Tributes paid to ‘trailblazer' academic Sir Geoff Palmer after death aged 85

The professor was long associated with Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, serving as chancellor and professor emeritus for many years.
He was also a prominent public figure in other fields, recently reviewing the legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Scottish capital.
The university hailed him as a 'trailblazer and inspiration within higher education and in wider society', while Labour MSP Foysol Choudhury described him as a 'courageous voice for justice and equality'.
Sir Geoff died on Wednesday. He is survived by his wife Margaret, their three children, and grandchildren.
It is with great sadness that we share the news that our esteemed Chancellor and renowned humanitarian, Professor Emeritus Sir Geoff Palmer OBE, has died.
Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time. #HeriotWattUni @SirGeoffPalmer pic.twitter.com/sZv74kSlzX
— Heriot-Watt University (@HeriotWattUni) June 13, 2025
Born in Jamaica in 1940, he moved to London aged 14 as part of the Windrush generation.
He came to Edinburgh in the 1960s, where he completed a Phd in grain science and technology. His developments in the field went on to be adopted by some of the largest breweries in the UK.
In 1989 he became Scotland's first black professor as he began a teaching role at Heriot-Watt which continued until 2005.
Sir Geoff returned to the institution as a professor emeritus and later as chancellor in 2021.
He was knighted in 2014 for services to human rights, science and charity, and last year he was appointed to the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's greatest order of chivalry.
As well as being a scientist, Sir Geoff was an outspoken advocate of human rights and racial equality.
He wrote several articles and books exploring these topics and pushed for education around Scotland's past roles in colonialism and slavery.
In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, City of Edinburgh Council commissioned an independent review group to examine its historic links with slavery in the public realm.
Sir Geoff led the group and his report made 10 recommendations, including ordering a 'significant' new public artwork and 're-presenting' buildings and places which have historic links to slavery.
In 2022 he successfully campaigned for a plaque at the Court of Session commemorating the 1778 judgment of Knight v Wedderburn, which established that Scots law would not support slavery.
He told the PA news agency at the time the plaque meant a 'tremendous amount' to him.
Despite his years-long efforts to address racism, Sir Geoff did not advocate for the removal of statues and building names associated with historic slave owners and those connected to the trade, such as Viscount Dundas.
He said: 'If you remove the evidence, you remove the deed.'
Richard A Williams, principal of Heriot-Watt, led tributes to Sir Geoff. He said: 'Today marks a sad day for this university and for everyone who knew Sir Geoff.
'He was an inspiration not just to me but to colleagues past and present, and countless students around the world. His infectious enthusiasm and passion for education was impossible to ignore and this university was all the richer for having such a strong association with him over the years.
'He will be dearly missed, and our thoughts are with his loved ones at this difficult time.'
MSP Mr Choudhury said he was 'deeply saddened' at the news.
He wrote on social media: 'He was not only a distinguished scientist and academic, but also a courageous voice for justice and equality.
'My sincere condolences to his family and all who knew and admired him. May his soul rest in peace.'
Scottish First Minister John Swinney said: 'Sir Geoff Palmer was a pioneer and an outstanding intellectual.
'He had a hugely positive impact on Scotland and will be sorely missed. My sympathy to his family.'
Scotland Office minister and Midlothian MP Kirsty McNeill described Sir Geoff as 'an innovator, campaigner and educator', adding: 'We were lucky to have someone of his extraordinary warmth and breadth of interest in Midlothian.'

