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PeOPle aPPOintmentS Professor gerard evan took up the Sir William Chair of Biochemistry and Head of Department on 1 October, replacing Professor Sir Tom Blundell. He was previously gerson and Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. Professor Evan’s research is focused on understanding the processes responsible for genesis and maintenance of cancers, in particular cancers of the pancreas, colon, brain, skin and liver. Professor Tim Crane was appointed to the Knightbridge Professorship in the Faculty of Philosophy with effect from 1 September. Professor Crane was a member of University College London’s Philosophy Department between 1990 and 2009 and, in 2005, founded the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London, where he was Director until 2008. He studied at the University of Cambridge in the mid-1980s, obtaining his PhD in 1989. The Knightbridge Professorship is one of the oldest professorships at the University. John emmines has stepped down as Senior Esquire Bedell after 22 years with the ceremonial team. Mr Emmines said: “As the 102nd Bedell since 1250, it has been a pleasure and honour to be part of that constancy of purpose. It has been my privilege to be present during a busy and historic period for the University, and to have worked as part of a good team and met some wonderful people.” Mr Emmines will remain in his post as Assistant Safety Adviser in the Health and Safety Office. 12 | november/deCember 2009 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER OBituary helen elsom Professor dame ann dowling became Head of the University’s Department of Engineering on 1 October. She replaced Professor Keith glover. Professor Dowling said: “This really is a wonderful opportunity for me to work with the whole department in developing the future of engineering at Cambridge. Professor glover has done a superb job for the past seven years and I look forward to taking on this role and the challenges ahead of me in ensuring continued excellence.” David Howarth, Member of Parliament for Cambridge and a Clare Fellow, writes: Dr Helen Elsom, who died on 17 September aged only 52, was a pioneering classical scholar who moved from academia into hi-tech industry while pursuing a parallel career as a music critic. Dr Elsom came to King’s College from the East End of London. She obtained first class honours in Classics in 1979, completing her PhD on the Roman novelist Apuleius in 1985, having also gained an MA from Princeton University in comparative literature. From 1984 to 1987 Dr Elsom held a Research Fellowship at Clare College, before embarking again for the United States to take up an assistant professorship in classics at Cornell University. Dr Elsom was one of a small group of British women classicists who sought Jane mcLarty took up the post of Senior Tutor at Wolfson on 7 September, succeeding David Jarvis, who is moving to be Senior Tutor of Murray Edwards. Jane was previously Admissions Tutor at Lucy Cavendish. She is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, teaching New Testament greek and supervising for New Testament papers. She has just completed her PhD dissertation on the role of emotion in early Christian literature. in the 1980s and 1990s to bring feminist thinking to bear on classics and put the study of women in antiquity at the centre of the subject. She also wrote a superb study of the relationship between the New Testament and greco-Roman literature. The early 1990s were, however, a very difficult time in academia, especially in the humanities. Undeterred, Dr Elsom defied the supposed gulf between the humanities and the sciences by launching herself into a new career as a technical writer in hi-tech industry, in which role she eventually returned to Cambridge. Of very wide cultural interests, she wrote extensively on music, taking a particular interest in Handel’s operas. Her reviews – always both sharp and measured – appeared mainly online, where they achieved a wide following. She was also involved in politics as a staunch Liberal. Helen will be missed mainly, however, as a loyal friend whose pointed insights into people and events, often expressed with acerbic wit, were tempered by great kindness.
