Royal Society honours University of Manchester academics
12 Jul 2012
Physicist Professor Brian Cox OBE has been awarded a Royal Society Award for excellence in communicating science.
The star of Wonders of the Universe received the Michael Faraday Prize in the Royal Society’s 2012 Awards, Medals and Prize Lectures.
Another Manchester academic, Professor David Leigh FRS, has been selected to give the Bakerian Lecture – one of the most highly regarded lectures in Physical Sciences. The lecture, which is accompanied by a medal and a gift of £1,000, is delivered annually and is one of the oldest scientific lectures in the world – first given in 1775.
Brian has become one of the most recognised figures in science and has won plaudits for making science accessible to a wider audience. His latest BBC series, Wonders of Life, “a physicist’s take” on natural history and the story of life, will be aired later this year.
A graduate of the University, Brian – along with thousands of other scientists – works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and contributed to research which resulted in the recent potential discovery of the Higgs Boson. He also is a prominent and passionate champion of science in the media.
David recently made the move to Manchester to take up a position as Professor of Organic Chemistry. He is a world leader in the field of synthetic molecular motors, machines and nanotechnology.
He has previously received many international prizes and awards for his work, including the EU Descartes Prize for Research and the US Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology, both in 2007. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009.
Speaking about the Bakerian Lecture and his work at Manchester, David said: “It's great when our group's work is recognised by prizes, of course.
“The Bakerian Lecture is one of the premier awards of the Royal Society and I was both surprised and honoured when the Royal Society asked me to give the 2013 Lecture.”
The full list of recipients of Awards, Medals and Prize Lectures for 2012 is available at: