This year, seven Cambridge academics, together with three researchers from the Cambridge Biomedical Campus’ MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society in recognition of their contribution to scientific research.

The Royal Society is an independent Fellowship of the most distinguished scientists, engineers, and technologists in the UK and the Commonwealth. It was founded in the seventeenth century to foster excellence in science, and to promote its use for the benefit of humankind. Current Fellows include Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and Tim Berners-Lee.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, a fellow at Darwin College and a member of the Department of Genetics at the University, told Varsity she was “delighted” about having been elected, and said the decision “recognises all the hard work of each member of my research team over the years, and the fun we continue to have exploring and discovering the wonders of epigenetics.”

Alongside Ferguson-Smith, the new members of the Royal Society from the University of Cambridge are Professor Krishna Chatterjee (Department of Medicine), Professor Mark Gross, )Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics), Professor David Owen (Cambridge Institute for Medical Research), Professor Lawrence Paulson (Computer Laboratory), Professor David Rubinsztein (Cambridge Institute for Medical Research) and Professor Andrew Woods (BP Institute).

The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Fellows are Dr Andrew McKenzie (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology), Professor John David Sutherland (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) and Dr Roger Williams (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology).

University moots splitting Medical and Veterinary Science tripos

More affiliates of the University of Cambridge were elected to the Fellowship this year than those of any other institution. Seven of the fifty newly-elected Fellows were from the University of London, while six were from the University of Oxford.

Announcing the new Fellows, Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, said that science “will play an increasingly crucial role in tackling the great challenges of our time”.

He continued, “the new Fellows of the Royal Society have already contributed to science, and it gives me great pleasure to welcome them into our ranks”.