The eminent statistician, economist and champion of the arts and sciences, Claus Moser was a Governor and later Fellow of Birkbeck, and a strong supporter of the College. In recent years he took a keen interest in the work of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism (now the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism), based at Birkbeck.

Claus and his family moved to the UK from Germany in 1936 to flee persecution from the Nazis. He had been offered a place at the London School of Economics when, in 1940 he, his father and brother were interned for three months as enemy aliens. Most of their fellow internees were cultured German or Austrian refugees from Nazism.

Claus Moser became an assistant to a professor of mathematics who spent his time conducting a survey of the inmates, and it was from this that his love of statistics was born. After being released and serving in the Royal Air Force, he began his academic career at the London School of Economics, going on to specialize in social statistics.

Lord Moser was made a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB) in 1973 and a life peer in 2001.