[1] He was educated at Bishop Foy's School in Waterford, where a special teacher had to be recruited to coach him in Greek.
[4] The successful candidate on that occasion was the mathematician, Albert Joseph McConnell, who remained in office for 22 years.
In 1965, Stanford gave the Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on the topic of the pronunciation of Ancient Greek.
A long-time member of the Royal Irish Academy, Stanford was appointed chairman of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies by the President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera.
As a leader of the Republic of Ireland's small Protestant population, Stanford was a lifelong champion of the proportional representation electoral process, believing that it protected the rights of minorities.