Thatcher's academic enterprise

Baroness Thatcher, the former prime minister, is hoping to establish a professorship at Cambridge University to further the study of economic enterprise, it was confirmed yesterday.

A university spokesman said administrators were in negotiations with the Thatcher Foundation on plans to endow a chair of economic and industrial enterprise. Reports suggest the foundation will pay pounds 1.9m to set up the professorship in the Judge Institute of Management Studies. "The university would seek to appoint a candidate with an outstanding academic record in the field of management studies, thereby to use the generous benefaction to further enhance the high reputation of the Judge Institute of Management Studies," the spokesman said.