Stefan Grimm

Stefan Grimm (1963–2014) was a German biologist and professor of toxicology at Imperial College London. He researched signalling cascades in the development of tumours.

Grimm was found dead in Northwood, Middlesex on 25 September 2014 after being told that he was "struggling to fulfil the metrics" of a professorial post by his head of department. The coroner described his death as "needless".

Career Grimm studied for his PhD in biology

Death and events at Imperial College London Grimm was found dead at his home in Middlesex on 25 September 2014, with typed notes next to his body. His inquest ruled that he took his life by asphyxiation. One month after his death, on 21 October, an email with the subject line "How Professors are treated at Imperial College", apparently set to deliver on a delay timer, was sent from the "professorstefangrimm" prefixed email address to senior members of the medical faculty.

In the email, Grimm describes how his head of department told him that he needed to obtain a programme grant, or else "start to give serious consideration as to whether [he is] performing at the expected level of a Professor at Imperial College." This was despite him already acquiring £135,000 in grant income and submitting the highest number of grant applications in the medical faculty.

In his last email, Grimm had this to say of the senior staff in his faculty:

Grimm also criticised Imperial College London, which he complained was no longer acting like a university and instead likened to a business. He reasoned that within the institution, the "very few up in the hierarchy [profiteered while others] are milked for money, be it professors for their grant income or students who pay 100 pounds just to extend their write-up status".

The Rector of Imperial College, Alice Gast, gave credence to Grimm's analogy, when she described university professors as "really like small business owners [...] they have their own research and they have their research funding to look after."

On 1 December, David Colquhoun, an emeritus professor of pharmacology at University College London and long-time critic of managerialism and research assessment in British universities, wrote a blog post entitled "Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm". Colquhoun published both Grimm's email and the emails sent by his head of department. The post was viewed 196,000 times in the year after Grimm's death. The day after it was posted, Colquhoun's web server received so many page requests it failed.

Colquhoun described Imperial's performance targets as "a recipe for short term, unoriginal research. It's an incentive to cut corners... It is a prostitution of science."

On 4 December, Imperial College London issued a statement expressing sadness at the "tragic loss" of Professor Grimm and reporting that "senior colleagues have offered their deepest condolences to Stefan's family on behalf of the college and all those affected by this tragedy". The statement denied "claims appearing on the internet" that Grimm's work was "under formal review" or that he had been "given any notice of dismissal".

Imperial College London commissioned an internal review into its performance management procedures, commenting:

Colquhoun commented: "It seems to be absurd to describe...[the head of department's email]... as an attempt to 'help' Professor Grimm. It was a direct threat to the livelihood of a competent 51 year-old full professor. Having flow charts for the bullying would not have helped."