Prof. em. Dr. Brian Vickers

Brian Vickers has been Full Professor of English Language and Literature at the ETH Zurich since 1975. He retired on March 31, 2003.

Born on December 13, 1937 in Cardiff, Great Britain, Prof. Vickers attended St. Marylebone Grammar School in London from 1948 to 1957. Following two years of military service he studied English Literature at Trinity College in Cambridge (B.A. with 1st class Honours, 1962; Ph.D., 1967). In 1964 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in English by Cambridge University, and in 1968 promoted to University Lecturer (with tenure from 1971). Simultaneously he was Fellow and Director of Studies at Downing College.

After a three-year professorship in English Literature at the University of Zurich (1972 -1975), Prof. Vickers became Professor Ordinarius at the ETH Zurich. The focusses of his research are the English literature of the Renaissance (Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Andrew Marvell), philosophy, rhetoric, and the relationship between the occult and the natural sciences. In 1977 he founded the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, and was its President from 1977 to 1979; since 1976 he has also been Director of the ETH Centre for Renaissance Studies. In 1980-1981 he was Visiting Fellow at All Souls College in Oxford, and in 1986-1987 Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Prof. Vickers has given numerous commemorative lectures. In 1974 he delivered the "Annual Shakespeare Lecture" of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft (West), in 1988 the "Annual Lecture" of the Society for Renaissance Studies, London, and in 1992 the "Annual Shakespeare Lecture" of the British Academy. In 1996 he gave the "Bluestone Memorial Lecture" at the University of Massachusetts, and in December 2001 he gave the "John Coffin Lecture in the History of Human Thought" at the University of London.

In 1989 Prof. Vickers was awarded the Morris D. Forkosch Prize of the "Journal of the History of Ideas" for his 1988 book "In Defence of Rhetoric"; in 1996 he received the Litt.D. of the University of Cambridge; and in 1998 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Brian Vickers was co-editor of the journals "Annals of Science", "Renaissance Studies", and "Isis".