Brian Cantor

Early Years

Birthplace
I was born in 1948 and grew up in Cheetham Hill, Prestwich and Higher Broughton, inner-city suburbs in North Manchester, just north of Strangeways Prison.

School
My mum and dad taught me to read and do sums when I was 2-3 years old. I was bright at primary school, passed my national 11+ exam a year early, and won a scholarship under a government-assisted scheme to go to Manchester Grammar School. I was put on an accelerated programme at MGS, so I gained another year and took my national O level and A level exams 2 years early. I was too young to go to university so I left school and started work in 1963 aged 15. (The photo shows an MGS schoolboy cap with its famous owl badge.)

Early Work
I worked as a teenager in Manchester: as a dogsbody in my dad's handbag factory based in two small terraced houses in the lee of Strangeways; as a chalker-up in a nearby bookmakers betting shop; as a bottle washer in the research labs of Exide Batteries, making lead-acid car batteries based just next to Agecroft Colliery in Swinton Junction; and as a warehouseman for Kellogg's Corn Flakes on Trafford Park in South Manchester. For about 2 years at Kellogg's I was earning £20-30 a week, which was a lot of money for a teenager in the mid-1960s. I was being paid more than the famous footballers George Best, Bobby Charlton and Dennis Law were paid at Manchester United, just across Trafford Park, since footballers' wages were capped in the 1960s at £20 a week. (The photo shows the Kellogg's Corn Flakes factory, which opened in 1938 and was for many years the biggest cereal food plant in the world.)

Early Interests
From 1961-5, aged 13-17, I played guitar in a series of pick-up groups, playing in pubs, clubs, casinos, concerts and at parties all around Manchester. I met groups like the Hollies and 10cc in rehearsal sessions. Over the same period I went hiking and rock climbing in the nearby Peak District and also by hitch-hiking to the Lake District or Snowdonia. In 1965 I went on an 8-week expedition to climb a series of mountains in the Arctic Circle in northern Norway. (The photo shows me (right) with a colleague on top of a mountain in Norway.)

University
In 1965, MGS contacted my dad to say that I should apply to Cambridge University. I was the first person in my family to go to university and we knew nothing about universities or Cambridge. You apply to a college, and I picked Christ's College out of a list of colleges with a pin. Entrants to Cambridge are usually accepted through an entrance exam and I was not at all interested in taking another exam. But, unknown to us and to my good fortune, Christ's had started a scheme of direct entry based on candidates' national A level results. I was interviewed, offered a place and moved to Cambridge to start studying Natural Sciences in October 1965.

Student Life
I had a wonderful social life at Cambridge, ignored my studies and failed my first year exams in maths and physics. I was nearly thrown out but the Department of Metallurgy agreed to give me a chance and took me on for a second year. I went on to get a BA in 1968 and a PhD in 1972. At Cambridge I learnt about history, literature, economics, philosophy, theatre and art (as well as science). I continued to play guitar in many groups and bands, and worked with the Ken Stevens Agency, booking national bands for concerts and gigs. Amongst others I played on the same stage as Pink Floyd and booked The Who. My girl friend Maggie got pregnant in my first year at Cambridge and we married, so by the time I left I had a family of four and was ludicrously poor. To manage, I took lots of extra jobs while studying, including being a musician, booking agent, chef, porter, encyclopedia salesman, factory hand, car mechanic, and car salesman.

Career

Cambridge
My PhD was on eutectic solidification. I built a Bridgman crystal-growth furnace, grew single crystals of many eutectic alloys and studied their solidification, crystallography. deformation and fracture. I discovered the mechanism of side-by-side nucleation, discovered 2-phase eutectic dendrites, demonstrated the variety of orientation relations between the eutectic phases, discovered how deformation is dominated by interfacial dislocations caused by differential thermal contraction, and discovered how ductile fracture is initiated from interfacial stress concentrations.

Sussex
I wanted to continue research in the USA but I couldn't get a place. I had to get a job to look after my family, and took the 1st one I was offered which, fortunately for me, was to work with Robert Cahn at Sussex, initially as a postdoc studying rapid solidification and amorphous alloys, and later as a temporary lecturer running his research group while he was Dean of the Engineering School. I discovered sputter-deposited amorphous alloys, used nuclear reactions to make the 1st diffusion measurements in amorphous alloys, discovered suppression of martensite in rapidly solidified steels, invented the concept of multicomponent alloys, and discovered the first high-entropy single-phase fcc Cantor alloys. In the late 1970s, Sussex refused to give me tenure, Robert Cahn left, Materials Science closed down and I was out of a job. At roughly the same time my first wife Maggie and I separated and we divorced, so my personal and professional lives were both in a mess.

