There are three types of membership in the EHRS: ordinary, corporate and affiliated, and honorary (life). The highest award is that of honorary membership which is only given to very special people. To obtain honorary membership, the person has to be elected by over twothirds of the ordinary members at the General Assembly. There are only nine current Honorary Members of the Society: James Black, Robin Ganellin, Wilfred Lorenz, Piero Mannaioni, Walter Schunack, Henk Timmerman, Ingrid Olhagen-Uvnas, Takehiko Watanabe and Jean West. At this meeting, the society awarded honorary membership to three special people who have all contributed significantly to the EHRS; they are Professor Madeleine Ennis, Professor Bruno Mondovi and Professor Fred Pearce. The oration for Professor Madeleine Ennis was given by Professor Fred Pearce. Madeleine was awarded a BSc in Chemistry from UCL in 1974 and a PhD in Biological Chemistry (supervisor Charles Vernon) in 1978. Her thesis was entitled ‘‘Some Studies on Nerve Growth Factor and its Antiserum’’ and provided important information about the mechanism of immunosympathectomy. She then spent 3 years carrying out postdoctoral work with Fred Pearce, and together they established the mast cell group in the Chemistry Department at UCL. Her main interests were calcium and histamine release and mast cell heterogeneity. This was a most productive period and resulted in 25 publications, one of which became a mini-citation classic and another EHRS Milestone Paper. Madeleine then spent 2 years in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in Hammersmith before joining Wilfried Lorenz in the Institute for Theoretical Surgery in Marburg. Her main interest in Marburg was adverse allergic and pseudoallergic drug reactions. This period in Germany consolidated Madeleine’s scientific reputation and she moved in 1989 to a lectureship in Clinical Biochemistry at Queen’s University, Belfast. Thereafter, she was rapidly promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1996 and to Professor of Immunopharmacology in 1999. Madeleine’s current research interests span the role of infection, inflammation and inflammatory markers in all of the major, non-malignant lung diseases. Madeleine consolidated these interests by founding the Respiratory Research Group at Queen’s, and she is now Director of the Respiratory Medicine Research Cluster and widely recognised as one of the United Kingdom’s leading experts in the pathogenesis of respiratory disease. She has supervised a huge number of research students all of whom hold her in universal affection. She also carried out some rigorous research into the basis of homeopathy which attracted enormous publicity and led to an appearance on the BBC television programme ‘‘Horizon’’. Madeleine has also found time to serve on the Women’s Forum Committee at Queen’s and to chair the Mentoring Sub-Group of that Committee. She is the Mentoring Champion at the M. Ennis Respiratory Medicine Research Group, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast BT12 6BN, Northern Ireland, UK