Our Honorary Fellow Professor Elizabeth Thompson has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
Professor Thompson (NC 1967) completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Newnham, holding many College prizes, scholarships and studentships.
She is among eighty outstanding researchers, innovators and communicators from around the world who have been elected as the newest Fellows of the Royal Society, in recognition of their substantial contribution to the advancement of science.
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society said: “These individuals have pushed forward the boundaries of their respective fields and had a beneficial influence on the world beyond.”
Newnham College Principal, Alison Rose said: “On behalf of the college we send huge congratulations to Professor Thompson on this great achievement.”
After postdoctoral research at Stanford University, Professor Thompson moved to King’s College as a Research Fellow and University Lecturer before returning to Newnham in 1981 as a Fellow and Director of Studies in Mathematics. Four years later, she took up a Professorship in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington, a department which she chaired from 1989-1994 and 2011-2014.
Her distinguished research in statistical genetics has been recognised by an ScD from the University of Cambridge (1988), the inaugural Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research from the National Institute for Statistical Science (2001), the Weldon Prize for contributions to Biometry from the University of Oxford (2001), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002-3), a Rothschild Visiting Professorship at Cambridge (2006), and a National Institutes of Health MERIT award (2008-2017).
Professor Thompson is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the US National Academy of Sciences. She was President of the International Biometric Society 2016-2017.