India & the USA
In 1980, my friend Ramachandrarao arranged a 1-year visiting fellowship for me at Banaras Hindu University in northern India, studying the structure of rapidly solidified and amorphous alloys; and in 1981, my friend Fred Luborsky arranged a 1-year visiting scientist position for me at the GE Research Labs in Schenectady, New York, working on amorphous alloys as magnetic cores in distribution transformers and as data storage devices for the early X-ray scanners. I learned a lot about the wider world: at BHU about poverty and disease in underdeveloped countries, and at GE about applied science, innovation, industry and capitalism.

Oxford
In 1981 I was fortunate to be appointed to a lectureship in the Department of Materials at Oxford University, working with Peter Hirsch to give the Department an engineering and industrial base. The same year I re-married, to my second wife Anne who came from Coogee Beach in Sydney. Real industrial links were new in UK universities in the 1980s and I was successful in getting support from multinational companies worldwide to do applied research into manufacturing in the aerospace, automotive, printing, engineering, defence, space, medical, computing, telecomms and IT industries. I helped develop for instance new MMC braking systems for cars, new TBC coatings for hot aeroengine components, new spray-formed piston rings for cars, new diffusion barriers for semiconductors, and new organic coating systems for Ti-alloy hip and knee implants. I became Head of the Department of Materials and then Head (Dean) of the new Division of Maths, Physical Sciences and Engineering. I bought Begbroke, the University's first science park, and helped set up Isis Innovation, its first science spin-out company. In 1993 Anne died sadly from cancer, aged only 38, and 2 years later I re-met an old friend from Sussex, Gill Partridge, who moved up to Oxford as my partner (we finally married in 2016).

York
In 2002, I left Oxford to be Vice-Chancellor (President) of the University of York, one of the new academic universities set up in the UK in the 1960s. Between 2002-2013 I developed and launched the biggest UK university expansion in the 2000s: a $1 billion development doubling its size, trebling its turnover, and turning loss into profit; building out the existing 250-acre Heslington West campus and buying and building up the adjacent new 200-acre Heslington East campus; with over 50 major new buildings; new medical, law and media schools; new research centres in health, education, renaissance studies, nanoscience, neuroimaging, infectious diseases, & environmental sciences; new theatres, cinemas and art galleries; new indoor and outdoor sports facilities; new science & business parks, and accommodation for over 10,000 students. I got York into the world top 100 and the Russell Group, and won 2 UK University of the Year Awards and 3 Queen's Awards for Higher Education. I founded and built up the National Science Learning Centre (NSLC) (now the National STEM Centre), a collaboration of 3 Russell-group universities, 10 multinational technology companies and the UK government, to deliver CPD and other support to 1000s of science teachers throughout the UK.

Bradford
In 2013 I left York to be the Vice-Chancellor (President) of the University of Bradford, one of the new technology universities set up in the UK in the 1960s. Between 2013 and 2019 I restructured the university to concentrate on its original applied, technology basis, building up its successful nursing, radiology, pharmacy, engineering, polymer components, drug development, dementia, and optometry activities; enhancing links overseas, with industry and with local communities; and taking the university back into profit. I founded and built up the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research (CAHR), dedicated to transferring scientific discoveries into medical and health practice; and the World Technology University Network (WTUN), a collaboration of 20 universities worldwide committed to using their teaching & research to make a difference to the world.

Present
In 2019 I left Bradford to go back to being a scientist, as an Emeritus Professor of Materials in the Department of Materials at Oxford, and as a research Professor and Strategic Advisor in the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) at Brunel University London. Since then I have continued to live just outside Hebden Bridge, up in the rugged and beautiful Pennine hills roughly halfway between Manchester and Leeds. Some weeks I use the internet to work from home, some weeks I travel down south to work at Oxford and Brunel, and many weeks I am away visiting scientific research centres throughout the world. I collaborate with scientists worldwide, mainly on developing our understanding of multicomponent and high-entropy alloys and materials, giving invited lectures, attending workshops & conferences, writing articles, papers & books, reviewing papers and research grant applications, and supporting the advancement of young scientists. I helped set up the UN and DEFRA supported UK International Centre of Excellence (ICE), developing sustainable circular materials for industry and society around the world.

Other Things

Family
My father, Oliver Cantor, was born and brought up in inner city Manchester, the youngest son of two Ukrainian refugees who fled from the Russian Tsar's pogroms in the late nineteenth century. My mother, Trudy Cantor, was born and brought up in inner city Liverpool, the youngest daughter of two Irish immigrants who fled from the potato famines in Ireland in the late nineteenth century. My father's family were highly free thinking, atheistical and communist. In the 1930s, my father fought Moseley's fascist blackshirts in the streets of Manchester; one of my uncles, Ralph Cantor, died while fighting in the International Brigade against Franco's fascists in Spain; and another uncle, Lance Helman, was a ringleader in the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Pennines that led to the setting up of national parks in England. So I am half Ukrainian Jew and half Irish Catholic, but in fact I was brought up wholly English atheist .

