Profile: Professor Sir George Bain

Proffessor Sir George Bain is president and vice-chancellor of Queen's University Belfast.

Proffessor Sir George Bain is president and vice-chancellor of Queen's University Belfast.

Appointed: January 1998; term of office ends 2004, when he is 65.

Education: University of Manitoba, Canada, economics and political science (taught there 1962-63); Oxford University, England, doctorate in industrial relations.

Academic career spans Nuffield College, Oxford; UMIST, where he was professor of industrial relations at UMIST; the University of Warwick, where he was chairman of the school of industrial relations and business studies, 1983-89; principal of London Business School 1989-1997.

Public service: includes chairman of the Low Pay Commission 1997-2001; non-executive director of Bombardier Aerospace Short Brothers Plc; He is also a member of the Northern Ireland Advisory Board of the Bank of Ireland.

Family: the Canadian son of a Scottish carpenter and a Belfast-born mother. His great-grandmother ran one of Belfast's best-known pubs, Pat's Bar, in the docks area, at the turn of the century. Divorced; remarried to Gwynneth. Two grown-up children from his first marriage, David, 32, temporary lecturer in Bristol University, Kathy, 34, working in the World Bank. Due to be a grandfather in May when Kathy gives birth.

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