26 Facts About Geoffrey Vickers

Sir Geoffrey Vickers, VC was an English lawyer, administrator, writer and pioneering systems scientist.

Geoffrey Vickers had varied interests with roles at different times with the London Passenger Transport Board, Law Society, Medical Research Council and Mental Health Research Fund.

Geoffrey Vickers was awarded the Victoria Cross in World War I while serving in The Sherwood Foresters, and was knighted following World War II, during which he served as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence and as a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Geoffrey Vickers described his first day of school as "school introduced me to the anguish reserved both for the non-conformist who wishes to conform and the awkward who long to excel in dexterity".

Geoffrey Vickers attended Bramcote, a preparatory school near Scarborough and then Oundle School; a public school before entering Merton College, Oxford where he briefly studied Classics from 1913 until the start of war.

Geoffrey Vickers described his father as "the best and most lovable man I ever knew; and he seemed to combine the two superlatives without the slightest effort".

Geoffrey Vickers's education was interrupted by World War I He and his brother William Burnell Vickers volunteered for service in the army.

Geoffrey Vickers was awarded the Victoria Cross for action in 1915 and the Croix de Guerre in 1918.

Geoffrey Vickers won the Victoria Cross for his actions on 14 October 1915 when he held a barrier across a trench in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, France against heavy German bomb attacks, ordering a second barrier to be built behind him in order to secure the safety of the trench, regardless of the fact that his own retreat would be cut off, and holding back the enemy for long enough for a second barrier to be completed.

Geoffrey Vickers qualified as a solicitor in 1923 and by 1926 he was a partner in the leading London law firm of Slaughter and May Geoffrey Vickers specialised in the legal aspects of large financial operations, many of which had international dimensions.

Geoffrey Vickers served in World War II; he was re-commissioned as a colonel, and was seconded as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence.

Geoffrey Vickers was a member of the London Passenger Transport Board and of the Council of Law Society.

Geoffrey Vickers wrote many books including The Art of Judgement, Freedom in a rocking Boat and Human Systems are Different.

Geoffrey Vickers introduced the concept of 'Appreciative Systems' to describe human activity.

Geoffrey Vickers's work was taken up by researchers at the Open University in particular.

Geoffrey Vickers died in 1982; however, the influence for his work is still alive.

Geoffrey Vickers's papers relating to systems thinking are archived at the Open University.

Geoffrey Vickers's work was taken up by researchers at the Open University in particular.

Geoffrey Vickers is regarded as a systems practitioner rather than an academic.

Geoffrey Vickers introduced the concept of appreciative systems to describe human activity.

Geoffrey Vickers recognised that appreciation of systems requires the participation of not only the observer, but that of the subject.

Geoffrey Vickers believed that social institutions are best analysed as systems, and his published work, notably Human Systems are Different, made far-reaching contributions to systems thinking in its applications to human society.

Geoffrey Vickers argues that our human experience develops within us 'readiness to notice particular aspects of our situation, to discriminate them in particular ways and to measure them against particular standards of comparison.

Such circular relations Geoffrey Vickers takes to be the common facts of social life, but we fail to see this clearly, he argues, because of the concentration in our science-based culture on linear causal chains and on the notion of goal-seeking.

Geoffrey Vickers suggests replacing the goal-setting and goal-seeking with feedback models in which personal, institutional or cultural activity consists in maintaining desired relationships and eluding undesired ones.

Geoffrey Vickers continued corresponding with Peter Checkland in the years before Vickers' death and discussed the relationship between systems ideas and real-world experience.