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Guardian

24 minutes ago

• The Guardian

The seagulls have landed: why gulls are encroaching on our towns

'They're a menace,' says Jenny Riley, shooting a wary glance at the gulls whirling above her beach hut near the pier in Lowestoft, Suffolk, as she shelters from the hot afternoon sun with her friend Angela Forster. The two older women have each had a hut on this stretch of powdery white sand for decades, and often eat sandwiches or fish and chips there, but as in many places on Britain's coast, it can be a perilous pastime. 'The birds are really vicious,' says Riley. 'If you're eating anything, you more or less have to go in to the hut or they'll take it from your hand. 'This is the worst summer I have known for seagulls, and I've lived my whole life in this place,' Riley adds, and her friend agrees: 'The mess and the smell in our town now is dreadful.' Is there anything they would like to see happen? 'Cull them,' says Forster. 'Although I wouldn't like to see them go completely – after all, they are the seaside.' Their sense of decades-long decline in a town whose fishing industry has almost vanished since the 1960s is perhaps not a surprise – but when it comes to the gull numbers, the women are not wrong. Local experts estimate the town's herring gull numbers at 10,000 – or 15% of its human population – though the birds' numbers are hard to calculate. Lowestoft's more visible gull problem, however, is its kittiwakes, another gull species whose population has grown from a single breeding pair in the 1950s to more than 1,000 nests today, splodged messily on to window sills, architraves and shopfronts throughout the town centre and leaving anyone passing underneath at risk of a foul-smelling guano splat. And this is not just a problem for Lowestoft. All over Britain, and coastal areas in Europe and the US, communities are in a flap about seagulls. North Yorkshire council is developing what it calls a gull management strategy in response to increasing complaints of 'gull mugging attacks' in towns from Scarborough to Whitby. In Lyme Regis, Dorset, authorities have introduced a public space protection order (PSPO) banning the feeding of birds to deter swooping herring gulls, having also tried flying drones and birds of prey to scare them away. The Highland council recently conducted a census of the birds to feed into its own management plans as herring gull numbers in Inverness and elsewhere soar. It is illegal, otherwise, to harm or capture any wild bird or interfere with its nest. Nevertheless, in March the former Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, called on the Scottish parliament to give people licenses to kill gulls, mentioning other Scottish councils that had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the problem 'to no effect'. Put to a newspaper poll, two-thirds agreed. If it can seem at times that seagulls are taking over British towns, the fact is that their numbers aren't rising at all – they are falling sharply. 'Seagulls', in fact, don't really exist – the term is a catchall for 50 species of gull worldwide, six of which are commonly found in the UK. Of these, both the kittiwake and herring gull are 'red listed', meaning their breeding populations have experienced perilous drops in recent decades; while other species including the great and lesser black-backed gulls and the (now misnamed) common gull are on the amber list, meaning moderate but still concerning decline. In some traditional coastal nesting sites, the most recent national seabird census found, the populations have all but collapsed. South Walney nature reserve in Cumbria had more than 10,000 herring gulls' nests in 1999 and just 444 in 2020, a drop of 96%, according to Dr Viola Ross-Smith, a gull expert at the British Trust for Ornithology. The crash in numbers of lesser black-backed gulls at the same site was even greater, at 98%. Why? Alongside the wider biodiversity crisis, say experts, it's partly because Britain's gulls are moving into town. 'When we talk about urban gulls, not only in coastal communities or towns but also increasingly in large urban centres, it's about recognising that these birds are moving,' says Helen F Wilson, a professor of geography at Durham university whose work focuses on the social and cultural geography of humans and other species sharing the same space. 'It's not that they're increasing in number, but they are shifting away from where we might have expected to see them.' There are lots of possible reasons for that she says – warming seas, falls in their prey species, changing in fishing practices, more violent winter storms. Rather than seeing gulls as malign dive-bombers that are after our chips, in other words, we ought perhaps to consider their vulnerability. 