Early life Alan Stewart was born on 8 December 1917 in
Auckland, a son of Kenneth Stewart and Vera Mary de la Cour. He attended primary school in Auckland and
Whakatāne, and then his first years of high school at
Whakatane District High School, where he was awarded a junior national scholarship. In 1934, he transferred to
Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland. Stewart excelled in sport at school, serving as captain of the swimming team and also taking part in
boxing and athletics. In 1936, Stewart began taking lectures at
Auckland University College while playing
rugby for the Auckland junior representative rugby team. In 1937, he began lectures at Massey Agricultural College in
Palmerston North where he was awarded the Lord Bledisloe Prize and the 1940 senior scholarship in agriculture for his academic achievements, and where he earned his
Bachelor of Agricultural Science in 1939 and
Master of Agricultural Science in 1940. While at Massey, he served as captain of both the college rugby team and the
Manawatu rugby team and was a member of the North Island Universities' rugby team. He was nominated for the
All Black trials in 1939. Stewart also held several college championships in tennis, swimming,
sprinting and
hurdles. After the war, he began working as an assistant lecturer at Massey Agricultural College. In 1946, Stewart was finally able to fulfil his Rhodes Scholarship and moved to England to attend the
University of Oxford, where he was an
Oxford Blue in rugby, played for the combined Oxford-Cambridge rugby team in the
1948 tour of Argentina, and was selected for the
Scotland national rugby team, although a knee injury ended his rugby-playing career. Massey University soon earned international recognition for its agricultural programme due in part to what one New Zealand
cabinet minister deemed Stewart's "extraordinary contributions". Stewart also served as president of the
Manawatu Rugby Union.
Knighthood and retirement Stewart was appointed a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the
1972 New Year Honours and promoted to
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the
1981 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to education, before retiring from the university in 1983. At the time of his retirement, Massey University had an annual budget of $30 million, operated 500 hectares of farmland, and enrolled thousands of students.
Death Stewart died on 1 September 2004 in Whakatāne. He was survived by his wife, Joan, four children, and 12 grandchildren. ==References==