Honoured but overlooked

While we all appreciate that Times Higher Education has a well-known blind spot where academic medicine is concerned, it is pushing even that envelope to say that Wendy Hall was the only female academic to be honoured at the new year for services to science and technology ("Honours for the sector's movers and scholars", 8 January).

This is simply not true. Sally Claire Davies, director of research and development at the Department of Health, was appointed a DBE for services to medicine. Davies has been a professor of haemoglobinopathies in the division of investigative science at Imperial College School of Medicine since 1998.

While we were invited to admire the accomplishments of a number of individuals appointed OBEs in the list, it is also significant that no other clinical academics were singled out for mention in this article, including those who received knighthoods and our own Kate Costeloe, who was appointed a CBE for services to paediatrics.

Sir Nicholas Wright

Warden, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.