'We need to think about what [their growth in towns and cities] tells us about what is happening elsewhere,' she says. 'Because for whatever reason, these birds are now finding urban environments much better than the coast.' They are also just carrying out their natural behaviour. 'We often describe herring gulls in very sinister ways: they're cool, calculating, muggers, cannibalistic – these very moral ways of talking about them. But what we're actually describing is natural behaviour, whether that's protecting a nest or simply feeding. Herring gulls snatch food from other birds in the wild, so it stands to reason that they would take things from people's hands.' Ross-Smith agrees. Herring gulls, for instance, can be especially aggressive – she prefers 'aggressively defensive' – while their chicks are fledging, 'but I wish people understood that the gull is merely being a very protective parent'. 'We are part of an ecosystem, and we're in a biodiversity crisis, and I think we need to be a bit more tolerant of the other species around us,' she says. As well as big environmental stresses, each town has specific local factors that may have encouraged gulls to settle. In Inverness, for example, the closure of a nearby landfill site in 2005 was one of the drivers of a very sharp increase in the city centre, according to David Haas, a senior community development manager for the Highland council. Having previously reduced the number of nests by physically removing eggs (under license), they have now moved to a range of non-lethal deterrents including the use of lasers, sonar and hawks. 'As we changed over to these methods, it's caused a lot of angst amongst people, understandably,' says Hass. They are also mindful that birds shooed from the town centre may simply move to the suburbs, 'and we have had evidence of that, where they're going into residential areas and causing a bit of mayhem in certain spots. But we're addressing that too. It's work in progress.' Similarly, the initial migration of Lowestoft's kittiwakes from its docks to its main shopping street and beyond followed the demolition of a derelict structure on which a small number of pairs were happily nesting. Finding town centre ledges even more to their liking than the cliff sides where they naturally roost, their numbers had reached 430 nests by 2018, then 650 in 2021, and more than 1,000 today, according to Dick Houghton, a retired fisheries scientist who now unofficially monitors the birds. 'And there are thousands of sites in the town where they could nest,' he says. Steam-cleaning kittiwake dung – a pungent brew, given the birds' diet of sand eels and herring sprat – from the pavement below Lowestoft's nesting sites is now a daily task, costing East Sussex council £50,000 a year, according to Kerry Blair, the council's strategic director. 'That's difficult to sustain in the current financial environment, but we can't not do it,' he says. Lowestoft, too, has experimented with nest removal and egg oiling (which stops them developing) in the past, 'but we've come a long way in terms of understanding our responsibilities', says Blair. That's included learning about the birds themselves, he says. Unlike other gulls, kittiwakes don't snatch food, and spend their winters out to sea in the North Atlantic, allowing old nests to be removed each winter. But they also like to nest in the same spot each year. So if they can't access that spot next year, it doesn't mean they'll fly back out to sea – they'll simply move to the next available windowsill along. It has led to the recognition that the birds aren't going anywhere, so people will have to learn new ways of living with them, says Blair. Rather than merely ousting the birds from their facades, for instance, building owners are now encouraged to build bespoke nesting ledges for them on more discreet walls away from public footpaths. A row of simple wooden ledges drilled to the side of a BT building now houses as many as 120 kittiwake nests, leaving the public space free of their mess. 'That's the journey that the council has been on,' says Blair. 'The Lowestoft kittiwake, when we started to look at [the issue], was about the dirt on the pavement, but it's turned into something else … It's about trying to see it as an amazing gift, really, to have these very endearing creatures living among us. Yes, it brings a few problems. Let's deal with all those problems and learn to love them living alongside us. That's a journey, I think, and more people than you'd expect in this town are starting to feel the same.'

