Sir Alan's Fiftieth Anniversary of his First Professorial Lecture

Today, Monday 8 January 2007 is the first teaching day of the University term in the UK. I had reason to visit the campus of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, where I was a professor for 24 years until I retired in March 2005 – I delivered nearly 200 exam papers that I had graded over what we used to call the ‘vacation’ (hence the light blogging since Thursday - each student deserves the full attention of the grader, and admin was worrying over deadlines).

It looked pretty normal for a first day of a January term; raining as usual (light drizzle) and slightly windy. New students at the Business School stood around the reception area, registering and meeting strangers. From my age and appearance, some looked at me, presumably wondering if I was faculty or a bureaucrat. I was delivering two boxes of the examination papers from the December Diet in my former day job, and hurrying to lunch with some of my former colleagues.

On this day, 50 years ago, my friend and colleague, Professor Sir Alan Peacock, stepped up the podium at the University of Edinburgh, to deliver his first professorial lecture in economics to first year students in the MA class.

It was the tradition in Scottish universities at the time, and for about ten years afterwards, for first-year classes to be taught exclusively by the professors, a tradition that lapsed sadly under the twin burdens of university expansion and the heavy increase in administration that cut professorial contact with students quite dramatically. Over my time, teaching contact of senior faculty with their students reduced exponentially.

Alan Peacock was (and is) a student-centred teacher, fully committed to helping those students who want to learn with advice, encouragement and a friendly ear. He did the same with junior staff. I know, from my casual meetings with him when I was looking for a text and relevant articles for the honours economics class I used to teach in public finance – a subject in which he excelled, particularly from his knowledge of German and Italian sources and personal contacts with continental universities – just how much trouble he would go to introduce me, and my students, to usable and enlightening sources.

He also knew many of the ‘household’ names of economists around the world, including in the USA, and could enliven any discourse about theories we associate with them by the judicious use of reported conversations he had or seminars he attended (plus the occasional ‘scandal’, always told with a twinkle in the eye and the impeccable taste of a Scottish gentleman and scholar).

He taught at Edinburgh, York and LSE, and knew the then ‘giants’ of the profession (he has numerous honorary doctoral degrees), falling firmly onto the classical traditions of economics – a veritable Adam Smithian political economist of the (UK) liberal school – though perfectly familiar with the neoclassical paradigm. His theoretical understanding is also heavily leavened with his experience as Chief Economist in the Department of Trade and much contact at the heart of government (but never a ‘party’ man).

Driving home after lunch, I couldn’t help thinking about what his 1956 undergraduate class thought of their new professor on what was bound to have been as bleak a day as it is today; where did they go from there and what have they done with their lives? Did any become economists (next time I see Alan, I shall ask him)?

I saw him briefly on Saturday at another professor’s 70th birthday reception and we discussed the new paper he has written and is making ready for press, and the next one he is starting for a talk to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Adam Smith was among its founders in 1783) on the economics of the recommended responses to climate change. On the application of economics to modern problems he takes no prisoners when confronting sloppy thinking and crass errors. I reflected afterwards that if younger economists displayed half the energies put to work by Alan Peacock in his 80s, the profession might be in better shape.

If Adam Smith’s legacy was in the hands of the likes of Sir Alan Peacock it would be in safer hands that it is today.