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Alison Richard will not be Cambridge's first female vice-chancellor ("Steely veteran with a cold eye on the bottom line", THES , December 6). Dame Rosemary Murray holds that distinction (1975-77).

The claim that the office was part time is also tenuous. When that claim was made in 1978 you published a letter from me that ended: "The description of the office as 'part time' is unlikely to be recognised by any vice-chancellor of recent years; indeed, it is probably that the office is more onerous in Cambridge than in other universities, both on account of the size of the university and the shortness of tenure" (THES, September 22, 1978).

A. W. F. Edwards
Gonville and Caius College
Cambridge