Family
I have two younger brothers, Martin and Philip, both retired. Gill and I have three sons, Matthew, Ollie and Simon, and I have four grandchildren, Alex, Christopher, Ernie and Agatha. Agatha is the first girl in my family for three generations. Matthew and Ollie both work as senior managers in the telecomms industry, Matthew for many years in Florida, but now based back in Oxford in England. Matthew's wife, my eldest daughter-in-law Ange, works as a housewife and mother; and Ollie's wife, my other daughter-in-law Nathalie, works as a business manager for Bloomberg. Simon runs an internet and retail business in Romania together with his partner Chris. Alex is doing his PhD at Warwick University and Christopher his BSc at Exeter University. Ernie and Agatha are both at high school in London.

Cantor Cup
My grandfather (Jacob), father (Oliver) and mother (Trudy) were all excellent at bridge. In the 1950s and 60s after Jacob had retired, he spent every winter holidaying in the exclusive watering holes of Nice and Monte Carlo in the south of France. Family legend has it that he paid for this (and more) by betting on himself at bridge in the casinos and gaming houses there. After Oliver died in 1983 Trudy taught bridge to novices in the bridge clubs in south Manchester, and with one of my brothers (Martin) she ran bridge holidays for bridge aficionados in Portugal and Spain as well as England and Wales. Martin still teaches bridge and writes about it from his home in Germany. After Trudy died in 1998, Martin, my other brother (Philip) and I used the (small) resulting inheritance as an endowment to found the Cantor Cup, a bridge tournament for novices that is held every year in Manchester in memory of our mum and dad. (The photo shows my brother Martin from his profile in bridgewinners.com.)

Cantor Lectures
At York I donated £10,000 each year to build up an endowment to found the annual Cantor Lectures, which alternate between the topics of nanoscience and modern art (two of my major interests). At Bradford I did likewise to found an annual Cantor Technology Lecture on the topic (fairly obviously) of technology (another of my major interests). The lectures have been given by a string of distinguished scientists, technologists and arts commentators including many Nobel Prize winners. (The photo shows Dr. Shelina Jilani, the 2026 Cantor Technology Lecturer at Bradford who discussed the merits and demerits of face-recognition technology.)

Brian Cantor Scholarship
In 2016 I founded the World Technology University Network (WTUN). a collaboration of about 20 universities from all round the world, all dedicated to doing teaching and research that is applied directly to improve the health, wealth and wellbeing of people and society. When I left Bradford and stepped down from being Chair of WTUN, the Board created a Brian Cantor Scholarship to recognise my contribution and support outstanding graduate students from within the Network to conduct important and exciting research and education projects that respond to key global challenges.

Brian Cantor & Gill Partridge Art Collection
I fell in love with modern art when I was at Cambridge in the 1960s and was blown away by the Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg exhibits at a major Pop Art Exhibition in the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank in London. Beginning in the 1990s, Gill and I began to collect paintings, prints and sculptures, mostly modern art i.e. from the 2000s and 2010s. We have about 150 pieces, most of which are on loan to the University of York, where at least half are on display at any time throughout the University. The collection includes prints by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Sam Francis, Tom Wesselmann, Joan Mitchell and Cy Twombly. It also includes original cartoon drawings, by artists such as James Thurber, Bill Tidy, Glen Baxter, Matt and Larry. We have retained about 20 of our favourite pieces in our house in Hebden Bridge.

Guitars
I began playing the guitar at the age of 13 in Manchester when my dad bought me a clapped-out old Spanish guitar for £5 from a small ad in the Manchester Evening News. It was a horrible guitar to play. It was ruined when I took it with me on our expedition to Norway a few years later and I left it out of the tent one night. The overnight condensation softened the wood and the tension of the strings broke the neck away from the body. My first electric guitar was a Hofner Club 40 also bought through the small ads in the Manchester Evening News (similar to the first guitars played by John Lennon and George Harrison, though I didn't know it at the time). At first I played R&B and rock guitar. I still play almost every day, but now I play finger-style jazz and blues. I have about 15 guitars, including a vintage 1961 semi-acoustic Gibson ES335 (similar to B. B. King's famous Lucille guitar) and a vintage 1986 red Fender Stratocaster (similar to the first guitars I saw played by Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin), My favourite guitar is still the cheap Japanese-made Spanish guitar given to me by Ken Stevens in Cambridge in the 1960s for working on booking bands for his agency. I love the idea of just picking a guitar up and playing it without messing around and having to plug it in.

