A “brain drain” of leading academics has begun already, four months after the Brexit vote, universities have told The Times.
It mirrors the intellectual flight of the early 1980s, which resulted in top British researchers basing themselves in America. Many are now Nobel prizewinners.
Elite British universities are paying for visa fees and legal advice for academics from abroad, in an attempt to hold on to them. Some who have left for other countries have taken millions of pounds in research funding and their postdoctoral students with them.
Anna Soubry, the Conservative MP and former business minister, told the Commons this week that the best EU workers were leaving the University of Nottingham, and academics from the school of geographical sciences at the University of Bristol echoed this sentiment in a letter to this newspaper.
They wrote that the Brexit negotiations had “already led to some of our staff leaving, potential students withdrawing their acceptance and a reduced research capacity”.
Other universities are receiving fewer or no applications for jobs and research posts that previously would have been in great demand.
Those leaving Bristol include a professor, Clive Sabel, who has taken a post in Denmark. His funding and research students have gone with him. Sandra Arndt, a physical scientist, has taken a job in Brussels.
Stephen Maher, a research scientist looking at treatments for oesophageal cancer, is moving back to Ireland from the University of Hull. He will take up a post at Trinity College Dublin.
Michael Soljak is leaving Imperial College London, where he worked as a full-time researcher, to move to Singapore. He is from New Zealand but has lived in Britain since 1992.
He said that Brexit was a factor in his decision, because of its possible effects on EU funding of a dementia trial he is involved with and because of weaker sterling.
Scientists for EU is a not-for-profit organisation that began monitoring the academic community after the referendum vote. In the first few weeks it heard from more than 400 people: 80 said that they intended to leave and almost ten had already secured a new job.
One academic from a leading institution said: “World-leading researchers are already reconsidering their positions in the UK because of the Brexit vote.
“One of the best pure mathematicians in the world was due to arrive at our university this summer to take up a professorial chair. He has now told us that he has changed his mind, citing the Brexit vote as the principal reason.” Mike Galsworthy, director of the organisation, said: “There are two things driving the motivation. Firstly the xenophobic rhetoric that came after the vote and personal experience of this.
“Secondly, the funding landscape going forward, both on a national level and as a relationship with the EU science programme.
“This has hit the brand hard and immediately. The even bigger hit is from people turning down posts they were lined up to take, or pulling applications for jobs being advertised.”
Dr Galsworthy added: “The British Nobel laureates living in the US, who went there in the early 1980s, abandoned the UK science because of funding cuts by Margaret Thatcher and it led to a brain drain.
“We’re in the second wave of a brain drain. It’s real and it’s happening but can be prevented if we take measures to encourage talent.”
Russell Goulbourne, executive dean of the faculty of arts and humanities at King’s College London, said that the Brexit vote had made staff anxious.
A French academic at the university had left a permanent post to take up a fixed-term contract back in France.
“I don’t want to see more and more of this happening,” Professor Goulbourne said. “If people leave there can be collateral damage, taking funding and post-docs with them.
“There’s been a kind of bereavement process going on. It’s going to be a very elongated bereavement process. It’s affecting all colleagues because it says something about how open we are as a country.
“It’s specifically affecting those who are EU citizens and that’s a significant number of us — more than 30 per cent of our academic staff and a quarter of non-academic staff. Most of our recruitment took place just before the referendum so next spring is when we’ll see if we’re having difficulties with posts.
He added: “We’re trying to support people. The college is providing legal advice to people who want to change their citizenship status and also provides interest-free loans to help them through that process.”
The University of Exeter is offering help to its 540 EU staff, advising them on their rights and how to stay in Britain, holding workshops on how to apply for citizenship or residency.
It has contacted all EU staff to offer assistance, including advice on the status of their children and other family members.
The university is offering to pay the £65 fee for EU and EEA staff who qualify to apply for an official biometric residence card, which certifies permanent residency in the UK.
Britons abroad . . .
● David Thouless, 82, won 2016 Nobel prize in physics. He works at the University of Washington in Seattle. The prize was shared with Duncan Haldane, 65, a Briton working at Princeton University, and Aberdeen-born Michael Kosterlitz, working at Brown University in Rhode Island.
● Sir Angus Deaton, 69, won Nobel prize for economics in 2015. Moved to US in 1980s and is professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton.
● Oliver Smithies, from Halifax, won the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine in 2007 when he was at the University of North Carolina.
● Sir Anthony Leggett was born in London but has been at the University of Illinois since 1983. He won Nobel prize for physics in 2003.
. . . and foreigners in Britain
● Konstantin Novoselov, born in Russia, was professor of physics at Manchester University when he won the Nobel prize for physics in 2010. He shared it with Andre Geim, who also studied in Russia before moving to Manchester.
● Jim Scott was honoured Unesco for contributions to nanoscience. Born in New Jersey, he works at St Andrews.
● Louise Richardson, vice chancellor of Oxford University, was also principal of St Andrews. She is Irish.
● Chris Brink, the vice chancellor of Newcastle University since 2007, was born in South Africa.