Nathan Bodington

Bodington was born in Aston, Birmingham, and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a teacher at Manchester Grammar School and Westminster School, Professor of classics at Mason College, (which later became Birmingham University), and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Bodington was responsible for consolidating the Yorkshire College's position within the Victoria University and later, when the fragmentation of members occurred, for obtaining the charter for the separate university in Leeds. His demeanour around the 1890s was described by a colleague thus:

though transplanted from an Oxford which was then almost exclusively devoted to classical studies, he adapted himself wonderfully to the direction of an institution which, always short of money, appealed for funds almost entirely on the ground of its utility to local industry. In public he has a formal, somewhat academic, manner, which was against him in his dealings with City Councillors and businessmen and suchlike: but in private he unbent and was excellent company, with a keen sense of humour. His greying beard made him look ten years older than he really was [...] Bodington was at his best in the chair at meetings of the Senate and other academic bodies, patient, courteous and impartial.

He was knighted in 1908.