Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

wartime experiences, including Hugh Alexander (1928), with whom he
shared a passion for chess.
A member of the National Executive Committee of the Association of
University Teachers, Philip had previously also served as Secretary and
Officer of the Cambridge branch. He was also a founder member of the
Cambridge Association for the Advancement of State Education, a citywide
discussion group aimed at making both the public and the government
more sensitive to the needs of local schools. Politics was another of Philip’s
interests and he was both a founder member and Officer of the Cambridge
Area SDP. He stood unsuccessfully in the Arbury Ward in 1982 and 1983.
Philip died in May 2003.
ERIC LESLIE LEESE (1929) was a statistician and expert in
operational research.
Born in London on 16 February 1912, Eric attended Colfe’s Grammar School
in Lewisham. A Scholar, Prizeman and M Thackeray Student, he gained a First
in Maths and a Half Blue for Chess. After a further two years undertaking
mathematical research at King’s, Eric joined London Transport as a statistician
in 1935.That same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.
Two years later he joined the Royal Naval Scientific Service at the Admiralty. In
1941 he married Marjorie Bastick; the couple had two children, Rosemary
and Kenneth.
In the early 1950s the family emigrated to Canada and Eric took up a position
with the Canadian Research Board, part of the Canadian armed forces. From
1957 to 1960 he was Deputy Director of Operations Analysis at NORAD
(North American Aerospace Defense Command) before becoming Director of
Operational Research at the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1968 Eric became
Director of Maths and Statistics at the National Defence Headquarters in
Ottawa where he remained until his retirement in 1975. He published
numerous reports on operational research, applied probability and statistics,
although the majority of these were classified.
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OBITUARIES