Fellow Of The Royal Society Research Articles

Variation in the social composition of the UK academic elite: The underlay of the two-or three-cultures?

In this paper, we complement a previous study of the UK natural science elite, as represented by Fellows of the Royal Society, with a comparable study of the humanities and social sciences elites, as represented by Fellows of the British Academy. We seek to establish how far similarities and differences exist in the social composition of these three academic elites and in the routes that their members have followed into elite positions. We are also concerned with the consequences of the humanities and social sciences elites being brought together in the British Academy, in contrast with the situation in most other countries where elite natural and social scientists are located in the same academy. We pursue these issues in the context of C. P. Snow's discussion of the social underlay of the cultural disjunction that he saw between the natural sciences and the humanities, while also considering how the social sciences fit in. We find that there is support for Snow's position at the time of his writing. However, a notable development in more recent years is that the growing social sciences elite is moving in its social composition away from the humanities elite and closer to the natural science elite. This is primarily due to changes in the social origins and education of Fellows in those sections of the British Academy that are on the borderline between the social and the natural sciences. A widening difference thus arises with Fellows in the humanities sections most representative of Snow's 'traditional culture'.

Voltaire FRS: His career as a scientist

Abstract Voltaire is remembered as one of the leading thinkers of the European Enlightenment, often quoted today for his views on free speech and religious toleration. In his lifetime he also enjoyed a reputation as a scientific thinker. His Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, published in 1738, did much to further understanding of Isaac Newton in Europe and led to Voltaire’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. He even tried his hand at experimental research and briefly entertained an ambition to become the Permanent Secretary of the French Académie des sciences. The plan came to nothing, but Voltaire’s presentation and promotion of Newtonian physics was enormously influential and has continued to this day to influence our understanding of Enlightenment scientific thinking.

CEST conversation with Prof. Marc A. Rosen: Evolving responsibilities and contributions in science and engineering for global carbon neutrality transitions

Prof. Marc A. Rosen is a Professor of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering at Ontario Tech University (formally University of Ontario Institute of Technology) in Oshawa, Canada, where he served as founding Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. Prof. Rosen has served as President of the Engineering Institute of Canada and of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering. He has received numerous awards and honors, including an Award of Excellence in Research and Technology Development from the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy, the Engineering Institute of Canada Smith Medal for achievement in the development of Canada, and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering Angus Medal for outstanding contributions to the management and practice of mechanical engineering. Prof. Rosen received a distinguished scholar award from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) and a Mid-Career Award from University of Toronto. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Engineering Institute of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the International Energy Foundation.

The Vaccine Godmother: Dr. Gagandeep Kang's Pioneering Journey in Global Health and Vaccine Development.

Dr. Gagandeep Kang is a distinguished Indian microbiologist and virologist known for her pioneering work in the study of gastrointestinal diseases, diarrheal infections, and vaccine development. This article highlights her career, beginning with her medical education at Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore, where she embarked on her groundbreaking research in enteric diseases, particularly rotavirus, a major cause of child mortality globally. Over the course of her distinguished career, she has led groundbreaking research on rotavirus, contributing to the development of two WHO-approved vaccines tailored for Indian communities: Rotavac (Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad, India) and Rotasiil (Serum Institute of India, Pune, India). Beyond her research, Dr. Kang has held significant advisory roles on national and global platforms, including WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). She has authored over 300 scientific publications and coauthored the bestselling book "Till We Win,"which details India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Her exceptional contributions have earned her numerous accolades, including the Infosys Prize in Life Sciences, the Fellowship of the Royal Society, and the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award. Dr. Kang's career exemplifies her dedication to advancing public health, vaccine development, and global health initiatives, making her a trailblazer in the field of microbiology and virology.

David (Dave) John Randall (1938-2024), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Science.

David (Dave) John Randall (1938-2024), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Science.

Alan Hall. 19 May 1952—3 May 2015

Alan Hall was born in a mining town in Yorkshire in 1952. He studied chemistry at Oxford and then, after starting his PhD in biochemistry in Oxford, he completed it at Harvard in the USA, where he made important discoveries about the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Following postdoctoral studies in the UK and Switzerland, he set up his independent research in London at the Institute of Cancer Research, where he began his work which opened up the field of study of the Ras-homologous family of small GTPase proteins. Alan made seminal discoveries in this field, which revolutionized cell biology in the UK and internationally. Alan's work made connections between cell migration, cancer and cell signalling and provided a mechanistic understanding of how many cell processes work at the molecular level. Alan helped to found the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology in London and became the director in 2001. In 2006 he moved to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York as chair of Cell Biology. He was awarded the Feldberg Foundation Prize in 1993, the Novartis Medal (UK Biochemical Society) and the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2005, as well as the Canada Gairdner Prize in 2006. He was elected as a European Molecular Biology Organization member in 1994, as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004.

