Sir George Sayers Bain (born 24 February 1939) is a British-Canadian academic. He was President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2004. Early life Bain was born and brought up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was educated at Miles Macdonell Collegiate. He studied economics and political science at the University of Manitoba. He then proceeded to Nuffield College, Oxford, where he took a Doctor of Philosophy degree in industrial relations. He served as President of the Manitoba New Democratic Party from 1962 to 1963. Academic career Bain began his academic career at Nuffield College; the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology; the University of Warwick, where he was Chairman of the School of Industrial and Business Studies between 1983 and 1989; and finally the London Business School, where he was Principal between 1989 and 1997. He was a member of the Committee of Inquiry into Industrial Democracy chaired by Lord Bullock in 1976–1977, of the Senior Salaries Review Body during 1993-6, and was Chairman of the Low Pay Commission during 1997–2002, the Work and Parents Taskforce in 2001, and the Independent Review of the Fire Service in 2002. He is a non-executive director of Bombardier Aerospace, Canada Life Group (UK) Ltd, the Canada Life Capital Corporation, Electra Investment Trust Plc, and Iain More Associates Ltd. He holds eleven honorary doctorates and was knighted in 2001. Career at Queen's Bain's gregarious and extrovert personality was in marked contrast to the sombre leadership offered by his predecessor Sir Gordon Beveridge. The latter's tenure was marked by an acrimonious dispute within, and without the University over symbols and the use of the national anthem at graduations ceremonies. Bain pushed Queen's further up the research league table, the RAE but as this was achieved in part by the axing of long-standing departments like Geology, Classics and Irish Studies he suffered from a letter-writing campaign in the Belfast press from supporters of the staff whose posts were closed. Perhaps the most public disappointment of his time at the helm of the university was the failure of the £60 million "Lanyon II" campaign to create a new 'student village'. The self-styled pressure-group "QUB Watch" also kept him under relentless scrutiny over the closure of the Armagh campus, and over what it considered his failure to reduce the number of cases of religious discrimination being taken against the university by