At the peak of his achievement in 1967 Simpson seemed even older than he actually was

At the peak of his achievement, in 1967, Simpson seemed even older than he actually was. When, that year, he became the first British goalkeeper to lay hands on the coveted European Cup, he was almost 37, and his seniority to a relatively youthful Celtic side saw him nicknamed “Faither”.Scotland’s most venerable football hero had once been its most precocious: although he did not earn his first cap until he was 36, he made his senior d?t for Queen’s Park before his 15th birthday. While football embraced the Swinging Sixties, the Celtic goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson was the decade’s antithesis. Ronald Simpson, footballer: born Glasgow 11 October 1930; played for Queen’s Park 1945-48, Third Lanark 1950-51, for Newcastle United 1951-60, Hibernian 1960-64, Celtic 1964-70; married (one son, one daughter); died Edinburgh 20 April 2004.

Other books, notably The Making of Classical Edinburgh (1967), celebrating the 200th anniversary of Edinburgh’s New Town, were mainly historical studies.Ian G Stewart. From 1983 until 1990 he chaired the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland.Youngson’s publications ranged over many fields, economic history, economics, architecture and Scottish history among them. The American Economy 1860-1940 came in 1951, Possibilities of Economic Progress in 1959 and The British Economy 1920-1957 in 1960. Overhead Capital: a study in development economics (1967) sprang from a period of leave spent as Irving Fisher Visiting Professor at Yale. Over the next 10 years, the Economics Department grew and flourished; by 1970 there were no fewer than four professors.In 1974, having been Vice-Principal at Edinburgh for three years, he moved out to Canberra as Director of Research in Social Sciences at the Australian National University.

From 1980 to 1982, he held a professorial appointment in Hong Kong before returning to Edinburgh. Edinburgh University authorities had not been as responsive to the growing needs of an economics department as Peacock had been urging. Sandy Youngson was persuaded to take on the burden but with the promise that a second chair in the Economics Department would shortly be established. My wife attended his course and to this day remembers it as a “breath of fresh scholarly air”.