John Barron was a leading classical scholar and college head who played an important role in the transformation of the British university system in the 1980s and 1990s. His personal qualities made him a natural leader in many academic projects and institutions in the universities of London and Oxford, and also nationally. He recognised that the relatively small and enclosed university system which had nurtured him had to expand, and was successful in persuading colleagues that institutional change should be embraced rather than fought.

John Penrose Barron was an only child, born in Morley, West Yorkshire, in 1934. His father, George Barron, was head of mathematics at Morley Grammar School. His mother, (Minnie) Leslie Marks, the daughter of a builder, was from a deeply rooted Cornish family, and Barron spent childhood holidays by the sea at St Just in Penwith.

From Wakefield Grammar School he moved to Clifton College. Later he was to advise Clifton as its president. He went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1953 where he read classical honour moderations and literae humaniores and was close to two of his tutors, Kenneth Dover and Russell Meiggs, the historian. His doctoral work was on the early history of Samos and led to his most important publication, The Silver Coins of Samos, in 1966. In this Barron displayed his aptitude and passion for hunting down scraps of evidence, making sense of them, and connecting them together. His talent for making connections, indeed, whether across the breadth of his academic interests or between different elements of his academic career or among colleagues, friends and students, was a feature of his approach to scholarship and to life.

Towards the end of his doctoral research, when already a lecturer at Bedford College, London, he met an undergraduate historian from Somerville College, Oxford, Caroline Hogarth, and they were married on her graduation in 1962. As Caroline Barron she became a leading historian of medieval London and held a chair at Royal Holloway College. Together they made a remarkable academic team, encouraging and inspiring their students and offering joyous hospitality to friends in London and Oxford. John’s support for Caroline’s career led him to take a lifelong interest in the promotion of academic opportunities for women, both as students and lecturers.

Barron had wide interests as a classicist. His study of Greek Sculpture (1965, revised in 1981) was a distinguished introduction to the subject. His work on numismatics, concerning the ancient coins of Kos as well as Samos, demonstrated the significance of coins to the broader understanding of the Ancient World. In Greek literature his focus was on the era from Hesiod to the early classical period of the first half of the 5th century BC, and he collaborated with Professor Patricia Easterling in writing on some of the authors of this period for the Cambridge History of Classical Literature in 1985. His interest in Greece extended to every aspect of its subsequent history and contemporary culture. He loved to travel there and was close to leading figures in the Greek community in London.

After periods at Bedford College and then University College, London, Barron was elected to the chair of Greek at King’s College London, at the age of 37. He held the chair for 20 years. He became director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London, 1984-91, and dean of the several London Institutes for Advanced Studies, 1989-91. He was twice public orator in the university, crafting his biographical portraits of those awarded honorary degrees to entertain the university’s Chancellor, the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who presided at the ceremonies.

More difficult commissions followed, however. Between 1989 and 1993 Barron was a member of the University Funding Council (UFC), established by the Conservative Government at the end of the 1980s to take the place of the old University Grants Committee and oversee changes to the British university system. The UFC included a majority of non-academic members drawn from business and public life and was unpopular with academics, some of whom questioned Barron’s decision to join it. Barron believed that it was better to influence an institution from the inside, protecting what was most valuable in the process, than to raise impotent opposition from without. Put honestly and straightforwardly, with the charm and courtesy that characterised everything he did, this argument was unanswerable. Using those same qualities he was able to persuade colleagues to accept the UFC’s decision to protect the study of classics by concentrating it in fewer university departments, a move which was, in retrospect, undoubtedly correct. Barron also supported the overall expansion of the university system which was planned and set in motion while he was a member of the UFC, and which saw participation rates rise from under 10 per cent to more than 30 per cent in less than a decade.

At St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he became Master in 1991, he encouraged many different initiatives to increase access to the university, especially when he served as chairman of the Oxford Colleges’ Admissions Committee, (1997-2000. During his mastership the proportion of women students at St Peter’s increased from fewer than 30 per cent to nearly 50 per cent and the number of female tutors and fellows increased as well. It was also during his mastership that it came of age: founded as recently as 1928 and with only limited resources, under Barron’s guidance St Peter’s became more self-confident and assured. Student numbers increased and the college’s academic position improved, not least because of his insistence that he meet every student at the end of each term to review progress. In reality these were often light-hearted conversations about books read and travels to be undertaken.

St Peter’s also expanded physically in this period. Barron had a sharp eye for architecture and design and was involved from the outset in plans to redevelop the site of the Castle to the west of Oxford city centre, close to St Peter’s. He accepted that this was too big a project for the college to manage alone, but his interest led St Peter’s to build and purchase three elegant student residences, thereby contributing to the regeneration of this previously run-down quarter of the city.

It was a mark of Barron’s success at the head of the college that the Fellows extended his term as Master beyond the usual retiring age. He stood down in 2003 and devoted himself to the many educational organisations which valued his membership and advice, including Lambeth Palace Library, whose committee he chaired latterly. He published articles on the very first institution of higher learning in Oxford, the house of scholars, situated in St George’s collegiate church in the Castle, founded in 1074.

Barron is survived by his wife and two daughters.

Professor John Barron, classical scholar, was born on April 27, 1934. He died on August 16, 2008, aged 74