Vale Professor Emeritus Victor Prescott

It is with sadness that we learn of the passing of Professor Emeritus Victor Prescott, a respected colleague who has long been a part of the University of Melbourne community.

Professor Emeritus Victor Prescott joined the University of Melbourne as a Lecturer in Geography in 1961, after education at the Universities of Durham and London and in the Royal Regiment of Artillery. During a distinguished Melbourne career he earned a Personal Chair in Geography in 1986, published many internationally influential works in political geography, served a year as Academic-in-Residence for then Foreign Minister Bill Hayden working on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and made a major contribution as Vice-President and President of the University’s Academic Board and a Pro Vice-Chancellor. As a psephologist he called elections for ABC Television between the 1960s and the 1980s, achieving 100 per cent accuracy in forecasts, with calculations made (in pre-computer days) using only a slide rule. His many books include International Frontiers and Boundaries (2008), co-authored with Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow Gillian Triggs.