Alan Gilbert (Australian academic)

Alan David Gilbert AO (11 September 1944 – 27 July 2010) was an Australian historian and academic administrator who was president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester between 2004 and 2010.

This, and his well-known controversial views on private funding of universities, led to Richard Davis in 2002 dubbing him the "doyen of economically rationalist vice-chancellors".

To rescue MUP, the University Council borrowed $150 million from the National Australia Bank and agreed to provide additional money from its investment reserves.

It will be an educational and research powerhouse that is at home in England's North-West and committed to regional as well as national and international agendas.

Without seeking to emulate the social cachet of Oxbridge or America's Ivy League, it will take its place confidently alongside those virtuoso institutions in its research capability and performance, in the quality of the students and staff that it attracts and in the reputation for scholarly excellence that it secures.

More than anything else, the success of the Manchester 2015 Agenda will be driven by the impact of internationally pre-eminent researchers and research clusters on the scholarly culture of the University generally.Central to Project Unity, the name given to the plan to merge, was the idea of extending the Golden Triangle of Oxford Cambridge and the London universities UCL and Imperial to a Golden Quadrilateral.

[citation needed] Gilbert's address to the university during the inauguration ceremony in the Whitworth Hall on 22 October 2004 made it very clear that he believed the plan was achievable and listed five key elements in the transition from "good to great".

This ranking measures indicators such as Nobel Prize winners and highly cited authors 154 are listed on ISI HighlyCited.com, for Manchester,[9] and has improved partly as a result of the appointment of such people.

However, Gilbert announced that due to increases in salary costs, energy bills and lower than expected revenue the university was about £30m (5% of its annual turnover) in deficit.

This building provides a variety of state of the art individual and group study facilities, and is managed by the University of Manchester Library.