Royal Society honours

Two academics from the College of Science & Engineering have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

Professors Paul Attfield and Peter Keightley are among 50 new Fellows and 10 Foreign Members who were announced recently.

The Royal Society is the UK's independent science academy. Its Fellows are some of the world's most distinguished scientists drawn from the fields of science, engineering and medicine.

These scientists who have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society have already contributed much to the scientific endeavour, whether that is in academia, industry or government.

Distinctive contributions

Professor Attfield is Chair of Materials Science at Extreme Conditions and Director of the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions within the School of Chemistry.

He is recognised for his distinctive contributions to the experimental understanding of structure in the solid-state, in particular pioneering the use of resonant X-ray scattering to study cation and valence ordering effects and characterising charge-order in strongly correlated systems such as magnetite.

Leading geneticist

Peter Keightley is a leading evolutionary geneticist and Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, within the School of Biological Sciences.

He received the honour for his seminal contributions to the genetics and evolution of quantitative traits, and to molecular evolution and variation. His work combines theoretical modelling, genetic experimentation and bioinformatic studies of DNA sequences.