ...
to 18 years.
Under Tizard's guidance, in 1970 Churchill's student union, the
Junior Common Room (JCR), inspired by the
worldwide student democracy movement, led the
National Union of Students (NUS) in taking the Cambridge Town Clerk to the
High Court to overturn a 19th-century precedent that won students the right to vote in their university towns.
As Senior Tutor, Tizard pioneered outreach, admitting 600 men from 300 schools. After his retirement, he discussed with non-resident members of the JCR the possibility of their extending this outreach activity to 30 primary schools.
Churchill College later named a room after him.
See also
*
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...
*
Social history of Postwar Britain (1945–1979)
*
Thomas Henry Tizard
References
External links
The Stanford Tizard Programme
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tizard, Richard Henry
1917 births
2005 deaths
20th-century British engineers
Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford
Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge
People educated at Rugby School