£3.8 million gift for Conservation Biology

The University’s Regent House has approved the establishment of this new professorship, which will be named after the late Dame Miriam Rothschild, a renowned naturalist admired by Lisbet Rausing.

The new Professorship will be based in the University’s Department of Zoology.

Professor Malcolm Burrows, Head of the Department said:

“We are very grateful to the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund for this imaginative gift. This new Professorship will allow us to build on Cambridge’s existing strengths in conservation biology and will help ensure that conservation policy and practice is based on rigorous scientific understanding.”

Dame Miriam Rothschild, who died at the age of 96 last year, was a brilliant self-taught amateur and generalist in scientific fields dominated by highly specialised professionals. Known primarily for her writings on butterflies and fleas, Dame Miriam had little formal education but received eight honorary degrees including one from the University of Cambridge in 1999.

“This is a wonderful honour and we are grateful to Lisbet Rausing and the Fund for recognising my mother’s work and passion for the subject,” said Charlotte Lane, Dame Miriam’s daughter.

Lisbet Rausing is a historian and a research fellow of Imperial College. She was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University, where she also taught for eight years. Her fellow trustees are Professor Peter Baldwin, Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her sister Sigrid Rausing, an anthropologist.

“We are very pleased to be able to establish this professorship in Cambridge,” said a spokesman for the Fund. “The University’s excellence in conservation science and the close interactions that are already developing with many international conservation organisations that are located close to Cambridge, will enable real advances to be made in our approach to the challenges of conserving our planet’s rich natural diversity.”