Cambridge Academics elected as new Fellows of the Royal Society

The new Fellows, elected for their scientific excellence, are:

Professor Andrew Hopper, a Fellow of Corpus Christi, is Professor of Computer Technology and Head of Department in the Computer Laboratory. Professor Hopper is a world leader in computer network design and mobile computing, distinguished for his use of large industry-based research groups to develop new concepts and their commercial exploitation in tandem. His vision of `Sentient Computing', involving the movement of people and sensors, has widely inspired academic research.

Professor Richard James Jackson is Professor of RNA Biochemistry at the Department of Biochemistry and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Richard is distinguished for his contributions to understanding the mechanism and regulation of initiation of eukaryotic messenger RNA translation. He co-discovered the regulation of translation initiation via phosphorylation of a translation initiation facto.

Professor Michael Richard Edward Proctor is Professor of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and is internationally recognised for his fundamental contributions to nonlinear convection theory and to the understanding of fluid dynamos. With WVR Malkus, he was the first to elucidate the so-called Malkus-Proctor-effect and showed that the appropriate scaling for geomagnetic equilibration is independent of viscosity. He is a Fellow and Vice- Master of Trinity College.

Professor Nicholas Ian Shepherd-Barron, a Fellow of Trinity College, is Professor of Algebraic Geometry and is one of the world's leading algebraic geometers and his work has had a major impact on modern work on classification of higher dimensional varieties. He has provided remarkable solutions to many deep and difficult problems across a broad range of topics in algebraic geometry and related areas of number theory.

Lord Browne of Madingley, a Cambridge graduate and chairman of the Judge Business School’s Advisory Board, is Group Chief Executive of BP p.l.c. and is distinguished for his application of science, particularly of earth science, to the transformation of a major UK company, BP, and in this way improving peoples' way of life, and also for his leadership of the climate debate within the oil and gas industry. He was made an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College in 1997.

Professor Austin Gerard Smith is MRC Professor at the Institute for Stem Cell Research at the University of Edinburgh and Chair of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Cambridge. He has carried out path breaking work on the mechanisms of self-renewal and lineage commitment in mammalian pluripotent embryonic stem cells.

Professor Ruth Marion Lynden-Bell, Cambridge University Centre for Computational Chemistry is the sole female from Cambridge to be elected this year. She is an Emeritus Professor at Queen's University Belfast and Emerita Fellow of New Hall. During the last twenty years her own research has involved using computers to model liquids, solutions and surfaces. Currently her main interests are trying to understand the properties of room temperature ionic liquids and those of water.

The Head of the Department of Chemistry, Professor Jeremy Sanders, said, “I have known and admired Ruth for many years. She has always combined her intellectual rigour with a deep humanity. The Department is absolutely delighted that her contributions to science have been recognized in this way.”

Professor Lynden-Bell returned to Cambridge in 2003 after 8 years as Professor at Queen's University in Belfast where she went as a joint founder of the interdisciplinary Atomistic Simulation Centre. The centre used computational modelling at the atomic and molecular scale to study problems in fields ranging from Chemistry, through Materials Science to Physics.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, and has been at the forefront of enquiry and discovery since its foundation in 1660. The backbone of the Society is its Fellowship of the most eminent scientists of the day, elected by peer review for life and entitled to use FRS after their name.