University of Bristol
“You have to think a lot. That took me 50 years”: Briton receives a doctorate – decades after starting his doctorate
Nick Axten is now a Ph.D.
© University Of Bristol/PA Media/DPA
Good things take time: A 76-year-old Briton has received his doctorate from the University of Bristol – 50 years after he started working for it.
A good 50 years ago, Nick Axten started his doctoral thesis – at the age of 76 the Brit finally got his doctorate. “What I wanted to do in the early 1970s was extraordinarily complicated,” Axten told the PA news agency on Tuesday. “Some problems are so big that you need most of your life to understand them. You have to think a lot. It took me 50 years,” said Axten.
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The subject of his research was a theory for understanding human behavior. It is based on the values of each individual and – the doctor of philosophy believes – has the potential to change the way behavioral psychology is viewed. In 1970 he went to the US University of Pittsburgh on a scholarship. But after five years he returned to the UK – without having finished his Ph.D., as the doctorate is known in English-speaking countries.
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Axten has now completed his degree: in 2016 he enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Bristol and in 2022 he submitted his doctoral thesis. “All the other philosophy doctoral students were around 23, but they accepted me as one of their own,” said Axten. “They are bright people full of ideas and I loved chatting with them – especially in the pub in the afternoon.” When he finally received his diploma, he was accompanied by his wife Claire and 11-year-old Freya, one of four grandchildren.