Ergonomics of human relations

Professor Welford was invited by the late K. F. H. Murrell and the other prime movers who founded the Ergonomic Research Society (ERS (now the Ergonomics Society)) to join them as a foundation member. At the time he was a lecturer in experimental psychology and director of the Nuffield Unit for Research into Problems of Ageing at the Cambridge University Psychological Laboratory. He thus typified the alliance of academic and applied interests which the new found Society was to keep in close touch. He became the Chairman of its Council having the task of keeping the protagonists of these two interests from falling out, success in this endeavour leading to the flourishing Society to which we are heirs. He gave up the Chairmanship to become the first editor of this journal, and held this position until he went on a visit to Australia in 1964. There he was instrumental in inspiring the formation of the Ergonomics Society of Australia and New Zealand of which he was later to be President. In 1968 he was appointed to a Chair of Psychology at the University of Adelaide from which he retired some 10 years later. Still active in retirement he has clearly adapted to warmer climes than those of his homeland and went first to live in Hawaii and now in the Channel Islands.