£4m scholarship scheme for budding scientists

By returning a gesture of goodwill, the Eliahou Dangoor Scholarships will provide welcome financial assistance to thousands of aspiring undergraduates keen to study science, technology, engineering or maths, and help them realise their ambitions

Naim Dangoor has felt a debt of gratitude to Britain for more than 70 years. An Iraqi Jew, now aged 95, he spent a happy period studying engineering at Queen Mary College, London in the 1930s. Then, three decades later, he fled to the UK to escape antisemitic persecution when the Ba’ath party, later headed by Saddam Hussein, came to power.

After the warm welcome he received both times, he vowed that if he was ever able to help a British university student he would. But he never expected to be in a position to help so much.

Thanks to a highly successful career in the property sector, he was able five years ago, to donate £1 million to offer scholarships worth £1,000 each for 1,000 of the UK’s most talented first-year students.

Now, on his behalf, his son, David, has donated a further £3 million, again for first-year students, but this time aimed at encouraging young people to study STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). Between 30 and 40 of these
£1,000 scholarships will be available each year for the next three years from 38 participating universities – members of the 1994 Group and the Russell Group, which together represent the leading research-intensive universities.

With matched funding from the government, the scheme, named the Eliahou Dangoor Scholarships after Naim’s father, will be worth £4 million and help thousands of students.

James Lightfoot, 22, who benefited from the previous scheme during his four-year biochemistry degree at the University of Bath, used it to fund flights to America for placements to carry out research into cancer. Without it, he says, he would have had to go further into debt – he already owed more than £16,000 on graduation – or would have had to forfeit the chance to do a placement abroad and gain the life experience of living in a new country.

For Luke Keenan, 22, another beneficiary of the earlier scholarship scheme, it lifted some of the financial worries of his first  year. His mother has health problems and his father is a full-time carer so neither was able to support him. “Without the  scholarship, I would have been a lot more worried and less focused on my work,” he says.

Both men have since gone on to do PhDs – Lightfoot in aerospace engineering at Bristol, Keenan in chemistry at Bath – and are passionate advocates of the value of studying science at university. For Lightfoot it offered the thrill of observing other people’s research and designing experiments, as well as the opportunity to “make a name for yourself by finding out something important and special that no-one else has done before – to change the world”. 

Dangoor is himself testament to the value of a science degree – and the variety of career paths it offers. After graduating, he returned to Iraq to join the army and then set up a business empire. He spent the 1950s running the Coca-Cola franchise there with a Muslim business partner, but had to give it up on the orders of the Ba’ath party. As a refugee in the UK he started a business in property development, becoming a multimillionaire.

His new donation comes amid increasing concern about the low proportion of young people in the UK taking maths and sciences at A-level and progressing to degrees in related subjects. Between 1997 and 2008, A-level entries fell by 18% in maths, 11% in physics and 6% in chemistry,  despite total entries for all subjects increasing by 12%.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, said: “We are still deeply concerned about the fall in the proportion of young people taking maths and sciences at A-level and progressing to degrees in STEM subjects. Although this year admissions offices are reporting a welcome increase in applications for science and engineering – these green shoots need nurturing.”

Piatt says Russell Group universities were also concerned that some students were put off applying to them because of a lack of confidence or misunderstanding about the costs and financial support available. “The Eliahou Dangoor Scholarships will be a great new weapon in our armoury in the battle to ensure that students fulfil their potential and take the courses that are best for them,” she explains.

Paul Marshall, executive director of the 1994 Group, says it is crucial that no student with the ability to go to university was unable to because of lack of funding. He adds: “Through the generosity of Dr Naim Dangoor, the Eliahou Dangoor Scholarships will support a large number of talented students to study science, technology, maths, engineering and science education in a research-rich environment.”

Guardian article on the Eliahou Dangoor Scholarships