Axe-wielding Irish physicist attacks lecturer

An axe-wielding Irish physicist has been arrested at a university in Portugal after attacking a lecturer.

Colin Paul Gloster, 34, from Dublin, struck the lecturer’s arm and hand before a student grabbed him.

A university spokesperson said the middle-aged female lecturer was targeted in the Monday afternoon attack because Mr Gloster, a former PhD student at the university, was refused a grant last year.

The spokesperson said “some threats” had previously been made by the former student, who was considered “problematic”.

Mr Gloster was remanded in police custody and appeared at Coimbra Criminal Court yesterday.

He was instructed to appear at the court every week and forbidden to “contact the victim by any means” and prohibited from entering the physics department at Coimbra University, where he first enrolled in 2008 to study dark matter.

Mr Gloster, who studied at Dublin City University, previously served an internship at the European Space Agency and was a researcher at the University of Pisa, Italy.

A Coimbra University employee told local paper Jornal de Noticias: “He was completely anti-social. He never greeted anyone.”

The lecturer was taken to a local hospital.