Climbing
All my life I have enjoyed, hiking, rambling, mountaineering and rock climbing. In the 1990s Gill and I also took up skiing. I am proud to have climbed Mont Blanc on the border of France and Switzerland (the highest mountain in Europe), Mount Fuji (twice) in Japan, Half Dome in Yosemite, California, and several unnamed peaks in the Arctic Circle in the far north of Norway. The first time I climbed Mount Fuji, we stayed at a hut just below the summit, got up early, and were lucky there was no cloud, so we saw the sunrise from near the volcanic crater at the top. The second time (several years later) there was a typhoon which nearly blew away the hut, it rained continuously, and we couldn't see a thing. I later learned that there is an old Japanese saying: "A wise man makes sure he climbs Fuji once in his life. Only a fool does it twice."

Watergate Tea Rooms
I first met my partner Gill in October 1972 when I went for an interview at the University of Sussex to become a postdoc working for Robert Cahn. I got the job and ended up running his research group while he was Dean of the Engineering School. Gill was his PA, so I ran his research and she ran the rest of his life. Shortly after we moved to Hebden Bridge in 2013, Gill retired from Leeds after many years as a senior PA, and we bought a cafe, the Watergate Tea Rooms, which she has run for the last 12 years, and which we recently sold. Watergate is famous for many things, including its home-made scones, Welsh rarebit and English breakfast.

CV

Education

1958-64: Manchester Grammar School

1965-71: Christ’s College, Cambridge: BA, MA, PhD

Employment

1972-81: Research Assistant then Lecturer, School of Engineering, Sussex University

1981: Visiting Fellow, Department of Metallurgy, Banaras Hindu University

1982: Scientist & Engineer, General Electric Research Laboratories, Schenectady

1981-2000: Lecturer then Reader then Cookson Professor and Head of the Department of Materials then Head of the Division (Dean) of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Oxford

1998-2002: Academic Director, Begbroke Business and Science Park

2002-2013: Vice-Chancellor (President), University of York

2013-2019: Vice-Chancellor (President), University of Bradford

2019-present: Emeritus Professor of Materials, Department of Materials, University of Oxford

2019-present: Professor of Materials and Senior Consultant, BCAST, Brunel University

Consultancies

1979-81: Surtees Racing Cars

1986-94: Alcan

1995-2002: NASA

1983-2006: Institute of Physics Press

1988-2020: Elsevier

1996-2015: Rolls-Royce

Awards

1979: Chartered Engineer

1993: Rosenhain Medal of the Institute of Materials

1998: Ismanam Prize

1999: Member of the Academia Europaea

2002: Platinum Medal of the Institute of Metals

2006: ISI Most Cited Researcher

2008: Companion of the Chartered Management Institute

2012: York Lifetime Achievement Award

2013: CBE

2016: Master Distinguished Lecturer, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai

2019: TMS Distinguished Scientist Award

2024: MRS Distinguished Scientist Award

2025: LAM Fellow, Liaoning Academy of Materials, Shenyang

2025: Thermec Distinguished Scientist Award

2025: Spiers Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry

Boards

1996-2002: Kobe Institute

1997-2002: Oxford University

2000-2002: Isis Innovation (now Oxford University Innovation)

2002-2013: York University

2002-2013: Worldwide Universities Network

2002-2019: Yorkshire Universities

2004-2006: Amaethon (Chair)

2004-2013: York Science Park (Chair)

2005-2013: National Science Learning Centre (Chair)

2005-2011: Yorkshire Science (Deputy Chair)

2008-2013: Centre for Low Carbon Futures (Chair)

2009-2013: Royal Academy of Engineering (Vice-President)

2010-2014: Leeds and York Chambers of Commerce and Local Economic Partnership

2010-2013: Universities UK Employers Pension Forum (Chair)

2013-2019: Bradford University

2013-2019: National Science and Media Museum

2014-2019: Bradford Economic Partnership

2015-2017: UK College of Business and Computing

2016-2024: (UK National) Science Museums Group

2016-2019: Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission

2016-2020: World Technology Universities Congress and Network (Chair)

2024-present: UN-backed UK International Centre of Excellence (ICE) for Circular Materials

Honorary
Professor

1996: Materials Research Society of India

1996: Northeastern University, Shenyang

2000: Chinese National Institute of Metals

2003: Nanjing University, Nanjing

2003: Zhejiang University, Hangzhou

2010: Indian Institute of Materials

2013: Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore

2025: Yantai University, Yantai, China

2025: Northeastern University, Shenyang (again)