Scientists honoured in New Year list
6 Jan 2011 by Evoluted New Media
The New Year’s Honours Lists was announced at the end of 2010, and science featured prominently with a British-born astronaut, university professors and a TV presenter scooping a collection of OBE and MBEs from the Queen.
The New Year’s Honours Lists was announced at the end of 2010, and science featured prominently with a British-born astronaut, university professors and a TV presenter scooping a collection of OBE and MBEs from the Queen.
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Piers Sellers on a spacewalks during STS-112, a mission to assemble the ISS (Credit NASA, Astronaut Michael Edward Fossum) |
Astronaut Piers Sellers was has flown on three space shuttle missions and is one of only five UK-born people to have flown into orbit so far. He was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for his services to science.
“It is a tremendous honour, and I’m really glad that the whole business of spaceflight has been recognised in the UK,” he told BBC News.
Born in East Sussex, Sellers had to become an American citizen in order to be considered for spaceflight. He joined NASA in 1980 working at the NASA Goddard Space Centre. His first flight was on the space shuttle Atlantis in 2002 where he carried out three spacewalks to help assemble the International Space Station. With the shuttle programme coming to an end, Sellers will return to NASA’s Goddard space centre.
Also honoured was science journalist Vivienne Parry – best known as a presenter on Tomorrow’s World – who was awarded an OBE for her services to the public understanding of science. She is also well-known as a broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and as a columnist for The Guardian and The Times.
OBEs were also awarded to Professor Christopher Lowe, professor of biotechnology at the University of Cambridge; Dr Carol Turley, research scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and John Roundell, the Earl of Selborne who received his honour for service to science.
CBEs (Commander of the British Empire) were awarded to Professor Ronald Laskey, Professor Stephen Holgate and Professor Hugh Godfray. Laskey holds the Charles Darwin Chair of Animal Embryology at the University of Cambridge and is the director of the MRC Cancer Cell Unit, while Holgate is MRC Clinical Professor of Immunopharmocology and honorary consultant physician at Southampton University Hospital Trust. Godfray is Hope Professor of Entomology at the University of Oxford.
