New Zealand Loses Many Brilliant Sons

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 805, 28 October 1929, Page 8

New Zealand Loses Many Brilliant Sons

STUDENTS OVERSEAS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING From Our Resident Reporter WELLINGTON, Saturday. For years it has been feared that the most promising of New Zealand University men are being lost to the country. Confirmation of this has been forthcoming as the result of investigations by the Vice-Chancellor of the University (Professor T. A. Hunter), who has had prepared a record of all students who have left the country to do post-graduate work. Forty-five students, over a period of 10 years, have left New Zealand and of all save one there is informtaion available.. Thirty of these students have remained overseas.

The feature of the investigation is | the somewhat alarming fact that practically every outstanding student of | science or engineering that the DoI minion has sent abroad to study has i been lost to New Zealand. Only one iof ten young scientists has returned to his homeland, that one being Dr. J. S. Yeates, now a lecturer in agricultural botany at Massey Agricultural College. Two engineering graduates out of 10 have come back to New Zealand. The record of the 1851 Exhibition Scholars in Science is particularly striking. R. m. Winter (Auckland) is now on the chemical research staff at Woolwich Arsenal; J. C. Smith (Auckland) was at McGill University, and is now on the staff of the Dyseon-Perrin Laboratory at Oxford; R. W. B. Harman (Auckland) is chief research chemist to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Sydney; J. G. Meyers (Wellington) is a member of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology; R. S. Allan (Otago) is reported to be at Cambridge University; R. R. Nimmo (Otago) is Lecturer in Physics in the University of Western Australia, and G. M. Richardson (Wellington) is completing his course for Ph.D. in London. Two post-graduate scholarships in science went to K. C. Roberts (Otago), who is working for his Ph.D. in London and is a demonstrator at King’s College, and R. G. Penseler (Otago), who is working at Halle. The ten engineering scholars, all products of Canterbury University College, are mostly in careers in England. O. Borer is with Walter Jones, Ltd., London; R. J. Beckley is assistant to the resident-engineer on the construction of the Tepic-Gaudalajara Raliways, Mexico; J. C. Dickinson is with John Jackson and Sons, London; J. M. Bishop with the General Electric Co., Sydney; D. A. Lightband with the American Westinghouse Co.; E. B. Cocks with Preece, Cardew and Ryder. London, and R. C. H. Richardson with Metropolitan Vickers Co., England. Two, E. C. Gough and W. G. Morrison, have returned to Christchurch. In arts, -where the position is at its best, one man in two is lost to New Zealand. Thirteen scholars have gone abroad, and five have returned to this country. Of one student information is not to hand. Four men who have held medical travelling scholarships since 1919 have remained overseas, and four have returned to this country. The best record is held by the travelling scholars in French, three out of four having come back to New Zealand.