Prior to becoming the 11th Master of St Edmund's, Dick Laws had spent a career researching animals in the Antarctic and in East Africa and was Director of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. By the time of his election, it was no longer required by statute that the Master of St Edmund's be a Catholic, lay or ordained, and Dick Laws became its first non-Catholic Master. When he began his period of office, St Edmund's had fewer than 50 students. By the time he left in 1996 there were some 200 students, the Fellowship of 29, with a strong bias towards the sciences, included among its number two Fellows of the Royal Society, and income from endowments had increased considerably. The climax of Laws' Mastership was the change in status from that of Approved Foundation to that of a full College of the University of Cambridge, with effect from 22 March 1996. [Notes courtesy of Michael Walsh, 'St Edmund's College Cambridge 1896-1996: A Commemorative History'.]