The idea of Europe has changed with time. The notion was originally identified with three concepts: that of freedom, of Christianity, and with civilization. Later it was associated with diversity, democracy and then with nationalism. Only very slowly has the idea of a common identity leading to integration come to the fore.

It is often said that an interest in the history of one's subject is, in a scientist, a sign of failing powers. If so, then my powers must have begun to fail very early, for I cannot remember a time, once I had learned to read for pleasure, when I was not fascinated by the personalities of those who had made great discoveries and by the circumstances in which those discoveries were made. So you' II find among my publications a number of occasional pieces in which some eminent scientist or some important scientific event is subjected to scrutiny, regrettably the far from expert scrutiny that lies within the purchase of a very amateur historian. Some of these pieces were prompted by invitations from editors in urgent need of an obituary notice or, less often, of a more extended biographical memoir. It was an invitation of this kind that set me to work on the scientific life of Basil D., who, some 30 years ago, had made a discovery whose importance can hardly be exaggerated. I remember being all but stunned by the paper when it appeared, for it showed, wholly unexpectedly and contrary to all our assumptions, that cells derived from our own bodies could somehow (we didn't find out how until very much later) exchange genes. Of course, such a revolutionary idea was received at first with extreme scepticism, but it was quickly confirmed and Basil was catapulted to a stardom that few scientists ever achieve.

The main constitutions with which medieval and modern Europe has experimented in the search for the best form of government are surveyed: most of them have now been relegated to the museum of legal antiques. However, constitutionalism and parliamentarianism proved to be permanent and are still highly valued acquisitions. The merits of a written constitution are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of the role of the nation state and its present embattled status. Can the past tell us what the best form of government is and, on the basis of the ‘Weber-thesis’, is there a link between political freedom and economic prosperity? The American controversy on capital punishment shows how the interpretation of the Constitution by the judicature can be a matter of life and death.

Mathematics, while a necessary part of information technology is remarkably conservative in its working habits. Much of the mathematics needed for the computer age is still produced by paper and pencil. There are some signs of change and this paper looks more closely at what is happening. The impact of the electronic age and computers on the science of mathematics and on the style and organization of mathematical research and publication is examined.

The Nobel Foundation and the Nobel Prize-Awarding Institutions plan to celebrate the centenary of the first Nobel Prizes in 2001 by expanding the Nobel Website (http://www.nobel.se) on Internet into an Electronic Nobel Museum (ENM) of science and culture. A special version will be designed for local networks (intranets) within museums. The ENM focuses on the achievements of the Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace, but will also include the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Laureates are presented by portraits and their autobiographies. Other sections will be devoted to Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Institutions, Nobel Essays, a Library, and Virtual Exhibitions. A Young Scholars section will use animated and interactive documents to interest students in the Prize areas.

The past half-century has been perhaps the European university's greatest age, even compared with the earlier flourishing in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and during the industrial revolution of the 19th century. More universities have been founded; student numbers have increased at an unprecedented rate; and the scholarly and scientific productivity of the universities has been unparalleled. But the university has become for the first time a truly global institution, cut off from its roots in Europe and Europe's colonial empires and open to other, non-European and non-élite, knowledge traditions. At the same time the tight relationship between the university and modernity, or ‘movement’, has been increasingly questioned. For more than a century that relationship has been axiomatic, relegating the university's other role as an agent of continuity and tradition into second place. But the dynamism of socio-economic and technological change in the so-called ‘Knowledge Society’ is now so great that the university's role as a force for stabilization may become more important. As a result the centrality of the university in the European experience could be diminished.

The creation of a Scottish parliament in 1999 will crystallize a cultural crisis for Scottish higher education. Scottish universities retained their autonomy after the 18th-century union between Scotland and England because the union was about high politics rather than the affairs of civil society and culture. Unlike in England, the universities developed in close relationship with Scottish agencies of the state during the 19th century, and these agencies also built up a system of non-university higher education colleges. In the 20th century, the universities (and later some of the colleges) sought to detach themselves from Scottish culture and politics, favouring instead a common British academic network. So the new constitutional settlement faces Scottish higher education institutions with an enforced allegiance to the Scottish nation that will sharply disrupt their 80-year interlude as outposts of the British polity.

For many years, different patterns of the higher education system existed in various European countries. The patterns were not stable in each country, because pressures for upgrading of the ‘less noble’ sector tended to be strong. Altogether, it was justified, however, to characterize the situation in Europe as a ‘persistence of variety’. Many theories helped to explain a coexistence of inclinations for common approaches or specific options of individual countries. Most recently, though, pressures for convergence seem to have grown in Europe. Although the European Union advocates a respect for variety, some countries tend to adapt themselves to anticipated trends. In addition, efforts are undertaken in various European countries to adapt the programmes and institutions to an Anglo-Saxon model in order to preserve or strengthen their position in the wake of internationalization and globalization.

The main beliefs, strategies and problems marking the road of higher educational change in the Central–Eastern European countries are analysed and distinction is made between three main actors: government, clients and the academic community. At governmental level the focus is on the handicapping effects of conflict between short and long-term reform and the internal nature of the government-higher education relationship. Government initiated reforms should offer transitory and contextual solutions rather than permanent and substantive ones. The traditional lack of distinction between higher education as public versus private good and the problems and consequences of expanding higher education is examined. The political power of the academic community can hamper the effectiveness of reforms and external accountability. Reforms should separate the merged functions of supervision, allocation and professional accreditation. At the institutional level, executive leadership should be separated from the traditional academic hierarchies. Institutional leaders need to be given more independence and need to improve their skills of financial management, institutional planning and self-evaluation. As for academic control, new institutional patterns of cooperation should be assisted at the expense of the traditional hierarchies of higher knowledge.

The policy frame and resource base within which universities work in the UK have undergone drastic changes. Whilst the nature of changes at the governmental level has often been remarked upon, there is little empirical work on the impact of these changes on academic values and working. This paper reports findings from the English component of an Anglo–Norwegian-Swedish project nearing completion which gives an account of the policy changes and their impact on values, research agendas and criteria, and modes of creating and ‘delivering’ the curriculum. Whilst the research invites caution about overstating the discontinuities of policy over the last 20 years, it displays the considerable effects of policy changes which emerge, however, differently in different subject areas and types of institution.

Since the fall of the apartheid regime South African higher education has begun to undergo a process of fundamental transformation. First-world universities, which were beneficiaries (however unwilling) of past racial inequalities, have had to adapt to the urgent needs of what is a post-colonial and, for the majority of its citizens, a third-world society. South Africa, therefore, provides a particularly sharp example of the encounter between a higher education system established within the European tradition, in terms of both its institutional and its academic culture, and a society in the process of radical change. This encounter has been mediated through the work of the National Commission on Higher Education which attempted to produce a compromise that would enable South African higher education to be both ‘Western’ (in terms of academic values and scientific standards) and also ‘African’ (in terms of its contribution to building the capacities of all the people of South Africa). The tension between the university's claims to represent universal knowledge and the counter-claims that ‘local’ knowledge traditions should be accorded greater respect, therefore, is much sharper than in Europe.