He finally found the solution.
A 76-year-old grandfather has graduated with a PhD — 52 years after starting his doctorate program.
Nick Axten earned a prestigious Fulbright scholarship in 1970 for a PhD in mathematical sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.
But after five years, he returned to the UK without the degree.
“Some problems are so great it takes the best part of a lifetime to get your head around them. They need a long hard think,” Axten said in a statement.
“This one has taken me 50 years.”
He was officially conferred a doctorate of philosophy this week in front of his wife, Claire, and 11-year-old granddaughter Freya.
He studied at the University of Bristol between 2016 and 2022.
“All of the other philosophy graduate students were around 23, but they accepted me as one of their own,” Axten recalled.
“They are clever people full of ideas, and I loved talking with them — especially at the pub in the afternoon.”
The university says Axten’s research, which he hopes to publish, is a new theory for understanding human behavior based on the values each person holds.
When he started his undergraduate degree in Leeds in 1967, men wore their hair long and women wore miniskirts.
Smoking inside university buildings was common, and personal computers were the future.
“It was still flower power and there was a revolutionary feel. It was the time of the Vietnam War, Paris, Prague and student sit-ins. Jack Straw was president of the students’ union in Leeds,” he said.
“Sociology and psychology were suddenly boom subjects. I went to study them because I wanted to understand people.”
His University of Bristol supervisor, Professor Samir Okasha, said in a statement: “Nick was an incredibly enthusiastic, energetic and committed student during his time here.”
He added: “It’s fantastic to see him graduate half a century after he started his original PhD.”
During his career, Axten created and co-wrote the school teaching program Oxford Primary Science. The Somerset resident is a father of two children and four grandchildren.
Axten isn’t alone in taking several years to finish his degree. Last year, an 84-year-old retired nurse finally earned her bachelor’s degree after pursuing it for nearly seven decades.