Celebrating Professor Rajeev K. Varshney's transformative research odyssey from genomics to the field on his induction as Fellow of the Royal Society.

Professor Rajeev K. Varshney's transformative impact on crop genomics, genetics, and agriculture is the result of his passion, dedication, and unyielding commitment to harnessing the potential of genomics to address the most pressing challenges faced by the global agricultural community. Starting from a small town in India and reaching the global stage, Professor Varshney's academic and professional trajectory has inspired many scientists active in research today. His ground-breaking work, especially his effort to list orphan tropical crops to genomic resource-rich entities, has been transformative. Beyond his scientific achievements, Professor Varshney is recognized by his colleagues as an exemplary mentor, fostering the growth of future researchers, building institutional capacity, and strengthening scientific capability. His focus on translational genomics and strengthening seed system in developing countries for the improvement of agriculture has made a tangible impact on farmers' lives. His skills have been best utilized in roles at leading research centres where he has applied his expertise to deliver a new vision for crop improvement. These efforts have now been recognized by the Royal Society with the award of the Fellowship (FRS). As we mark this significant milestone in his career, we not only celebrate Professor Varshney's accomplishments but also his wider contributions that continue to transform the agriculturallandscape.

Circles and Mistakes: Interview with Tim Ingold

Tim Ingold is a British anthropologist, Social Anthro­pology Professor at the University of Aberdeen, Fellow of the British Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has explored the relationship between anthropology, architecture, art, and design; and through his work, has invited us to ‘think through making’ and ‘learn by doing’. Ingold is the author of Evolution and Social Life (Cam­bridge University Press, 1986); Lines: A Brief History (Routledge, 2007); Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (Routledge, 2010); and Anthropol­ogy: Why it Matters (Polity, 2018), among many other books. In this interview he responds to some questions about the practice of repair in his own daily life, but also the role and comprehension of repair in his intellectual work, and the possible connection between such action and the act of design.

An Essay concerning the Origine of Sciences and the Mode of Scriblerian Satire

Abstract: A short satire, An Essay of the Learned Martinus Scriblerus concerning the Origine of Sciences , concerns the alleged role of an anthropoid race of pygmies in the evolution of human knowledge. It was first published in the Miscellanies of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift in 1732, and has been attributed to both of these authors. The aim of this article is to provide the first full account of the Essay in its context. This draws on information relating to the literary, biographical, and bibliographical circumstances in which members of the Scriblerian group produced the work. Among issues considered are relevant controversies engaged in by fellows of the Royal Society, notably Dr. John Woodward; the debt of the Essay to a pioneering work of physical anthropology, Edward Tyson's Orang-Outang (1699), first explored by Richard Nash; and a survey of other sources, as revealed by citations and hidden allusions. The concluding argument seeks to establish the close filiation of the Essay with other Scriblerian satires and to suggest that it serves as a template for the subgenre that these came to embody. A case is made for the key role in composition taken along with Pope by Dr. John Arbuthnot, FRS, a polymath with special interests in comparative anatomy.

The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art

The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art

‘The Northern chemist’—Truth behind the stereotype in the British scientific elite?

In a prosopographical study of the British scientific elite, defined as Fellows of the Royal Society born since 1900, chemists were found to be distinctive in their social origins and schooling, being more likely than Fellows in other fields to come from relatively disadvantaged class backgrounds and to have attended state rather than private secondary schools. In thinking of possible explanations, we called to mind the student stereotype of ‘the Northern chemist’. Could this give some indications of how it should come about that those chemists who enter the scientific elite—a small minority—tend to differ from other elite members in the ways in question? Our more detailed analyses of the biographies of elite chemists, comparing those of different class origins, point to the following conclusions. The Northern chemist was a male stereotype, and chemists prove to be more predominantly male than other members of the scientific elite. Young people, mainly male, often growing up in industrial areas of the North of England (or in Wales) and in families whose male members were in manual work, were particularly likely to develop an interest in chemistry rather than in other sciences, and it was in chemistry that state education gave them their greatest comparative advantage over those privately educated. Generalising from these analyses, we suggest that a larger pool was created in chemistry than in other scientific fields of people who were of relatively disadvantaged social origins and state educated, and that this difference was then maintained through into the social composition of the small number of chemists who eventually gained elite status.

