The School is proud to announce The Brian Booth Fund, which makes available grants to members of the Oundle School community who are undertaking research connected to biological sciences, with preferred applicants being current or recent leavers.
Up to £10,000 is available annually to support relevant projects no matter how small or large the budget.
The fund was made possible by the generosity of Anne Booth, the widow of Old Oundelian Brian Booth (Bramston 1945).
Brian said that while at Oundle, he was inspired by the ornithologist James Fisher, who encouraged him to take an interest in natural history. James was the son of the headmaster Kenneth Fisher, and a colleague of naturalist and Old Oundelian, Sir Peter Scott.
In his 2008 obituary, the Daily Telegraph described Brian as “an explorer and naturalist in the tradition of a vanished golden age of discovery”. His many intrepid expeditions included the discovery of a giant elk rock carving in Libya, the discovery of evidence of Neolithic cultures in Chad, the rediscovery of the Black Glass Wren in north-west Australia, and ornithological trips to Iceland where he spent a winter camping by a river in a hut that he built, studying Arctic bird life. He was still dog sledding and camping in the snow in Swedish Lapland in his late 70s. He died in 2008, aged 80.
Applications for an award are encouraged to involve active, constructive participation in original research that involves field work, expeditions with tangible scientific aims, expeditions with aims connected to conservation and preservation, ornithological expeditions or expeditions linked to an academic institution or other recognised research body.
