Gordon Higginson
Sir Gordon Robert Higginson was an English engineer and academic who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton from 1985 to 1994. He was co-author of the standard text on hydrodynamic lubrication and the Higginson Report on A levels.
Early life and education
Higginson was born in Leeds in 1929. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and the University of Leeds from which he received the degrees of BSc and PhD, both in Mechanical Engineering.Career
Higginson worked briefly for the Ministry of Supply and was then appointed Lecturer at University of Leeds in 1956. In 1962 Higginson became an associate professor at the Royal [Military College of Science], Shrivenham and in 1965 he was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering in what is now the Durham University [School of Engineering and Computing Sciences|School of Engineering and Computing Sciences] at the University of Durham. His research interest was hydrodynamic lubrication and tribology, later extending to bio-engineering.In the 1990s he served as chair of the engineering board of the Science and [Engineering Research Council], the major grant-awarding body in UK academia.
He came to wider prominence when he chaired a committee set up to advise on the reform of the A Level system, producing the "Higginson Report" into the use of technology to support learning in colleges. Despite gaining widespread approval, the report was curtly rejected by the government, but many of the detailed proposals still enjoy some currency.
Within the Further Education sector of England there was, arguably, a more successful "Higginson Report". The Learning and Technology Committee, chaired for the FEFC by Gordon Higginson, published its report in 1996. Known universally across English FE as the "Higginson Report", it made a number of recommendations for how the FEFC should go about supporting colleges' use of IT. It set a framework for Information & Learning Technology development across the FE sector over following years.
Following the privatisation of the railway system in the UK in the 1990s, he was the founding Chair of the Railway Heritage Committee, which supervised the transfer of historic artefacts and records to collecting institutions.