Honorary Members Archive - The Physiological Society

Donald M. Bers - Elected 2024

Catherine Ross - Elected 2024

Rose Anne Kenny - Elected 2023

Rose Anne Kenny is Regius Professor of Physic (Medicine) and holds the Chair of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College Dublin. She is the founding Principal Investigator of The Irish LongituDinal study on Ageing (TILDA) and Director of the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA) at St. James’s Hospital, where she is also director of a large national falls and syncope and autonomic function laboratory.

TILDA includes extensive research of physiological determinants of the ageing process as a measure of biological ageing.

She is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, London and Ireland, a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine Ireland, and was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She has received a number of international awards and has published widely, authoring over 600 publications including, her recently published book “Age Proof – The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life” which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2022. In 2020, she was elected President of the Irish Gerontological Society. In 2022 she was nominated 24th Regius Professor of Physic at TCD (1637), the first female nominee.

Philip Nolan - Elected 2023

Professor Philip Nolan is a native of Dublin, Ireland. His childhood scientific interests ranged across astronomy, electronics, biology and medical sciences. He was the first member of his family to have the opportunity to attend university, and in choosing between science and medicine, felt he was not clever enough to be a successful scientist, and opted for the certainty of gainful employment offered by a medical degree. However, during his second medical year, he attended an open day in the Department of Physiology at University College Dublin (UCD), including a visit to the laboratory of Professor Ronan G O’Regan, where recordings were being made from carotid chemoreceptor and baroreceptor afferents. This led to his decision to complete an intercalated B.Sc. in Physiology, including a project on the effect of airway carbon dioxide on the discharge of sensory receptors in the laryngeal mucosa. Philip thus earned degrees in Physiology (1988) and Medicine (1991) at UCD. He returned to UCD to complete a PhD under the supervision of Ronan O’Regan on the role of upper airway sensory receptors in the control of breathing and the cardiovascular system during sleep.
Philip was appointed to the academic staff of the Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology at UCD in 1996, where he was fortunate to work with and be inspired by outstanding colleagues including Paul Mc Loughlin, James F X Jones and John B Moynihan. He won UCD President’s Awards for both Research and Teaching. His research interests remained in the areas of upper airway sensation and motor control, and cardiorespiratory control, in animal models and in humans, with a focus on understanding sleep apnoea, including important collaborations on signal processing and modelling with electronic engineers.
He became involved in higher education leadership from 2003, when he was appointed Director of the UCD Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research in 2003, before becoming Vice-President Academic and Deputy President at UCD in 2004. He was President of Maynooth University from 2011 to 2021, a period which saw unprecedented growth and diversification of teaching and research, and a doubling of the research capacity of the University. During 2020 and 2021, Philip was centrally involved in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, as a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team, chairing its disease modelling subgroup and synthesising scientific advice on the management of the pandemic.
He was appointed Director General of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Irelands primary funder of science and engineering research, in January 2022, and May 2023, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, appointed Philip the CEO-designate of Research Ireland, the new research funding agency to be formed by the amalgamation of SFI and the Irish Research Council. He is a strong advocate for the importance and value of fundamental curiosity-driven research across all disciplines as the foundation of a thriving research and innovation ecosystem. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and an Honorary Fellow of the Physiological Society.

David Paterson - Elected 2023

David Paterson is Professor of Physiology and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Since 2016 he has been Head of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics at Oxford (QS Ranked 1st) and is immediate Past President of The Physiological Society of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. He is a graduate of the University of Otago (NZ), University of Western Australia and New College, University of Oxford where he completed his DPhil on chemoreception. Rising through the ranks at Oxford from a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church then Tutorial Fellowship at Merton College, he became Professor of Physiology over 20 years ago. As a cardiac neurobiologist, he is best known for his work linking the nervous system to heart rhythm, which was featured in the 2012 BBC Four documentary Heart v Mind: What Makes Us Human?
He served as Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Physiology (2008-11) and The Journal of Physiology (2011-16) and has played a major role in academic publishing. In 2018 he co-authored with Neil Herring the text book Levick's Introduction to Cardiovascular Physiology, 6th edition.
Today, he is the European lead on an $8m transatlantic network of excellence grant from the Leducq Foundation that is focused on neuromodulation therapy and diagnostics.
David Paterson is an elected Member of Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe), and an Honorary Fellow of The Royal Society of New Zealand and in 2023 will receive an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Western Australia (HonDUniv in Medical Sciences).

Kim E. Barrett - Elected 2022

Kim E. Barrett

Professor Kim E. Barrett is a native of the United Kingdom, and obtained her B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees (in Medicinal Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, respectively) from University College London. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she joined the faculty of the University of California (UC) San Diego in 1985, was promoted to Full Professor in 1996, and advanced to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Medicine in 2015. From 2006-2016, she additionally served as Dean of the Graduate Division at UC San Diego. In this capacity, she oversaw the recruitment, academic advancement and climate for more than 5000 masters and doctoral students. She also served as the rotating Director of the Division of Graduate Education at the US National Science Foundation from 2020-2021.

