 In one well-publicised incident, he and the registrar were taken hostage by students and locked in a building on the campus.But he had anticipated this possibility and was able to escape using a spare set of keys.Between 1975 and 1978 Pitt served as chairman of the Universities Central Council on Admissions, and between 1984 and 1985 he was President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the association of practising mathematicians.