A NORTH-EAST academic's pioneering photography has gone on display for the first time, at the university where he taught.

Tom Willmore, who died last February, aged 85, was an eminent professor of mathematics at Durham University.

But in his spare time, he was a keen photographer and, as well as taking landscape shots, he pioneered the technique of photographing tiny objects using a microscope, for which he was awarded an associateship of the Royal Photographic Society.

Among the pictures on display is the eye of a great gadfly, which looks like a honeycomb.

A total of 200 pictures were found in his basement by his second wife, Dr Gillian Boughton.

A university spokesman said: "His family wish to donate any proceeds from sales of these photographs, which are intended to be priced well within the budgets of his many friends, direct to the Durham University Willmore pure mathematics postgraduate awards, which began this year."

The fund was set up by Dr Boughton.

She said: "Tom got enormous enjoyment from taking and developing these photographs and we hope very much that visitors to the exhibition share that feeling."

The exhibition, in the Old Library, Grey College, opened on Saturday and runs until Sunday, February 5.

Admission is free and it is open from 10am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. They can be viewed through the week by appointment, by calling the college on 0191-334 5900.