JHET INTERVIEWS: EVELYN FORGET

Evelyn Forget is among the “women of value” working in the economics profession. Her work has always been on the interface between theory and policy. It focuses on how economic tools and language can be mobilized to ensure that all members of society have access to the resources and services that allow us to live with dignity. Her contributions on the issue fall into two areas: history of economics, and health and social policy research. Her work in the latter area has earned her the titles of Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her most recent research focuses on the issue of basic income, which in Canada really means a form of targeted guaranteed income. Her 2018 book Basic Income for Canadians was shortlisted for the 2018–19 Donner Prize. In 2020, she updated the book to focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her latest book, Radical Trust: Basic Income for Complicated Lives, co-written with Hannah Owczar, was published in 2021.

Ian Michael Glynn. 3 June 1928—7 July 2022

In the mid 1950s the convergence of crucial discoveries on nerve and muscle physiology brought to centre stage the question of how sodium and potassium concentration gradients needed for nerve conduction and muscle contraction are maintained. This was the subject Ian Glynn set out to investigate when he returned to Cambridge as a Trinity College graduate student in 1953. His initial results on the sodium and potassium permeabilities of the human red blood cell membrane, published in 1956–1967, established these cells as an ideal experimental system for studying the transport properties of the ‘sodium pump’ because of the ease with which the ionic composition of intra- and extracellular environments could be controlled, cell metabolism managed and ionic fluxes measured using isotopes. This work was followed by ground-breaking contributions from his research group over the next decades in a long series of brilliantly designed experiments, setting the foundations of our current understanding of the molecular mechanism of the sodium/potassium pump. Ian became a Trinity College fellow in 1960, advanced rapidly to a professorship in the Department of Physiology after being elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970, and was appointed head of department in 1986 until his retirement in 1995.

Joanna Szpunar, a great chemical researcher internationally recognized, kindly spoke to BrJAC

Joanna Szpunar graduated from the Warsaw University of Technology in 1986 and obtained her Ph.D. (1992) and D.Sc. (Habilitation) (2000) from the University of Warsaw. Since 1997, she works at the National Research Council of France (CNRS). In 2007, she obtained in Poland the title of professor of chemistry. She has broad experience in the field of mass spectrometry-based bio-inorganic speciation analysis and metallomics with a focus on the identification and quantification of trace element species in biological systems and in the chemistry of metal-biomolecule interactions. She is the co-author of a book and approximately 250 scientific publications in peer-reviewed international journals. Joanna Szpunar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and has been, for many years, a member of the boards of Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry' and Metallomics. She regularly gives invited lectures at international analytical chemistry meetings and was the chairperson of the European Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry (Kraków, Poland) in 2013. The investigations carried out under her supervision and/or with her active participation resulted in the identification of a number of molecular targets of metals in biological systems, as well as contribute to selenometabolomics and selenoproteomics studies in bacteria and plants. In recent years, her interests were broadened to the environmental fate of metal-containing nanoparticles and nanoplastics. She has supervised 12 Ph.D. theses and several post-doctoral fellows. Joanna Szpunar is the laureate of the 2013 Jerzy Fijalkowski Award of the Committee of Analytical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the 2017 European Award for Plasma Spectrochemistry. In recent years, Joanna Szpunar has been involved in collaboration with analytical chemists in Brazil, hosting graduate students from the University of Campinas and the Federal University of Pelotas in the laboratory at the Institute of Analytical Sciences (IPREM) in Pau afiliated with the CNRS, lecturing at the Federal University of Santa Maria and co-supervising a Ph.D. student with work carried out at the University of Pau and the Federal University of Pelotas.

