Hard-worked Professors

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31441, 7 August 1967, Page 10

Hard-worked Professors

New Zealand university professors were very hard-

worked because of the

size of their stage one classes, Professor D. D. Quinn, Andrew Geddes and John Rankin professor of modem history at the University of Liverpool, said in Christchurch yesterday.

The departments in New Zealand universities were obviously very much in touch with the latest overseas developments in their fields, he said. While the university system was not very different from that of the United Kingdom, it *was expanding even more rapidly. Like many British students, New Zealand students would find in the years ahead that a lasting memory from their university days would be the roar of bulldozers.

Professor Quinn is in New Zealand on a lecture tour sponsored by the British Council through the vicechancellors of New Zealand Universities. He and Mrs Quinn arrived at Auckland on

July 9, and have spent a week at Auckland University, a week at the University of Waikato and Massey University, a week in Wellington, and a week in Dunedin. They will leave Christchurch next Saturday for the North Island, where they will spend two weeks touring. His present trip had given him a revived interest in the history of New Zealand and

the Pacific area, Professor Quinn said. Professor Quinn will give an illustrated lecture in Christchurch on “The discovery of America, from the Norse Voyages to about 1550.” The very early phase of European expansion overseas in the Atlantic area is his main interest, and he has combined his historical interests with “exploring holidays”

—visiting and photographing the areas he is dealing with. During a holiday in 1963-64 he saw most of the North American coast

Historians had not yet established who first discovered America, but this did not mean Colombus was not the most important discoverer, Professor Quinn said. Colombus’s discovery really put America “on the map” and led to the settlement of Europeans there.

Much interest had been caused by the discovery in Newfoundland of what appeared to be a site established by Norsemen from Greenland about the year 1000. Full scientific reports on the site had not yet been completed, but it appeared genuine. Further, historical evidence produced recently suggested it was possible that Englishmen, probably fishermen, might have found America in the 15th century, but this too remained to be proved.