Univ Record 2018

Master’s Notes
After two years of comfortably nesting
in the top ten of the Norrington Table,
Univ slipped to a middling 17th in 2018.
The number of Firsts awarded was a
commendable 36, almost matching last
year’s 37, and the fourth highest number
in the College’s history, but unlike 2017
a small number of students gained Lower
Seconds and Thirds, which pulled us down
the rankings. Star billing goes to the
twelve historians, of whom nine gained
Firsts – a remarkable feat for Finalists and
their tutors alike.
Academic prizes were not limited to our Finalists. A number of our Fellows won
national recognition for their academic distinction over the year. Ngaire Woods and
Sarah Harper were each awarded a CBE in the Honours Lists both for the eminence of
their research and for their sustained contributions to public policy in, respectively, the
fields of global governance and population. The Royal Society selected Tamsin Mather,
a leading volcanologist, for the 2018 Rosalind Franklin Award and Lecture on the
basis of her research and outstanding ability to communicate it to a wider public. Paula
Koelemeijer, also a volcanologist, and a junior research fellow, was awarded the Doombos
Memorial Prize for her pioneering work on the Earth’s deep interior. Barry Potter won
the 2018 Tu Youyou Award for the advances of his research in the fields of medicinal
chemistry and chemical biology and Laura Herz received the Nevill Mott Medal and
Prize from the Institute of Physics for her ground-breaking work on the fundamental
mechanisms underpinning light harvesting, energy conservation and charge conduction
in semiconducting materials.
Three of the award winners – Sarah Harper, Laura Herz and Barry Potter – are
Supernumerary (non-teaching) Fellows elected by the College under a scheme launched
seven years ago to strengthen the links between the College and the most dynamic
branches of the University’s research community. A growing number of senior researchers
in the University, many with global reputations, are funded by international research
programmes and attached to a University department but have no college association,
and therefore little or no contact with undergraduates. Many work in the medical and
biological sciences, fields in which Oxford has expanded at an astonishing pace in the
past two decades and is widely recognised as the world’s pre-eminent centre of excellence.
The College appoints two supernumerary fellows a year, by open competition across all
disciplines, from the unaffiliated senior research community in Oxford. All of those
elected are not only highly distinguished academics but have made a valuable and varied
contribution to the College’s intellectual and social life, from which students and Fellows
alike have benefited. The scheme will continue for some years to come.
The year marked a significant expansion of the College’s Fellowship as a result of
major benefactions, with supplementary support from the University. A generous gift
from Pavel and Ivana Tykac of Prague endowed a Fellowship in their name in Czech
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