Royal Society announces new Cambridge fellows

Five University staff, two members of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and a future honorary graduate are among the new Fellows named by the Royal Society. Baroness Onora O'Neill, former Principal of Newnham College and current member of the Faculty of Philosophy, was also named an Honorary Fellow.

Professor Michael James Bickle, Personal Chair, Department of Earth Sciences

Professor Mike Bickle graduated from Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences, completed a DPhil at Oxford, and had his first teaching post in Perth, Australia after post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Rhodesia and the University of Leeds.

He returned to Cambridge in 1983 where he now has a personal chair in Earth Sciences. Professor Bickle is distinguished for his major contributions to understanding the evolution of the Earth through geological and geochemical research. His work includes pioneering studies on the thermal evolution of mountain belts, the tectonic and igneous processes that operated in the early Earth and studies of the geochemistry of rivers to evaluate the long-term fluxes to the oceans and long-term controls on climate.

Professor Barry John Everitt, Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology

Professor Barry J Everitt received his first degree (Zoology and Psychology) from Hull University, his Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, and post-doctoral training, first at Birmingham and then at the famous Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, under the eminent neuroanatomist Professor T. Hokfelt.

Professor Everitt is distinguished for research that has helped to introduce a new way of addressing the neural basis of motivated behaviour by linking learning theory with the methodology of systems neuroscience. He has defined the functional organisation of the limbic-striatal circuitry that mediates Pavlovian and instrumental learning processes. He has been Master of Downing College since 2003.

Professor William Anthony Harris, Head of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Professor Bill Harris is distinguished for his fundamental contributions to developmental neuroscience - these include molecular genetic analysis of signal transduction; growth and guidance of developing axons; and the genesis of neurons in the vertebrate central nervous system. He also discovered the sevenless gene in Drosophila. His many contributions in neurogenesis include the discovery of the first vertebrate Notch receptor.

Professor Peter Brent Littlewood, Head of the Department of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory

Peter Littlewood took a BA in Natural Sciences at Cambridge in 1976 and a PhD in Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1980, with a one-year intermediate sojourn at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1980 he moved to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey and remained to become head of the Theoretical Physics Research Department in 1992. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Physics and head of the Theory of Condensed Matter Group in the Cavendish Laboratory.

Since 2005 he has been Head of the Department of Physics, and the Cavendish Laboratory. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Professor Littlewood has made seminal contributions in the theory of collective phenomena in condensed matter physics. He developed the phenomenology of sliding charge density waves, as model systems for friction and force flow. He provided the accepted mechanism for colossal magnetoresistance in manganese oxides, and this work has been very influential. He discovered the amplitude collective mode in superconductors and he invented the marginal Fermi liquid phenomenology for cuprate superconductors.

Professor Robert James Mair, Department of Engineering

Robert Mair was appointed Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at Cambridge University in 1998, is Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in 2001 was elected Master of Jesus College. He was awarded a PhD on tunnelling in soft ground in 1979.

Professor Robert Mair is distinguished for his pioneering work on the development and application of soil mechanics theory and the latest laboratory and field research to the practice of geotechnical engineering and underground construction. As well as numerous international projects, in the UK he has been closely involved with the design and construction of the Jubilee Line Extension for London Underground, and with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Crossrail projects. He was responsible for the introduction of compensation grouting which is a technique used to reinforce and preserve buildings, including the Big Ben clock tower.

Professor Daniela Rhodes, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

Professor Rhodes became a research assistant at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and obtained a PhD in 1982 at the University of Cambridge. She continued to work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology where she obtained tenure in 1987 and became Senior Scientist in 1990.

She is Official Fellow of Clare Hall Cambridge, was elected EMBO member in 1996 and chaired the EMBO Longterm Fellowship Committee between 2000 and 2006.

Throughout her career Professor Rhodes has made many fundamental contributions to our understanding of nucleic acid structure and function. She contributed to the elucidation of the structure of chromatin, and of telomeres, and assisted in evaluating the basis of zinc finger protein-DNA recognition.

Dr. William Bradshaw Amos, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

William Bradshaw Amos got his Honours degree in Zoology at Oxford in 1966 and PhD degree in Cambridge in 1970. From 1981 he has been a senior research staff member at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Professor Amos is distinguished for his role in the development of the confocal laser scanning electron microscope. Use of this instrument has facilitated considerable advances of understanding in fields ranging from cell biology, neurobiology and experimental pathology to materials science.

Dr. Amos has been awarded several prizes, including Queen's Award for Technological Achievement (1991), Mullard Award and Medal of the Royal Society (1994) and Ernst Abbe Award for Lifetime Achievement of the New York Microscopical Society 2005.

Mr Richard Leakey, Honorary Doctor of Science (to be awarded 25 June 2007)

Dr Richard Leakey, a renowned palaeoanthropologist and environmentalist, has made international headlines for his work in Kenya. He has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific articles and books, including The Origin of Humankind, Origins Reconsidered, and The Sixth Extinction. As the second of Louis and Mary Leakey's three sons, he began participating in fossil-hunting expeditions from an early age.

In the 30 years following Dr Leakey's first expedition, he and his team of palaeoanthropologists unearthed more than two-hundred fossils, including "Turkana Boy," a Homo Erectus roughly 1.6 million years old, one of the most complete skeletons ever found. From 1968 to 1989 he served as Director of the National Museums of Kenya. His interest in conservation issues led him to the post of Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service from 1989 to 1994. He has been active in Kenyan politics, and was Secretary General of the Kenyan opposition party Safina. In December 1997, he was elected to an opposition seat in the Kenyan parliament. Although no longer active in fieldwork, he continues to educate others about the dangers of environmental degradation through his many lectures and books.

Honorary Fellow

Baroness Onora O'Neill, former Principal of Newnham College and current member of the Faculty of Philosophy

Baroness Onora O'Neill, President of The British Academy, is distinguished for her outstanding contribution to the defence of reason and her rigorous philosophical and ethical analyses of controversial topics in science, and particularly in the biosciences. She is widely regarded as the UK's foremost moral philosopher and is internationally recognised for her elaborations of Kantian concepts of autonomy and of morality based on reason.