Honorary degrees

Mr James Earl [Jimmy] Carter Jr
Former President of the USA

‘Wise and compassionate leader, champion of the human race, who by your writings, actions and example have benefited many people in many parts of the world …’

Jimmy Carter served as President of the USA from 1977 to 1981. His presidency was marked by significant foreign policy accomplishments, including the Panama Canal Treaties, the Camp David Accords, the treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union and the establishment of US diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. On the domestic side, his administration’s achievements included a comprehensive energy programme conducted by a new Department of Energy; deregulation in energy, transportation, communications and finance; major educational programmes under a new Department of Education; and major environmental protection legislation that doubled the size of the national park system. In 1982 he became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and founded the Carter Centre, a non-partisan and non-profit organisation which works to advance peace and health worldwide. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts and promoting social and economic justice. 

Baroness Hale of Richmond,
DBE, FBA
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary

‘Wise and erudite interpreter of law, who have explicated justice in your books and promoted it on the bench …’

Baroness Hale is a barrister and judge. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1966 she taught Law at Manchester University, also qualifying as a barrister and practicing at the Manchester bar. From 1984 to 1993 she was a member of the Law Commission where she is credited with leading work that reformed family law in Britain, in particular the 1989 Children Act and contributions to the 1996 Family Law Act. In 2004 she became the first woman to join the House of Lords as a Law Lord and a member of the UK's highest court of appeal. She is Chancellor of the University of Bristol and a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College.

Dame Antonia S Byatt, DBE, FRSL
Author and critic

‘Vivid and penetrating writer, whose books have embraced so wide a range of themes and generations …’

Dame Byatt is a Booker Prizewinning author internationally renowned for novels such as Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and The Virgin in the Garden and collections of short stories such as Sugar and Other Stories and Little Black Book of Stories. She was an undergraduate at Cambridge University before coming to Oxford to undertake graduate work at Somerville College. Following her research on Renaissance allegory, she was appointed Lecturer at the University of London and at the Central School of Art and Design. In 1972 she became Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in English at University College London. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983 and was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2003. She is an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College. 

Sir Clive Granger, Kt
Emeritus Professor at the University of California at San Diego

‘Masterly economist, who by the brilliance of your intellect have lit up both City and cloister …’

Sir Clive was an undergraduate and graduate student at theUniversity of Nottingham, and between 1956 and 1974 he held a number of academic posts there, becoming Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Economics. In 1959 he won a scholarship to Princeton University to study spectral analysis, and on his return to Nottingham worked with a colleague on a variety of time series econometrics topics, including a definition of causality, various aspects of forecasting and spurious regressions, which resulted in the publication of a widely used advanced textbook. In 1974 he took up the post of Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego where he remained until his retirement, holding the Chancellor’s Associates Chair in Economics from 1994 onwards. Sir Clive has, in the past, been a Visiting Fellow of All Souls and Nuffield Colleges. His breakthroughs in analysing the relationships between different financial or economic variables over time led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics with Robert F Engle in 2003. He was knighted in 2004. 

Dr Richard A Lerner
President of the Scripps Research Institute

‘Wise leader and master, whose discoveries both benefit the sick and stir our sense of wonder …’

Dr Lerner obtained an MD from Stanford Medical School in 1964 before undertaking postdoctoral training in experimental pathology at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California. In the 1970s he carried out research at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, before returning to the renamed Research Institute of Scripps Clinic. In 1982 he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology, then five years later was appointed Director of the Institute. In 1991 the Scripps Research Institute was established as a non-profit entity and Dr Lerner became its first President. Under his leadership, the Institute has seen extensive growth, making it among the largest non-profit biomedical research organisations in the world. In addition, Dr Lerner is the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry and Cecil H and Ida M Green Chair in Chemistry. His work spans a wide range of discoveries, from unique insights into protein and peptide structure to the recent identification of a sleep inducing lipid. He is perhaps most well known for the groundbreaking work of converting antibodies into enzymes. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Parke-Davis Award in 1978, the San Marino Prize in 1990 and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1994. 

Lord May of Oxford, OM, FRS
Former Head of the Office of Science and Technology and
Former President of the Royal Society and Royal Society Research Professor in Zoology, University of Oxford and Imperial College London

‘Masterly investigator of nature, who have both increased knowledge and done service to the nation …’

Lord May began his academic career as a student at Sydney University and then as a lecturer at Harvard University. In 1962 he returned to Sydney as Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Physics and in 1969 was appointed to the University’s first Personal Chair. He then became the Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology and Chairman of the Research Board at Princeton University, before moving to a Royal Society Research Professorship at Oxford and Imperial College London and taking up a fellowship at Merton College, now Emeritus. As Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government (1995–2000), he had a major influence on the interface between science and policy. He was President of the Royal Society from 2000 to 2005. His research interests include how populations are structured and respond to change, particularly with respect to infectious diseases and biodiversity. He was awarded a knighthood in 1996 and made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1998, both for services to science. In 2002 the Queen appointed him to the Order of Merit. 

Professor Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao, FRS
National Research Professor and Honorary President and Linus Pauling Research Professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientifi c Research, Bangalore, India

‘Eminent master of the science of chemistry, who have studied both the structure and the use of materials with unsurpassed brilliance …’

Professor Rao undertook his undergraduate and graduate studies in India before becoming a research chemist at the University of California, Berkeley. Following this, he held various posts at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technology. One of the world’s foremost solid state and materials chemists, he has made prolific and sustained contributions to the development of the field over five decades. In addition to his current posts, he is an Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science. He is President of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. In 2005 he was the first recipient of the India Science Award by the government of India. In the same year, he was named as Chemical Pioneer by the American Institute of Chemists and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the President of the French Republic. He was a Visiting Fellow at St Catherine’s College in 1974. 

Mr Daniel Barenboim
Pianist and conductor, Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and Principal Guest Conductor of Milan’s La Scala opera house

‘Eminent maestro, who create harmony in music and strive for harmony amongst peoples …’

Daniel Barenboim began learning the piano at the age of 5, and gave his first public concert aged 7. Following his international début performance as a solo pianist in Vienna in 1952, he has regularly toured worldwide. He began his recording career as a pianist in 1954 and during the 1960s recorded the Beethoven and Brahms piano concertos and all the Mozart piano concertos, as both pianist and conductor. Since his conducting début in London in 1967 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, he has conducted most of the world’s leading orchestras. Between 1991 and 2006 he was the chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and since 1992 has been the general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where he was also artistic director until 2002. In 1999 he co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Workshop, which brings together young musicians from Israel and Arab countries to promote dialogue between the various cultures of the Middle East. In 2002 he and the co-founder were awarded the Principe de Asturias Prize for their peace efforts.