7 October 2010

Sir Philip Cohen named as one of the UK's most influential scientists

Sir Philip Cohen, of the University of Dundee, has been named among the '100 most important people in British science' by The Times newspaper.

Sir Philip is placed at no. 55 in the list, ahead of figures like Ian King, the CEO of British Aerospace (59), Lord Browne, the former CEO of BP (68), Lord Sainsbury, the former Minister of Science and head of Sainsbury’s supermarket chain (78), Lord Winston, the fertility medicine pioneer and broadcaster (84) and Prince Charles (92).

Number one in the list is Sir Paul Nurse, who will become the President of the Royal Society on December 1st and has just returned to the UK after being the President of the Rockefeller University, New York for the past five years. David Attenborough, the iconic broadcaster on natural history came in at number seven.

The citation in today’s Times mentions Sir Philip’s work on protein phosphorylation - a process that controls how cells behave - which has improved understanding of cancer and other diseases. It also cites his role in transforming Dundee into a hub of medical research and for his pioneering partnerships between academia and business, including the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy at the University of Dundee, the largest such collaboration in Britain.

Sir Philip is Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit and of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling, both based within the College of Life Sciences at Dundee.

'It is nice to have been included in this first ever list of the 100 people in Britain that matter in science,' said Sir Philip. 'While such lists should not of course be taken too seriously, as they are based on the opinions of a small panel of judges, it is good to see that science and its importance to the UK economy and culture is now being recognised more widely by the general public.'

The list in published in today’s issue of The Times’ Eureka science supplement.

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