The distinguished career of Professor Bob Watson has received further recognition with the announcement that he has been selected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
This coveted title is bestowed on scientists from the UK and the Commonwealth who have made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science". Fellows are elected for life, and gain the right to use the letters FRS after their name.
Responding to the news, Professor Watson said: “I am extremely honoured and humbled to join a fellowship of the world’s most eminent minds in the world’s oldest scientific academy, which has been in continuous existence since the 1600s.”
Professor Watson’s early research was as a physical chemist and he played a significant part in providing scientific evidence for the depletion of the ozone layer in the 1980s, leading to the Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs.
He went on to be a leading player in many international environmental assessments, including the International Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He became more widely known as Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, bringing together science and policy to protect the global climate. A former Chief Scientist of the World Bank, he was also previously environmental adviser to the Clinton Administration.
He currently shares his time between the University, where he is Professor of Environmental Sciences, and Defra, where he is Chief Scientist.
Professor Edward Acton, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, said he was delighted by the news. “Bob Watson is one of the leading scientists in his field and I would like to offer him our warmest congratulations on this richly deserved award,” he said.
“The work he has done, and indeed continues to do, in climate science is an area in which this University continues to play a leading role, so this recognition is particularly pleasing.”
The honour is the latest in a number of awards made to Professor Watson, most recently (2010) the Blue Planet Prize, Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. He also shared in the IPCC’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
There are currently around 1450 Fellows of the Royal Society, who are considered to be among the leading scientists of their generation. They include UEA colleagues Professor Andy Watson and Emeritus Professors Peter Liss and Andrew Thomson.
http://royalsociety.org/people/robert-watson/
Printer-friendly version
Send by email