Ian J. Saunders

Immediately after graduating I got married (two children, two grand-daughters, Golden Anniversary this year) and moved to Essex for a career in industrial research, but soon I decided a doctorate would be useful after all and to complete that moved to Lancaster University in 1967. 

I joined their staff as a lecturer in 1969 and it was such a friendly department and so good an area to live in that I never left.          Many years of collaborative research on compound semiconductors followed, with interest in fabrication leading to involvement with the British Association for Crystal Growth, being Chairman for 1985-8 and taking the 1988 Annual Conference to Glasgow, where we sponsored a Crystal Pavilion at the Garden Festival.  I have also been chair of the IOP Lancashire and Cumbria branch.

Various senior offices in Lancaster’s Bowland College led to a decade as the College Principal and heavy involvement in University politics.      I did part-time teaching and consultancy for the Open University from 1979 to 2008, including writing sections of the S207 Physics Text in particular on Solid State Physics, an interest inspired by George Wylie all those years ago! 

Private interests include collecting antique maps, and performing cartographic research.  

I mounted four large exhibitions of maps in the University Library in 1987, 1989 and 1994, and ‘Maps as Art’ in the Scott Gallery in 1994.    My book “Printed Maps of Lancashire” was published this year.    I lecture on historical cartography (and physics of course) to local societies several times a year and organise malt whisky tastings whenever invited to do so!