PrizeS, awarDS anD hOnOurS new fellows of the British academy Professor Mary Jacobus Seven Cambridge academics have been elected to British Academy Fellowships this year in recognition of their research achievements. They are: Professor simon baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity. Professor Cohen’s research focuses on the neuropsychology of autism, specifically in the phenomenon of mind-blindness. It also extends to the psychology of sex differences in humans and the role of foetal testosterone in neurocognitive development. Professor Philip ford, Professor of French and Neo-Latin Literature and a Fellow of Clare. Professor Ford’s research places an emphasis on the relationship between humanism and writing in French and Neo-Latin literature. He has produced a wide variety of publications on subjects such as george Buchanan, Pierre de Ronsard, Renaissance mythography and the reception of Homer in the Renaissance. Professor Jonathan haslam, Professor of the History of International Relations and a Fellow of Corpus Christi. His research interests include the history of thought in international relations, the history of Soviet foreign policy and the contemporary history of Chile. Professor Haslam has also published a biography on the historian, journalist and Dissertations dr danielle van den heuvel won the International Economic History Association’s PhD Dissertation Prize (pre- 1800 category) for her thesis ‘Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands circa 1580-1815’ (Aksant Academic Publishers, 2007). Dr van den Heuvel was appointed Ottilie Hancock Research Fellow in Modern international relations theorist EH Carr. Professor mary Jacobus, Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and a Fellow of Churchill. She is also a professor of English at the University. Professor Jacobus’ research interests lie in British Romanticism with an emphasis on the work of William Wordsworth. She also has special research interests in feminist literary theory and criticism, psychoanalysis and visual culture. dr John marenbon, a senior research Fellow of Trinity whose academic interests are centred on the history of philosophy, especially the period spanning the sixth to 18th century. Dr Marenbon has written specifically on the period before 1200 on Boethius, Anselm and Abelard. His current work, however, extends to the period of Leibniz. Professor susan rankin, a Professor of Medieval Music and Fellow of Emmanuel. Her research is on Western medieval music and its transmission and notation from origins to the thirteenth century. She is also interested in the development of the Latin liturgy, with a special focus on ritual. Professor John duncan, Honorary Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience. Professor Duncan researches the psychological and neural mechanisms of selective attention and general intelligence. His research uses a variety of different methods including cognitive psychology, studies of brain damage, functional brain imaging and neurophysiology. The British Academy is the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, the counterpart to the Royal Society, which exists to serve the natural sciences. Its president is the philosopher Baroness Onora O’Neill, the former Principal of Newnham and a lecturer at the University’s Department of Philosophy. History at girton in 2008. Her research interests are primarily in the economic development of early modern Europe. St Catharine’s alumnus Chris fitzsimmons won the British Hydrological Society’s dissertation prize for his paper ‘Subglacial drainage system structure and morphology of Midtdalsbreen, Norway’. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen Professor John Gurdon Dr Danielle van den Heuvel Other awards ➔ Professor Christopher dobson, Master of St John’s, has been awarded a Royal Medal for “his outstanding contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of protein folding and misfolding, and the implications for disease”. Three Royal Medals, known also as the Queen’s Medals, are awarded annually by the Sovereign upon recommendation of the Council of the Royal Society. ➔ Professor John gurdon has been awarded the 2009 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research award with Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. They received the award for their discoveries in nuclear reprogramming. This process instructs fully specialised adult cells how to turn into stem cells that can guide the formation of any tissue type. Nuclear reprogramming thus provides the means to create invaluable materials for experimental or therapeutic purposes. ➔ Professor John Williams has been elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is distinguished as the originator of the spiral groove pumping seal, which has greatly extended the performance of mechanical face seals and is widely used in the oil and gas handling industries. ➔ Professor sir John meurig Thomas, of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and former Master of Peterhouse, has been awarded the Bragg Lectureship by the British Crystallographic Society. ➔ Professor horace barlow, who is based in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, was awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. The American Society for Neuroscience presents the prize to “an individual whose activities over a period of time have produced a significant cumulative contribution to theoretical models or computational methods in neuroscience, or to a person who has made a particularly noteworthy advance over the past several years in theoretical or computational neuroscience”. ➔ dr Jessica sharkey recently won the Sir John Neale Prize in Tudor History, awarded by the Institute of Historical Research. Dr Sharkey joined Wolfson as a Research Fellow in October from Clare, where she completed her PhD thesis ‘The Politics of Wolsey’s Cardinalate, 1515- 1530’ under the supervision of Professor John guy. november/deCember 2009 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER | 13
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