T. S. R. Boase
Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase was a British art historian, university teacher, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University.Life
Thomas Boase was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Charles Millet Boase, operator of a bleaching mill at Claverhouse, outside Dundee, of which the Boase family were part-owners, and his wife Anne. Boase was educated at a day preparatory school and then at Rugby School in England. He fought on the Western Front during World War I in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and was awarded the Military Cross. Boase studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1919 to 1921, and was subsequently Fellow and Tutor at Hertford College from 1922 to 1937.
From 1937 to 1947, Boase was Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and Professor of History of Art at the University of London. During World War II, he worked in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, followed by the RAF in Cairo, Egypt, from 1939 to 1941. He was then in charge of British Council activities in the Middle East, also based in Cairo, from 1943 to 1945.
From 1947 to 1968, Boase was President of Magdalen College. He also served as Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University from 1958 to 1960.
He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford for 1963–64.
Boase became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1961. He was a Trustee of the National Gallery and the British Museum. He was also a member of the Advisory Council of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
