Whittle left Cambridge for the
University of Manchester, and, rather than follow him there, Kingman moved instead to the
University of Oxford, where he resumed his work under
David Kendall. After another year, Kendall was appointed a professor at Cambridge and so Kingman returned to Cambridge. He returned, however, as a member of the teaching staff (and a
Fellow of Pembroke College) and never completed his PhD. a backwards-in-time theory of individuals in historical populations that, because it greatly simplifies computation, underlies much of modern population genomics. From October 1985, Kingman was elected
Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Bristol. at a time when most academics received pay-rises of about 3%. Whilst at Bristol, he also served in a number of other capacities. In the academic field, he was president of the
Royal Statistical Society from 1987 to 1989, and president of the
London Mathematical Society from 1990 to 1992. In public service, he was a member of the board of the
British Council between 1986 and 1991 and was on the Board of the
British Technology Group from 1986 until after it was privatised in 1992. In 2000 the
Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed Sir John the first chairman of the
Statistics Commission, the body that oversees the work of the
Office for National Statistics, the UK government's statistics agency. In 2002 Kingman attracted some media attention by telling the
House of Commons Treasury Select Committee that the 2011
UK Census could be conducted using new technology rather than the traditional headcount, or even not conducted at all. ==Honors and awards==