Special Collection on Boron Chemistry

In this Guest Editorial, Varinder Aggarwal, Zuowei Xie and Hajime Ito introduce the joint EurJOC/AsianJOC special collection on boron chemistry, which features original research and review articles on the synthesis and applications of organoboron compounds from researchers around the world. This EurJOC/AsianJOC joint Special Collection features original research and review articles on the synthesis and applications of organoboron compounds from researchers around the world. From materials chemistry to the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, organoboron compounds continue to play a major role. Although the topic of organoboron chemistry may seem like a fairly mature field, the chemistry of organoboron compounds continues to flourish unabated. Its use in enabling the formation of C−C bonds remains a dominant feature of its chemistry, primarily through Suzuki-Miyaura couplings. But its use in asymmetric synthesis through Matteson-type reactions has also flourished. Much of the utility of organoboron compounds stems from the ability to transform them into a myriad of alternative functional groups, usually with perfect stereospecificity. This occurs because boron is a rather temperamental atom, as although it has 3 bonds to it, it is rather hungry for a 4th, but then when it gets a 4th substituent, one of the groups on boron migrates to a neighboring group which houses a leaving group, returning boron to its trivalent state. The great beauty of boron is that it can orchestrate these movements of groups with high selectivity and perfect precision. With the emergence of new technologies like visible-light photochemistry, and simple-to-set-up electrochemistry new opportunities emerge where these fields are brought to the door of organoboron chemistry and new transformations can be achieved. There is no doubt, that the field of organoboron chemistry will continue to thrive and its use in materials and in synthesis will continue to evolve for the benefit of the whole of society. This collection provides a taster of some of the new directions that the field can move in and the breadth and variety of organoboron research. The opinions expressed in this publication are the view of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, the Publisher, Chemistry Europe, or the affiliated editors. Varinder K. Aggarwal studied chemistry at Cambridge University and received his Ph.D. in 1986 under the guidance of Dr. Stuart Warren. After postdoctoral studies (1986-1988) under Prof. Gilbert Stork, Columbia University, he returned to the UK as a Lecturer at Bath University. In 1991 he moved to Sheffield University, where he was promoted to Professor in in 1997. In 2000 he moved to Bristol University where he holds the Chair in Synthetic Chemistry. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. Zuowei Xie pursued studies in a joint PhD program between Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technische Universität Berlin under co-supervision of Profs. Yao-Zeng Huang, Changtao Qian and H. Schumann, and earned his PhD in 1990. After postdoctoral work (1991-1995) under Prof. C. A. Reed at University of Southern California, he took up an Assistant Professorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1995, and then was appointed as a Choh-Ming Li Professor of Chemistry in 2013. He moved to Southern University of Science and Technology in 2022 as a Chair Professor. Prof. Xie has been elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2017. Hajime Ito obtained his PhD under the supervision of the late Professor Yoshihiko Ito. He served as an Assistant Professor at Tsukuba University, collaborating with Professor Akira Hosomi, before moving to the Institute for Molecular Science. In 2001, he worked as a research associate in Professor Kim D. Janda's research group at the Scripps Research Institute. The following year, he became an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, where he worked with Professor Masaya Sawamura. In 2010, he was promoted to full Professor at the same university. In 2018, he was appointed as vice director of WPI-ICReDD at Hokkaido University.

Reflections on the life and career of Professor Dame Valerie Beral AC DBE FRS FRCOG FMedSci (1943–2022)

Reflections on the life and career of Professor Dame Valerie Beral <scp>AC DBE FRS FRCOG FMedSci</scp> (1943–2022)

Editorial

Editorial

Victor Percy Snaith, 1944–2021

AbstractVictor Snaith was born in Colchester, Essex, on 15 March 1944 and passed away in Bristol on 3 July 2021 at the age of 77. He completed his PhD at the University of Warwick in 1969 under the supervision of Luke Hodgkin. He held faculty positions in Canada, at the University of Western Ontario (1976–88) and McMaster University (1988–98), and became a leading figure in the Canadian mathematical research community during that time. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1984, and held the first Britton Professorship at McMaster University. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1998, to professorships at the University of Southampton (1998–2004) and the University of Sheffield (2004–2009) from where he retired in 2009. He was an active member of the Heilbronn Institute from 2006 until the time of his passing. Snaith made significant research contributions in various areas, including the Snaith splitting theorem in stable homotopy theory, the introduction of the Bott periodic form of algebraic K‐theory, and the explicit Brauer induction theorem with its applications in algebraic number theory. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, son Dan, and daughters Anna and Nina.

The House as Repository of Knowledge and Intercultural Transfers

ABSTRACT This article explores the house during the Romantic period as a site of intercultural transfer of knowledge. Hosting decentralized networks, the house functioned as a significant conduit in disseminating knowledge or creating new productions. The first part of the paper examines the opening of mummies by Professor Blumenbach as an example of how private collections were curated in several houses of the Fellows of the Royal Society. The second part presents an analysis of the role of the professorial house in Göttingen in transferring knowledge of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination in Germany. The final example takes a closer look at a confluence of Anglo-Franco-German literature converging on Villa Diodati in 1816, showing how the famous villa is not a site of solitary creation as illustrated in prints of Byron and Villa Diodati, but the site of communal reading inspiring creativity.

Bioelectricity in Plants: From So Simple a Beginning

Bioelectricity in Plants: From So Simple a Beginning