11 June 2008
Leading thinkers to be honoured at Dundee graduations
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist, the inventor of DNA genetic fingerprinting, and world leaders in the fields of architecture and nutritional health will be among the honorary graduates at the University of Dundee next week.
The University will award honorary doctorates to Professor Edmond Fischer, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, Lord Norman Foster and Dr Walter Willett.
"We are delighted to have such a distinguished range of Honorary Graduands this year, leaders in their respective fields who can offer great inspiration to our students at Dundee," said Sir Alan Langlands, Principal of the University.
Professor Edmond Fischer was the co-recipient, with Edwin G. Krebs, of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning reversible phosphorylation, a biochemical mechanism that governs the activities of cell proteins.
Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys is a geneticist, based at the University of Leicester, who developed the techniques used for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling, tools which have become keystones of modern forensic analysis.
Lord Foster of Thames Bank is one of the world’s most renowned architects, responsible for a huge array of striking buildings over the past four decades. Among the many notable buildings he has designed are the restored Reichstag in Berlin, the `Gherkin’ building in London and the new Wembley Stadium with its distinctive arch.
Dr. Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, is the most cited nutritionist internationally, and is among the five most cited persons in all fields of clinical science.
Lord Foster, Professor Jeffreys and Professor Fischer will all receive their honorary degrees at the Graduation ceremony on the morning of Friday June 20th. Dr Wllett will be honoured at the afternoon ceremony on the same date.
The ceremonies take place in the Caird Hall in Dundee.
Dr Willett will also deliver the 2008 Greatest Minds Lecture at the University on Wednesday June 18th. His lecture is titled `The Pursuit of Health: Is Contemporary Medicine Taking Us Down the Wrong Path?’ and will examine how a more balanced approach between medical research and dietary and lifestyle modifications could have a much greater impact on the health of our societies.
The lecture takes places at 6 pm on Wednesday June 18th in the New Teaching Block, Old Hawkhill, University of Dundee, and admission is free.
NOTES TO EDITORS
There will be photo opportunities with each of the Honorary Graduates before each ceremony in the Robing Room of Dundee City Chambers. These will be from 9.30 am for the morning ceremonies (which begin at 10 am) and 2 pm for the afternoon ceremonies (which begin at 2.30 pm)
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
* Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys is a geneticist, based at the University of Leicester, who developed the techniques used for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling, tools which have become keystones of modern forensic analysis.
After graduating from University of Oxford, he moved to the University of Leicester in 1977 where he developed DNA fingerprinting, using variations in the genetic code to identify individuals.
His DNA technique was used in the first regional screen of human DNA to identify the rapist and killer of two girls in Narborough, Leicestershire in 1983 and 1986.
Sir Alec was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986, declared Midlander of the Year in 1989 and was appointed as a Royal Society Research Professor in 1991. He was made a freeman of the City of Leicester in 1992 and was knighted in 1994. In 1996 he was awarded the Albert Einstein World Award of Science. He was awarded the Australia Prize in 1998. In 2004 he was awarded his D.Sc by the University of Leicester and the Royal Medal by the Royal Society.
In 2005 he won the Morgan Stanley Great Briton Award for the Greatest Briton of the Year.
* Dr. Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally, and is among the five most cited persons in all fields of clinical science. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.
Much of his work over the last 25 years has focussed on the development of methods to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses' Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices.
Dr. Willett has published over 1,000 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease and cancer, and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press. His book for the general public, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, has appeared on most major bestseller lists, and he has recently published a second book, co-authored with Mollie Katzen, for a general audience, Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less.
* Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. After graduating from Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning in 1961 he won a Henry Fellowship to Yale University, where he gained a Master's Degree in Architecture.
He is the founder and chairman of Foster + Partners. Established in London in 1967, it is now a worldwide practice, with project offices in more than twenty countries. Over the past four decades the company has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban masterplans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and product design. Since its inception, the practice has received 480 awards and citations for excellence and has won more than 86 international and national competitions.
Current and recent work includes the largest single building on the planet, Beijing Airport, the redevelopment of Dresden Railway Station, Millau Viaduct in France, a headquarters tower for Swiss Re at 30 St Mary Axe (informally known as the `Gherkin’) and the Great Court at the British Museum in London, an entire University Campus for Petronas in Malaysia, the Hearst Headquarters tower in New York, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and research centres at Stanford University, California.
He became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate in 1999 and was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture in 2002. He has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture (1994), the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (1983), and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1991). In 1990 he was granted a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours, and in 1999 was honoured with a Life Peerage, becoming Lord Foster of Thames Bank.
* Professor Edmond Fischer was the co-recipient, with Edwin G. Krebs, of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning reversible phosphorylation, a biochemical mechanism that governs the activities of cell proteins.
The pair’s work at the University of Washington in Seattle in the 1950s and ‘60s became one of science’s great partnerships and opened the way to a major new field of research suggesting how enzymes might function in various physiological processes, such as hormone regulatory mechanisms, gene expression, and fertilization of the egg. Their work also had major implications for the understanding of certain diseases including diabetes and asthma.
Fischer and Krebs made their discoveries while studying a process called `reversible phosphorylation’, the attachment or detachment of phosphate groups to cell proteins. The two men were the first to purify and characterize one of the enzymes (phosphorylase) involved in the process of phosphorylation. They also discovered the enzymes that catalyze the attachment and detachment of phosphate groups, known as protein kinases and phosphatase, respectively.
In the decades following these initial discoveries, scientists were able to identify many other enzymes that regulate specific processes in cells, leading to explanations of the mechanisms controlling basic activities in all living cells.
The impact of their work has been keenly felt in Dundee, where studies in the field of reversible phosphorylation in cell regulation and human disease form a large part of the local biotechnology sector.
For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate
Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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