Glittering Prizes

Neil Kinnock, former leader of the Labour Party and now a European Commissioner, and his wife Glenys Kinnock, MEP for South-east Wales, have received honorary fellowships from the University of Wales College, Newport, along with animator Joanna Quinn, whose film Famous Fred, drawn under her direction by nine recent UWCN graduates, received an Oscar nomination this year.

Sir John Meurig Thomas, professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution and knighted in 1991 for his services to chemistry and the popularisation of science, will be the first person to receive a new award from the American Chemical Society, intended to recognise and encourage outstanding research on catalysis.

Saghir Akhtar, a lecturer at Aston University, will today be awarded the British Pharmaceutical Conference Science Medal by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain for his research into the genetic therapy of brain tumours.

Heather McQueen, from Edinburgh University's institute of cell and molecular biology, Beth Sullivan from the MRC human genetics unit at Edinburgh and Verity Brown, from St Andrews University school of psychology, have been awarded Caledonian Research Foundation research fellowships. It is the first time all the research fellowships have gone to women since they were introduced seven years ago, thanks to a rule change this year allowing fellows to work part-time for domestic reasons.