Spotlight on Old Mancunian: Arnold Thackray
Posted on: March 17th 2022School News
We are very grateful to all of our donors who, through their generosity, enable the School to provide an education of the highest quality to suitably able boys. There have been over 3000 individual donors to the School and the Bursary Fund since 1997. One of these significant benefactors to the school is Professor Arnold Thackray, who is now retired in North Carolina.
Here is a snapshot of his successful life thus far.
Following his study at MGS, Arnold went to Bristol University and gained a B.Sc in Chemistry. After that, he went to study at Cambridge University and received a Ph.D. in 1966. He has held faculty appointments in Oxford (Visiting Fellow at All Souls College), Cambridge (Fellow at Churchill College) and at the LSE, Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He was the founding Chairman of the Department of History and Sociology of Science, and today is the Joseph Priestley Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Thackray is the former president of the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Arnold wanted to offer his words of encouragement to those in the MGS community, as follows: "Life has few certainties. The 500-plus year track record of MGS is one! A free, appropriate education for boys of high intellectual promise was and is something to cherish.
"Like you, I am privileged to have enjoyed an MGS education, thanks to earlier benefactors. Their long-sighted philanthropy was the one essential ingredient, enabling us to develop and use our talents.
"As the years pass, my awareness increases of how unusual MGS is - in its history, in its track record and in its ongoing commitment. The least I can now do in return, is to contribute to the MGS Bursary Appeal, to the limit of my ability.
"I trust that you too profited from your years of instruction, community, and aspiration in Old Hall Lane, Today, the school has strong leadership, dedicated staff, eager boys and a vivid awareness of the need to restore and extend the school's endowment. May I therefore invite you to include the MGS Bursary Appeal among your highest priorities, now and through the days ahead?"
[In gratitude, Arnold Thackray OM 1949-57]
Thank you very much to Arnold for his inspiring words and all his continued hard work and support of the school. We are immensely grateful for his generosity in helping us to provide school places to academically able boys.