Five Cambridge scientists have been recognised for their contributions to science, engineering and medicine with their election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

探花直播new Cambridge Fellows are:

Professor Derek John Fray FRS

Director of Research and Emeritus Professor of Materials Chemistry, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, 探花直播 of Cambridge

Distinguished for his versatile and far-reaching work in the field of materials chemistry. His research on the chemistry of solid electrolytes has led to novel sensors for gaseous species and elements in molten metals. He has developed electrode arrangements that greatly enhance mass transfer in aqueous and molten salt electrolyte systems. A major discovery which came from an elegant study of electrode potentials has led to an original method for the reduction of metal oxides; this pioneering work has had international acclaim. It is being exploited in the extraction of titanium, the creation of novel alloys and for numerous applications including superconductors, medical implants and magnetic materials.

Professor Stephen Philip Jackson FRS

Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology, Department of Zoology, 探花直播 of Cambridge and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories, 探花直播Gurdon Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology, Cambridge

Steve Jackson has contributed to several fields of research. He was instrumental in elucidating the NHEJ pathway of DNA double-strand break repair, being the first to: identify a mammalian NHEJ factor; provide insights into how NHEJ factors function; and show that in addition to repairing radiation damage these proteins function in telomere maintenance and help to generate the vertebrate immune system. In the transcription field, Professor Jackson established that many transcription factors are glycosylated, that RNA polymerase III transcription requires the TATA-box binding protein and, through his work on Archaea, he has provided fundamental insights into transcriptional control mechanisms.

Professor Michael Christopher Payne FRS

Professor of Computational Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, 探花直播 of Cambridge

Professor Payne is responsible for many of the technical developments that have led to the widespread adoption of the total energy pseudopotential technique. These include the development of robust, efficient minimisation techniques. These have been critical for the `black box' implementation of pseudopotential calculations which has allowed non-experts to apply the technique to systems of interest. He has made numerous contributions to the development of optimum, minimal scaling algorithms for the computationally intensive parts of the calculations. Finally, he was responsible for the implementation of codes on parallel computers allowing the first fully optimised quantum mechanical calculation to be performed for systems containing hundreds of atoms. This breakthrough was primarily responsible for the adoption of density functional theory in chemistry.

Professor James Floyd Scott FRS

Professor of Ferroics, Earth Sciences Department, Cambridge 探花直播

Jim Scott is generally credited with being the father of integrated ferroelectrics, which is the combination of a ferroelectric thin film and a semiconductor transistor on a single chip. He answered the questions of ultimate memory speed (250 ps) and film thickness (2.4 nm). Previously ferroelectric devices were bulk ceramics with kilovolt switching; his thin films brought this down to 5V silicon logic levels. Every SONY Playstation 2 has a ferroelectric memory, and total sales have exceeded US$1 billion. Jims textbook Ferroelectric Memories is the Bible in the field and has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

Professor John Duncan FRS

Assistant Director, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge

John Duncan is an unquestioned world leader in study of neural mechanisms underlying higher cognitive function. Combining experiments in human behaviour, focal brain lesions, functional neuroimaging, and awake monkey physiology, his work has uncovered basic cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention, intelligence and awareness. His discoveries extend from a basis for selective attention in competitive neural functions of the visual cortex, to adaptive response properties of prefrontal neurons and their role in control of behaviour. More broadly, his ideas have been applied to fields including the basis for general intelligence, integration of cognition and emotion, and biology of psychiatric disorders.

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