̽��ֱ��Royal Society announces 2018 Fellows

cjb250 — Wed, 09 May 2018 14:26:31 +0000

̽��ֱ��50 newly-elected Fellows announced today join a list of scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and Commonwealth. Past Fellows and Foreign Members have included Newton, Darwin and Einstein.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge academics announced today as Royal Society Fellows are:

Alexander Dawid, Emeritus Professor of Statistics, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics
Gregory Hannon, Royal Society Wolfson Research Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology and Director, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute
Judy Hirst, Deputy Director, MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit
Lalita Ramakrishnan, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and Head of Molecular Immunity Unit, Department of Medicine

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, says: “Our Fellows are key to the Royal Society’s fundamental purpose of using science for the benefit of humanity. For their outstanding contributions to research and innovation, both now and in the future, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the world’s best scientists into the ranks of the Royal Society.”

̽��ֱ��new Fellows will be formally admitted to the Society at the Admissions Day ceremony in July, when they will sign the Charter Book and the Obligation of the Fellows of the Royal Society.

View the full list of new Fellows and Foreign Members

Four Cambridge academics are among the new Fellows announced today by the Royal Society and chosen for their outstanding contributions to science.

For their outstanding contributions to research and innovation, both now and in the future, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the world’s best scientists into the ranks of the Royal Society

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan

Royal Society

Professor Simon Tavare elected as a Foreign Member of US National Academy of Sciences

Professor Simon Tavare, former Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, has been elected as a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Tavare works at the interface of the mathematical sciences and the biological and medical sciences. He pioneered probabilistic and statistical aspects of coalescent theory, full likelihood-based methods for sequence variation data, methods for ancestral inference, evolutionary approaches to cancer, and approximate Bayesian computation for inference in complex stochastic processes.

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International award for evolution expert

ns480 — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:43:27 +0000

Over two decades ago, Professor Jennifer Clack and colleagues made a discovery in Greenland that was to overturn ideas of our evolutionary history: a 370 million-year-old tetrapod (an animal with four legs, plus fingers and toes) whose skeleton held the clues to ‘terrestriality’. This missing link and the research it generated caused a re-evaluation of when, where, how, and in what order changes occurred during the evolutionary transition from water to land. It is these important contributions to science that have recently been recognised through the awarding of the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal to Professor Clack by the National Academy of Sciences.

‘ ̽��ֱ��transition from water- to land-dwelling creatures in the Late Devonian period is one of the major evolutionary events since it triggered the radiation of all subsequent vertebrate life on land,’ explained Professor Clack, Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Zoology. Professor Clack’s discoveries, including the earliest foot adapted for walking, initiated a revolution in perceptions of this key transition.

‘Limbs appear to have first evolved in water and we now know that the first four-limbed creatures possessed multiple fingers and toes rather than the architypal five,’ said Professor Clack. ‘We believe that these evolved to help propel them through weed-choked swamps.’ Her climate studies suggest that the transition to land came at a time of low oxygen in the atmosphere, and even lower in the water, when being able to breathe air became an advantage.

As a result of these detailed analyses, curators are now able to recognise similar fossils in museum collections the world over. ̽��ֱ��result is a worldwide re-evaluation of the fossil record and a resurgence of interest in the field.

Almost 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin published his theories on the origin of species, the fossil record was frustratingly incomplete, with few examples of transitional stages in evolution. Professor Clack’s research is helping to complete the story.

For more information, please contact Professor Jennifer Clack (j.a.clack@zoo.cam.ac.uk).

Professor Jennifer Clack’s research into one of the major events in the evolutionary history of life on Earth has been honoured by the National Academy of Sciences.

This missing link and the research it generated caused a re-evaluation of when, where, how, and in what order changes occurred during the evolutionary transition from water to land.

Professor Jennifer Clack

Skull of one of the earliest known animals, Acanthostega gunnari found in Greenland, 1987

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̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - National Academy of Sciences

̽��ֱ��Royal Society announces 2018 Fellows

International award for evolution expert