Our students lost in the Great War

We found this document while looking for some records related to the University’s high country lands. It is a list of Canterbury College students who laid down their lives in the Great War.

This Roll of Honour shows the degrees of the graduates marked against their names.

The list is mainly correct but letters attached to the roll suggest a few names were missed off the roll. One such name was William Carnegie Lyall who had passed through the College and was killed in action in 1918.

Science block and cars

We came across this image the other day and it took our fancy. Lovely shiny cars against the backdrop of the brightly lit science lecture theatres. We guess it must be in the early 1960s.

Canterbury alumni - Ernest Rutherford

One of Canterbury University's most distinguished alumni is Ernest Rutherford. He attended what was then called Canterbury College from 1890 - 1894 and obtained three degrees. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. His work was important in developing the framework for 20th century nuclear science.

Rutherford worked here in the 'old tin shed' which housed the Chemistry and Physics laboratory at Canterbury College until WWI. His lecturer at the time was Professor Bickerton who also taught John Erskine and was to become notorious in NZ for his positons on marriage and society

Rutherford's mathematics lectures were conducted here in the old Mathematics lecture room under Professor Charles Cook. Interestingly Professor Cook had a long-standing rivalry with Professor Bickerton.

For more information on Rutherford see the University library

Flight 712

Recently while cataloguing the University Warehouse records we came across the below letter which had been salvaged from a plane crash (flight 712) in London in 1968. The letter was a application from a Mr. C.E.Manning of Southampton University, United Kingdom to work in the UC classics department. The crash occured after the engine fell off the aircraft in flight. Five of the 127 on board the aircraft were killed in a major fire, although the plane made a safe emergency landing. As well as the passengers, the aircraft was carrying baggage, mail and a radioactive isotope destined for the University Hospital in Jerusalem.

Although the letter was delayed, Mr Manning still got the role as a lecturer in the Classics Department.

Charles Manning lectured at the University of Canterbury from 1968 to 2001. He was a Christchurch City councillor from 1980 to 1983 and 1986 to 2001. He was appointed as a Environment Commissioner in July 2001.