In the week of the Railtrack flotation there can really be only one alumnus to be proud of. No 50 in our series is the man who back in the 1960s began the process the Government is now bent on completing, Lord Beeching.
As plain Richard Beeching he enjoyed a dazzling academic career at Imperial College, winding up with a first, a doctorate and a publication on electron diffraction by the age of 23.