Colin Blakemore is awarded the Edinburgh Medal
7 April 2005
Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC), has been announced as the 2005 recipient of the Edinburgh Medal.
The Edinburgh Medal is awarded each year to men and women of Science and Technology whose professional achievements are judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity. A ceremony to present the award will take place on Friday 8 April as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival. After receiving his medal, Colin Blakemore will deliver the keynote address, ‘Whose Science is it Anyway?’ in which he will discuss the future of medical research and the importance of an open dialogue between science and the public who fund it.
Colin Blakemore studied Medical Sciences at Cambridge and completed a PhD at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1979 he became Waynflete Professor of Physiology at Oxford and was Director of the MRC Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience for eight years. He has been President of the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society, the new Biosciences Federation and President and Chairman of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
A champion of the need to keep the lines of communication open between scientists and the public, Colin Blakemore won the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday award in 1989 for his work on the public communication of science.
Colin Blakemore said:
“It’s a great honour to receive this prestigious award and be listed alongside some of science’s best known communicators and public servants. I will continue working hard to engage the public to foster better understanding, trust and appreciation of medical research”
For further information contact the MRC press office on 020 7637 6011
Notes to Editors
The Edinburgh Medal was inaugurated in 1989. Previous winners are:
- 1989 Professor Abdus Salam
- 1990 Professor Stephen J Gould
- 1991 Professor Jane Goodall
- 1992 Professor Heinz Wolff
- 1993 Professor Wangari Maathai
- 1994 Professor Manuel Pattarroyo
- 1995 Sir John Crofton
- 1996 Professor Richard Levins
- 1997 Professor Amartya Sen
- 1998 Sir David Attenborough
- 1999 Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell
- 2000 Professor Lynn Margulis
- 2001 Sir John Sulston
- 2002 Lise Kingo
- 2003 Professor Wang Sung
- 2004 Professor Stephen Rose
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a national organisation funded by the UK tax-payer. Its business is medical research aimed at improving human health; everyone stands to benefit from the outputs. The research it supports and the scientists it trains meet the needs of the health services, the pharmaceutical and other health-related industries and the academic world. MRC has funded work which has led to some of the most significant discoveries and achievements in medicine in the UK. About half of the MRC’s expenditure of £510 million is invested in its 40 Institutes, Units and Centres. The remaining half goes in the form of grant support and training awards to individuals and teams in universities and medical schools.