Scottish Sun

8 hours ago

• Scottish Sun

‘He used to scream in the night' – Scottish WW2 veterans return to scene of one of worst military tragedies

NORMANDY RETURN 'He used to scream in the night' – Scottish WW2 veterans return to scene of one of worst military tragedies Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) VETERANS returned to the scene of one of Scotland's worst military tragedies this week - 85 years after 10,000 men were either killed or captured in WW2. The Black Watch paid an emotional visit to St Valery-en-Caux in Normandy to commemorate the ill-fated defence of the region by the 51st Highland Division. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 The Black Watch Commemorative Visit to Normandy in France. Credit: ©Perthshire Picture Agency. NO SYNDICATION. REMAINS WITH PERTHSHIRE PICTURE AGENCY 4 Lt Col Bill Bradford of The Black Watch whilst serving as a Captain. Credit: © Perthshire Picture Agency. NO SYNDICATION. REMAINS WITH PERTHSHIRE PICTURE AGENCY 4 Private Cameron Walker who was hidden by the Hubert family for four years - pictured with his mother after returning. Credit: © Perthshire Picture Agency. NO SYNDICATION. REMAINS WITH PERTHSHIRE PICTURE AGENCY 4 Infantry of 51st Highland Division are carried into battle aboard Sherman tanks. Credit: Alamy It was an equally sombre event for grateful locals who remembered the men that gave their lives for strangers and saved their ancestors. Retired Brigadier Alastair Aitken, Chairman of The Black Watch Association, said: 'People talk about the Auld Alliance but what they are thinking of is a few beers at Murrayfield with some French rugby supporters. 'But actually, here in Normandy is the real Auld Alliance because here we had Scottish soldiers who died not just in France, but for France, and that is unique in recent British history. 'This is a story of Scotland's best who fought bravely for France as they died for Scotland. They would have fought to the last man and the last round. That has created a unique bond with the communities of Normandy. We won't find it anywhere else in France. 'This is not even a Scottish story – it is a Highlands story – and The Black Watch is part of that. 'It is all about the people. And it is their individual stories that keep their names alive. These are the stories that inspire current and future generations.' Mayor of St Valery-en-Caux, Jean-Francois Ouvry, added: 'I once watched an old soldier stand at the 51st Highland Division monument on the clifftop above St Valery as a tear trickled down his cheek and I realised I also had a tear in my eye. 'Perhaps future generations will not be so aware of our mutual history but hopefully St Valery will never forget. 'The monument stands strong; the graves are tended and the soldiers of Scotland rest here forever. They are in our hearts and we will take care of them.' The heroic soldiers remained behind, under French command, in a last gasp attempt to halt the German advance. But the onslaught proved too strong and 51st Highland Divisional commander Major General Victor Fortune reluctantly followed orders to call a ceasefire and surrender when all hope of naval evacuation had gone. Mistakes were made but we fought with honour – hero Scots soldiers remembered 20 years after Iraq Troops were vastly outnumbered and rapidly running out of ammunition, food and fresh clothing, as well as having no aerial or heavy artillery support. French families played their own in part in trying to save those left behind - taking in stricken Scots and shielding them from the Germans. Private Cameron Walker, a blacksmith's son from Forteviot in Perthshire, remained hidden with a family for four years – helping on the farm and hiding in a specially-made niche between the chimneys whenever enemy soldiers made their frequent searches. His host Hamilton Hubert later 'adopted' Cameron as an extra son and the last surviving daughter – 80-year-old Ghislaine Pegard – told of the love the family had for the young Scotsman. She said: 'I never met him – I wasn't born. But my parents talked about Cameron often. I feel very proud of them and what they did. 'Cameron was a part of the family and The Black Watch became part of our family too. My grandchildren now know of what my parents went through to keep Cameron safe and they will tell their children and grandchildren.' Meanwhile, retired Black Watch Colonel Ronnie Bradford, 67, from Aberdeenshire, is still in awe of the legends told about his famous father - Captain Bill Bradford He was taken prisoner following the surrender of British and French commanders but managed to escape on six separate occasions. The hero spent 367 days trying to reach safety. He walked more than 620 miles, cycled over 500 miles, travelled 2,216 miles by train, 469 miles by ship and around 700 miles by small boat to reach British soil. Ronnie said: 'He never spoke of those times but I know they scarred him deeply. He used to scream in the night. 'It was only after my brother stopped Dad burning his diaries just before he died that his story came to light. 'He was a kind and tolerant father. I just wish we'd known his war story before so that I could have talked to him about it. 'I've been thinking of him and all the other soldiers who fought here in Normandy and to walk where they walked and see where his friends and comrades fell is a really emotional journey.' King Charles passed on his wishes to those who made the trip to pay their respects. And general Fortune's grandson, actor Jack Fortune, from Galloway, believes people could learn a lot from the soldier's commitment to his men. He proudly said: 'While in prison in Poland after capture at St Valery, he suffered a stroke and refused to be repatriated, saying he would stay with his men of the 51st Highland Division until the end.'

Edinburgh Reporter

18 hours ago

• Edinburgh Reporter

Firefighters called to Morrison Street after report of electrical fire under pavement

Last night Thursday 19 June 2025 firefighters were called to Morrison Street in Edinburgh after being made aware of an electrical fire under the pavement. The pavement was blocked off to pedestrians while investigations are carried out Last night a spokesperson for Scottish Fire and Rescue said: 'We were made aware of an electrical fire under the pavement at Morrison Street. Morrison Street Photo Craig Duncan 'We are waiting on Scottish power arriving. 'One appliance is at the scene and we are still in attendance.' The SFRS have been contacted for an update. Like this: Like Related