Obituary: Lewis Elton

In February, 1939 Victor Ehrenberg fled from Czechoslovakia to the UK with his wife Eva (née Sommer) and their sons, Gottfried and Ludwig. Victor and Eva were secular German Jews who had raised their family in Tübingen, where Victor taught classical studies at the local university. He had fought in the German army during the First World War and was appointed to the staff of the German University in Prague. From there he took his family to England.

Gottfried was conscripted into the British army and ordered to Anglicise his name, and so the Ehrenbergs became Eltons. Gottfried became Geoffrey (later Sir Geoffrey) Elton, a leading historian of Tudor England and Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Ludwig became Lewis, a polymath who distinguished himself in two different careers, as a physicist and as an authority on quality and standards in higher education.

On arrival in Britain, Lewis Elton, who has died aged 95, was given a place at Rydal School, Colwyn Bay, from where he progressed to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to study mathematics. After further study at the Regent Street Polytechnic he gained a PhD in theoretical physics at University College London in 1950, and was appointed to the teaching staff at King’s College London. In 1957 he joined Battersea College of Technology (later the University of Surrey), where he became professor of physics from 1964 to 1970.

In 1970 he became increasingly concerned at what he regarded as the amateur status of teaching in British higher education. There was no professional teaching qualification at this level, and little professional development as a university teacher. So Elton stepped away from physics and became professor of higher education at Surrey University. On retirement in 1988 he moved to the UK government’s Employment Department, and in 1994 was appointed professor of higher education at UCL, where he established the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning.