John Fleetwood Baker, Baron Baker of Windrush, 19 March - 9 September 1985

Abstract

John Fleet wood Baker returned to Cambridge in 1943, as Professor of Mechanical Sciences and Head of the Department of Engineering, and as a Professorial Fellow of Clare College, where he had been an undergraduate. In the conflict of interests, sometimes trivial, sometimes painful, between ‘University’ and ‘College’, Baker was clear, at least officially, as to where his duty lay. His staff was large—Engineering forms one tenth of the University of Cambridge, and consumes proportionately more than one tenth of its resources—and his staff were in demand, as men of affairs, for various College offices. He pretended to deplore this, and would occasionally, in the Departmental Common Room, rail against the College system, which seduced his lecturers away from their tasks of teaching and research to the time-consuming offices of Bursar or Tutor. In fact, when a young lecturer—and all his lecturers were, to Baker, young—when a young lecturer would summon the courage to confess that a College was proposing an appointment of this sort, Baker was not altogether displeased. He took immense pains with the appointment of his staff; he was quick to terminate employment of those who did not meet his high standards, in a way that is not possible in these more bureaucratic times; and he gave unstinting support to those he thought of as his team. If one of these should catch a College’s eye, it was only confirmation of the qualities of those in his Department.