Former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council, Flo Clucas received her honorary degree on Monday
Nobel Prize winner, Professor Ryoji Noyori, and award-winning BBC presenter, Chris Beardshaw, are among seven esteemed figures to receive honorary degrees from the University of Liverpool.
Professor Noyori and Chris Beardshaw will be honoured alongside Oxford Professor and BBC presenter, Marcus du Sautoy; former Liverpool councillor, Flo Clucas; former Chair of the Disability Rights Commission, Sir Bert Massie; ancient historian and British Academy Fellow, Dr Dorothy Thompson; and University of Manchester Chair of Inorganic Chemistry, Professor Paul O’Brien.
Professor Noyori is a Nobel Prize winner and President of RIKEN, Japan’s largest research institution and one of the University’s global research partners. Currently a professor at Nagoya University, he chairs the Science and Technology Council of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. An active promoter of Green Chemistry, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 for his work on hydrogenation reactions.
Award-winning garden designer and presenter, Chris Beardshaw, is known for his BBC2 series Gardeners’ World, Hidden Gardens and The Flying Gardener. In addition to his presenting career, he lectures and runs his own garden design business. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Gold Award-winner also created an international show garden at the University’s Ness Botanic Gardens.
Professor Marcus du Sautoy OBE is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of New College. He has presented a number of BBC programmes, making mathematical sciences accessible to a wider audience. In 2009 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Prize, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. He was appointed as an OBE for services to science in 2010.
Flo Clucas is a former Liverpool councillor who helped to secure millions of pounds of European funding for the city. She currently sits on the regional management committee for EU funds, and has also served as Chair of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and as a board member of TATE Liverpool, Liverpool Science Park and the Council of the Chamber of Commerce. She was appointed as an OBE in 2005 for services to the community.
Former Chair of the Disability Rights Commission, Sir Bert Massie, has spent most of his adult life promoting the equality and human rights of disabled people. In 2000 he became Chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, then from 2008-2011 he chaired the Commission for the Compact. He was appointed as an OBE in 1984, a CBE in 2000, and was knighted in 2007.
Dr Dorothy J Thompson FBA is an ancient historian whose research has focused on Egypt following the Greek conquest under Alexander the Great. Born in Liverpool, she is Honorary President of the International Society of Papyrologists and a Fellow of the British Academy. She has spent most of her teaching career in Cambridge and is a Fellow of Girton College and Bye-Fellow of Clare College.
Professor Paul O’Brien FRS, graduate of the University of Liverpool, is Chair of Inorganic Materials Chemistry at the University of Manchester. His research centres on developing new chemical processes for thin films and nanoparticles. He has led major development programmes in Africa for more than 12 years, and in 2011 he received the Sir Colin Humphries Medal. He was elected to the Royal Society in May 2013.
The honorary degrees will be conferred during a week of ceremonies at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall from Monday, 15 July, in which more than 4,000 students will graduate.
