The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Distinguished university leader, 84
Professor Philip Love, an Aberdeen Grammar School dux who became one of the founders of the Russell Group of universities, has died aged 84.
He had also been elected twice as dean of the Faculty of Law at Aberdeen University, and served as president of the Law Society of Scotland in 1981-82.
The following year, Phil was made a CBE for his services to law in Scotland.
In 1992, he was appointed vice-chancellor of Liverpool University and later became a deputy lieutenant of Merseyside, and a high sheriff of Merseyside.
Philip Noel Love was born on Christmas Day 1939, the only child of Thomas and Ethel Love who had a grocer’s shop in Walker Road, Torry.
He attended Walker Road Primary School, and then Hilton School for a short time when the family moved to North Anderson Drive.
Phil started at Aberdeen Grammar School in 1952 and was soon making his mark academically and on the sports fields.
Phil represented Aberdeen Grammar at the Scottish schools’ athletics meetings and, in 1957, he was senior prefect, athletics captain, rugby captain, dux, and winner of the AllRound Trophy.
In later years he endowed the Phil Love Trophy, awarded annually to a student who has brought credit to the school through national or international activities.
He graduated from Aberdeen University in 1963 and shared The Society of Advocates Prize in Roman Law. He then joined the law firm of Campbell Connon and Co, then, with the firm’s approval, became an assistant in the department of Scots law and a parttime lecturer at Aberdeen University.
In 1979, he was elected dean of the Law Faculty at Aberdeen for a four-year term and again in 1991. He also served as senior viceprincipal of the university in 1989-90.
In 1992, the year he was appointed vice-chancellor at Liverpool, Phil lost his wife Isabel (Mearns), with whom he had three sons, Steven, Michael and Donald and, eventually, six grandchildren.
Three years later, he married Isobel Pardey (nee Cruickshank), a widow with a son, Iain, and daughter, Julie, both married, providing four
more grandchildren. The two had known each other since their school days and met up again while they were working in Liverpool and Manchester respectively.
In Liverpool, Phil was instrumental in setting up the Russell Group of research universities.
Isobel said: “Phil was a modest man who always gave 110% to everything he did. He was genial, with a great sense of humour.
“He was a man of great intellect and integrity who was not only suited to legal complexities but to business and administration also.”