Alexander Duncan Campbell PETERSON, known as Alec, was born in Edinburgh on 13 September 1908, the son of John Carlos Kennedy Peterson of the Indian Civil Service and his wife Flora Campbell.

Alec and his three surviving brothers lived with relations in England while their father served abroad, and the 1911 census shows Alec (2) and his older brother Peter Charles Peterson (5), who had been born in Darjeeling, living at Thornwoods, 31 New London Road, Chelmsford, Essex with their aunt Matilda Martin, née Campbell (the sister of Alec's mother) and her husband John Little Martin, who was a physician and surgeon, and their cousins Thomas Martin (12) and Ruby Martin (9).The family had five servants, including two nurses to look after the children. Soon after the start of the First World War Alec and his older brother Peter and younger brother George Rainey Peterson (born 12 October 1909) went to live with their father's older sister Miss Marion Peterson (known as Minnie) at Murchison Crescent in Edinburgh.

Alec's parents remained in India during the war, and his youngest brother Arthur William Peterson was born in Calcutta in 1916. The 1921 census shows Arthur (5 years and one month) boarding at a prep school in Winchester and Peter (15) boarding at Radley College. Alec himself (12) also went to Radley but is hard to find in that census.

Alec went up to Balliol College, Oxford and obtained a Second in Literae Humaniores in 1930.

After a brief period as a trainee in industry, in 1932 Alec was appointed a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury School. The 1939 Register shows him living at the school's New House with other teachers and some older pupils.

On 28 December 1939 at St Clement Danes Church in London, Peterson married his first wife Ruth Pauline Armstrong, known as Pauline, who was the youngest daughter of the solicitor William Andrew Armstrong of Westoe House, Westoe Village, South Shields.

In the Second World War he served in the Psychological Warfare Unit in India, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was appointed OBE in 1946.

Alec Peterson and his first wife Pauline were divorced in 1946, and in that year he married his second wife Corinna Cochrane, a graduate of Somerville College and the daughter of Sir Arthur William Steuart Cochrane, Clarenceux King of Arms. From 1946 to 1952 he was the Head of Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, and their three children were born in that county.

From 1952 to 1954 he served as Director General of Information Services in Malaya.

From 1954 to 1957 he was Head of Dover College

From 1958 he was head of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford and lived at 33 St Andrew's Road in Headington. This is the very wide house at the left end of the row of rebuilt cottages to the west of St Andrew's Church (now its vicarage):

In the 1960s Alec Peterson was the Liberal Party's official spokesman on education. He stood as a Liberal candidate for Oxford in the General Election of 1966 and would address the people of Oxford with a loud hailer as they went through the turnstiles into the Manor Ground in Headington for football matches. In that election the city returned a Labour MP (Evan Luard) for the first time (24,412 votes) who beat the sitting Conservative MP Monty Woodhouse (21,987 votes); Peterson trailed behind with 6,152 votes:

Alec Peterson established himself as one of the leading pioneers of international education in the UK. In 1966 he was appointed Head of the International Schools Examination Syndicate, which became the International Baccalaureate Organization in 1968, but he continued to live and work at 33 St Andrew's Road.

In 1973 he left Headington and moved to London. He lived at 107A Hamilton Terrace and took a part-time teaching post at the Hammersmith & West London College of Further Education, teaching the Theory of Knowledge,

Alec Peterson retired in 1977, and died at the age of 80 on 17 October 1988. His widow Corinna died in 2010, and they are buried together in Stanley Hill Cemetery, Amersham (see their grave).

There is a much fuller entry on Alec Peterson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
His ODNB entry online is free to view via many public libraries.
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Wikipedia: Alec Peterson