A FORMER Oxford don who founded what became the Oxford Centre for Criminology has died aged 97.

Professor Nigel David Walker was a respected criminologist who turned to academia after more than a decade as a civil servant.

Criminology is the scientific study of crime and criminals.

Nigel Walker came to Oxford in 1961 as Christ Church’s new Reader of Criminology, a respected position that saw him make headlines several times in the Oxford Mail.

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His interests were the links between mental health and crime and he published several influential books in his field. In particular, Crime and Punishment In Britain (1965) was hailed by a reviewer in our sister paper The Oxford Times as a “monumental text”.

Considered a landmark piece at the time, it examined the national penal system of the 1960s, and the differences in view on crime and punishment between the man on the street, legislators, lawyers and philosophers.

He was a Nuffield don until 1973, but in 1966 set up the Penal Research Unit which was made a department in Oxford University in 1971.

When his successor, Dr Roger Hood, took over as Reader in 1973, the unit was moved to Bevington Road and became the Centre for Criminological Research.

It has since been renamed the Oxford Centre for Criminology and is an integral part of the university’s law department.

Nigel David Walker was born on August 6, 1917, in China, where his father was representative for the British Embassy.

His family lived there for 10 years, before moving to Edinburgh, where he was a pupil at Edinburgh Academy. He then studied classics at Christ Church, Oxford, before the Second World War, and it was during that time that, while back in Edinburgh, he met Sheila Johnston, a fellow undergraduate. They married in 1939 and later had a daughter, Valerie.

During the war he served with the Cameron Highlanders and later the Lovat Scouts. He was removed from the frontline after being shot in one of his legs in Italy.

In 1954 Prof Walker was made a Doctor of Philosophy of Edinburgh University and from 1952 to 1955 he was private secretary to the Minister of State for Scotland. This was during an 11-year period in the Civil Service at the Home Department.

In 1961 he took the post of Reader in Criminology, a senior academic position, at Nuffield College in Oxford, to replace the retiring Dr Max Grunhut.

This followed an honorary fellowship he had previously completed during a sabattical year from 1958 to 1959.

Following a 12-year career at Nuffield, he was hired by Cambridge University to become the director of its Institute of Criminology in 1973.

There he was made a fellow of King’s College and Wolfson Professor of Criminology.

At Cambridge, the Nigel Walker Lecture, established in 1997, is still given by eminent criminologists annually.

Prof Walker retired from full-time work in 1984, but wrote several more books, including Dangerous People (1996) plus his own memoirs, and continued teaching.

Nigel Walker died in Edinburgh, where he had returned to be closer to his family, on September 13.

Sheila Walker died in 2006.

He is survived by two sisters, his daughter Valerie, two grandaughters and four great-grandchildren.

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