Earlier in my career, I had been one of the two Chemistry Fellows from 1984 until 2004. During my Provostship the College completed a number of substantial building projects on the Main Site, made a number of excellent appointments to the Fellowship, greatly strengthened its relationships with Old Members, and recovered well from the effects of the financial crisis of 2008. Whilst Provost I had two spells as the Deputy Chair of the Conference of Colleges, and then took over as Chair, during a period in which the Conference developed substantially. The Conference is the body which attempts to keep the colleges acting in concert and responds on behalf of the collegiate side of the University to formulate policies in response to external and internal challenges. As a consequence of these roles, I was on the University Council for six years and became a pro-vice-Chancellor of the University.

The 1984-2004 period marks the mid-career time during which I really consolidated my scientific research, whilst also attending to the physical chemistry tutorials in the College. I began to develop several computational methods to enable the study of the atomistic structure and dynamics of materials at a realistic level. Some of these strands were quite successful and have resulted in programs which are in use around the world – especially to study and predict the physical properties of ionic materials. These studies took me into several topical application areas including the application of ionic melts in new nuclear technologies, batteries and supercapacitors.