The Newnham College community is saddened to hear of the death yesterday (28 August) of Professor Jan Anderson, FRS, Honorary Fellow of the College, at her home in Australia.
Professor Jan Anderson, pictured on the right in pink, graduated from Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand, and completed her PhD with Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin at the University of California, Berkeley (1959).
Her distinguished research at CSIRO, Plant Industry, Canberra, led to major advances in the understanding of the molecular basis of photosynthesis, a fundamental biological process on which life depends.
She has received numerous awards to recognise her outstanding contributions to science, including election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1987 and as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996. At the time of her death she was an Adjunct Professor in the Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University.
In 1973-4 she was Ann Horton Research Fellow at Newnham. She has written warmly of her time here, which gave her the “rare luxury of time to think in the perfect Ivory Tower, the Pightle attic”. This led to the publication of her seminal article on the dynamic molecular organisation of photosynthetic membranes as a key to understanding their structure and function.
In return, she established at Newnham College the Jan Anderson Cambridge Australian Trust PhD Scholarship to provide Australian students with the same opportunity she had for creative thinking.
The status of Honorary Fellow was conferred upon Professor Jan Anderson, MSC, PHD, FAA, FRS, FDhc (Umeå), on 29 November 2002.
Jan visited Newnham in July 2015 and reacquainted herself with her many friends. During her visit a small reception was held in her honour at which she signed the Roll of Honorary Fellows and shared stories of her memories of Newnham in the 1970s.