Anastasios Christodoulou

Brilliant administrator and founding father of the

Richard Bourne , Tuesday 28 May 2002 10.20 BST

Three people turned the idea for a "university of the air" into the reality of the Open University, one of the most exciting educational innovations in the second half of the 20th century. They were 's arts minister Jennie Lee, Walter Perry, the OU's first vice-chancellor, and Anastasios "Chris" Christodoulou, its first secretary, who has died aged 70.

From 1963 to 1968, Chris had been assistant secretary at Leeds University. The following year, he transferred to the OU headquarters at Walton Hall, an old house in the heart of the new town of Milton Keynes. The "university of the air" had been proposed by Harold Wilson in 1963 and, during his Labour governments of 1964-70, he promoted the idea as a massive extension of second-chance educational opportunity, mixing broadcasting, correspondence and tutors, with new material prepared by teams of academics.

The project attracted support from a clutch of radicals, such as the Marxist English scholar Arnold Kettle and the biologist Steven Rose, while being shot at by the likes of educationalist Brian Jackson for being too traditionalist and not doing enough for the working class.

It also drew visceral hatred from some Conservatives, who saw it as a Wilsonian gimmick. William van Straubenzee, junior minister for higher education in 's 1970-74 Conservative government, told me, "I would have slit its throat if I could." He blamed the outgoing Labour education minister Ted Short for some nifty, last-moment work with the charter that made the OU unkillable.

Christodoulou thus had to forge a working institution out of an untried idea under immense pressure. Always personable, he was also tough, as he had to be while sorting out power struggles between Walton Hall, academics, broadcasters and the OU regional staff. While Walter Perry reassured the academics that the project would not compromise on quality, Chris reached out to further and adult education, and built links in the regions. The logistical challenge was formidable, especially when a correspondence institution suffered a postal strike in its first year, potentially fatal in the pre-internet era.

Faced with Harold Wilson's decision to hold an early general election in 1970, Chris and Perry brought forward the start of the OU by 12 months, to 1971. When Perry was ill, Chris fronted the launch. And when the new Conservative education secretary visited Walton Hall, saying she thought this was the university where you got a degree by ticking boxes - because some coursework involved multiple choice - Chris and Perry returned to with her to persuade her that the OU was a genuine educational service.

From www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/28/guardianobituaries.administration 8 August 2013 Although the Conservatives screwed down the finances, and foisted on the OU a premature experiment in taking 18-year-olds, the university was able to fight another day and build its own reputation. Of the 43,000 initial applications, 24,000 began degree courses in 1971; today, there are more than 200,000 students in Britain, and another 16,000 abroad.

Chris Christodoulou was born in , came to as a child, and grew up above a Greek restaurant in Soho. He won a place at St Marylebone grammar school, and went on to Queen's College, Oxford. His lifelong commitment to the Commonwealth began with six years in the colonial service, as district commissioner and magistrate in what is now Tanzania. He then joined the administration at Leeds University, where he soon acquired a reputation as a safe pair of hands.

He saw the OU through to relative security, leaving in 1980 to become secretary-general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), where he fought against the higher fees for Commonwealth students introduced by the Conservatives in the 1980s - seeing it as regressive to let in richer European students at British rates while those from developing countries were hammered. He also oversaw a substantial growth in ACU membership as former technical institutions around the Commonwealth became universities. With the Canadian Tom Symons, he raised some £2m in a 75th anniversary appeal for the ACU in 1988.

Chris was disappointed not to have been become chairman of the governors of the Commonwealth Institute - as acting chairman, he welcomed the Queen there in 1987 - and some felt that Whitehall might have feared his fighting reputation as it cut the institute's budget.

He did, however, become secretary of the Commonwealth scholarship commission and the Marshall scholarships, and was a governor of the Commonwealth of Learning, a distance teaching institution based in Vancouver. Surrey University made him a visiting professor in 1991, when he was chairing the Surrey University centre for Commonwealth and European education and development (Succeed).

Chris never lost his affection for Cyprus. He worked with the father of Stelios Hadji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, to establish a new Cypriot university, but, in the end, the prospective benefactor pulled out. Not long before he died, he visited the village where he was born, but found the experience depressing as it had been occupied by Turkish troops. His last years were dogged by eyesight problems.

Chris is survived by his wife Joan, whom he married in 1955, and their two daughters and two sons.

Lord Perry of Walton writes: I first met Chris Christodoulou in autumn 1968, when he came to Edinburgh to face a whole day of me explaining to him what I hoped the OU could achieve, despite the scepticism and downright hostility of most of the academic world. That he had the imagination and courage to accept the post of secretary was a major victory for the project.

Four of us started work together on January 1 1969; we had two years until we were committed to admit 25,000 students. Chris was the rock to which I clung; I was an academic, and he provided the gifted administrative expertise I lacked. He had absolutely no side; he talked to everyone, and everyone talked to him. His antennae picked up word of problems before they became serious.

From www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/28/guardianobituaries.administration 8 August 2013 While I was recruiting professors and planning teaching programmes, Chris built a team of administrators to handle such problems as student recruitment and records. These were common to all universities, but never previously on such a scale - inquiries in hundreds of thousands, applications in tens of thousands. Everything had to be computerised from the outset, and Chris was responsible for recruiting and supervising the people who would design the systems and make them work.

As the OU grew in size, complexity and administrative problems, Chris found solutions. As our reputation spread, inquiries increased from countries keen to learn about . We had a steady stream of visitors, political as well as academic, and were asked to send delegates to countries interested in establishing their own open learning centres. Chris played a major role in dealing with these developments. His contribution to the OU's success was massive.

Anastasios 'Chris' Christodoulou, university administrator, born May 1 1932; died May 20 2002

From www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/28/guardianobituaries.administration 8 August 2013