Professor John Dunning OBE

The University of Reading is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Professor John Dunning OBE, and we offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

Professor Dunning was widely known and extremely well respected by the University of Reading, receiving an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters in 2008. He was Emeritus Professor of International Business at the University and was the first head of the then Department of Economics upon its establishment in 1964.

He was the founder and leading light of the 'Reading School' of thought in the economics of international business and international investment, and was a consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank and numerous other governmental organisations. Henley Business School at the University of Reading, with its John H. Dunning Centre for International Business, is still the world's pre-eminent centre for international business research.

Professor Robert Pearce, a longstanding colleague and friend said, 'My first thought is that I knew John for 45 years and through all that time I never stopped learning from him. Not, of course, that John would ever dream of lecturing those of us who knew him and worked with him in a proscriptive or censorious way, he was much too generous and open-minded for that, but we did have the wonderful opportunity to learn valuable and important things from his example.

'I will miss John terribly, but I will continue to learn from him, because I will take his example with me always.'