May 15 2009
Nine Cambridge scientists have today (15 May) been recognised for their exceptional contributions to society, with their election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. As Fellows of the UK's national academy of science, these leaders in the fields of science, engineering and medicine join other famous Cambridge names such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking.
The new Fellows, elected for their scientific excellence, are:
Professor Ross Anderson is the Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory. Professor Anderson is a pioneer and world leader in security engineering, and is distinguished for starting a number of new areas of research in hardware, software and systems.
Professor Jennifer Clack is Professor and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the Museum of Zoology. Professor Clack is a palaeontologist whose work has fundamentally changed our understanding of the origin and early evolution of tetrapods, rewriting the textbooks and revitalising the subject area.
Professor David Glover is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics in the Department of Genetics and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Professor Glover is principally known for his work in the control of the cell cycle in Drosophila.
Professor Christine Holt, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, is Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Professor Holt is distinguished for her fundamental studies of axon guidance and topographic mapping in the visual system.
Professor David Mackay, a Fellow of Darwin College, is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics. Professor MacKay introduced more efficient types of error-correcting code that are now used in satellite communications, digital broadcasting and magnetic recording.
Professor Wolfram Schultz is Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. He has been the most influential electrophysiologist working in the area of the reward and reinforcement in the last decade. He pioneered procedures for recording from single midbrain dopamine neurons in awake, behaving monkeys and discovered that dopamine activity, rather than being directly related to movement, is driven by rewards and reward predicting stimuli.
Professor Henning Sirringhaus, a Fellow of Churchill College, is the Hitachi Professor of Electron Device Physics in the Department of Physics. Henning Sirringhaus is distinguished for his work on semiconductor device physics and engineering. Early in his career, at the ETH Zurich, he pioneered the technique of ballistic electron emission microscopy. At Cambridge he has transformed the field of organic semiconductor transistors from curiosity to fully manufacturable technology through both fundamental science and engineering. His insights into the polaronic nature of electron states in these materials and the control of interfacial structure made possible large increases in field-effect carrier mobility. His work on novel processing methods, including ink-jet printing, has made possible new manufacturing methods. A recent highlight is his realisation of a light-emitting field-effect transistor.
Professor John Todd, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius, is Professor of Medical Genetics at Cambridge University and Director of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Todd is distinguished for his research on the genetics of common complex disease.
Professor Burt Totaro is Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. The central part of Burt Totaro's work has been devoted to the interaction between two of the major areas of pure mathematics, topology and algebraic geometry.
To view the full press release, click here