Since November 2021, she has been Distinguished Professor of Physiology and Membrane Biology and Vice Dean for Research in the School of Medicine at UC Davis, where she is leading initiatives to bolster both basic and clinical research activities. With support from the NIH and private foundations, her own research interests have centered on the physiology and pathophysiology of the intestinal epithelium and their relevance to inflammatory bowel diseases and diarrheal diseases, and have resulted in more than 300 publications.

Her scientific accomplishments have also garnered a number of awards and other recognitions, including the Bayliss/Starling Lectureship of The Physiological Society, the Bowditch, Davenport and Ussing Lectureships of the American Physiological Society, receipt of the degree of Doctor of Medical Science, honoris causa, from Queens University Belfast, the Distinguished Achievement in Basic Science award from the American Gastroenterological Association, and election as a Fellow of the International Union of Physiological Sciences. She is a Past-President of the American Physiological Society and is currently serving as Councilor-at-Large on the Governing Board of the American Gastroenterological Association. She has also been highly active in scholarly publishing, and completed a six-year term as Editor-in-Chief for The Journal of Physiology in 2022.

David Julius - Elected 2022

David Julius

Professor David Julius grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where he attended public elementary and high schools. David received his undergraduate degree from MIT (1973-77), gaining his first research experience in the laboratory of Dr. Alexander Rich studying mechanisms of tRNA aminoacylation. He then moved to the University of California at Berkeley for graduate studies (1977-84), where he worked with Drs. Jeremy Thorner and Randy Schekman to elucidate mechanisms of peptide hormone processing and secretion in Saccharomyces yeast, culminating in characterization of KEX2 as the first identified prohormone convertase. For postdoctoral studies (1984-1989), David joined Dr. Richard Axel’s group at Columbia University, where his focus turned to neuropharmacology and receptor function. During this time, David developed novel expression cloning methods that enabled him to identify genes encoding members of the serotonin receptor family. David then joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (1990), where he is currently the Morris Herzstein Chair in Molecular Biology and Medicine and Professor and Chair in the Department of Physiology.

A major focus of David’s work is to elucidate molecular mechanisms of somatosensation and pain, and sensory adaptation. His group has exploited the properties of natural products to discover a family of thermo- and chemo-sensitive ion channels that enable sensory nerve fibers to detect hot or cold temperatures and other noxious stimuli. With the aid of genetic, electrophysiological, and behavioral methods, they have determined how these ion channels contribute to pain sensation, and how channel activity is modulated in response to tumor growth, infection, or other forms of injury that produce inflammation and pain hypersensitivity.

David is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Honorary), and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (Foreign Member). He serves on the Board of Directors of the Diablo Regional Arts Association, a non-profit organization that brings performing arts and education to the California Bay Area. He is a co-recipient of the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the 2021 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (all shared with Ardem Patapoutian).

Gary Richard Lewin - Elected 2022

Gary Richard Lewin

Professor Gary Lewin was born on the Isle of Man and was the first in his family to go to university. He has led a research group at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin, Germany for more than 25 years. Early in his career he discovered a critical role for nerve growth factor in the development of inflammatory pain hypersensitivity. Later he pioneered the study of the molecular basis of mammalian sensory mechanotransduction that underlies our sense of touch and pain. Both of these research avenues have led to the development of new therapies to treat sensory disorders. In the last 15 years he also introduced the naked mole-rat as an experimental model to probe the molecular basis of extreme physiology. Professor Lewin did his first degree at the University of Sheffield in Physiology and Pharmacology and his PhD at the University of London. After post-doctoral work at SUNY at Stony Brook he moved to Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow to work at the Max-Planck Institute in Munich. In 1996 he started his own group in Berlin and became a tenured Professor with a joint appointment at the Charité Medical University in 2003. Professor Lewin has received two senior ERC research grants in succession. He has fulfilled numerous leadership roles at the MDC and now responsible for one of three main research areas within the institute. He has served on many grant bodies notably as an ERC panel member for 10 years. He was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2008. In 2019 he was honored with Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine a prestigious research prize in Germany.

Diane Lipscombe - Elected 2022

Diane Lipscombe

Professor Diane Lipscombe, Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director of the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science and the Thomas J Watson Jr. Professor of Science in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, is a leader in the field of neuronal calcium ion channel regulation and function in health and disease. She is a past President of the Society for Neuroscience, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH. Professor Lipscombe studies ion channel expression, modulation, and function with interest in the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie neurological and psychiatric diseases. Her research team recently discovered a new mechanism that controls cell-specific pre-mRNA splicing of a voltage-gated calcium ion channel important for the transmission of noxious stimuli and the development of hyperalgesia in nociceptors. The recipient of several awards for teaching and mentorship, Professor Lipscombe has a history of working to improve and enhance graduate education and training.

Ardem Patapoutian - Elected 2022

Ardem Patapoutian

Professor Ardem Patapoutian is a molecular biologist and physiologist. His laboratory identified the molecules that sense temperature and pressure involved in touch, pain, and regulating blood pressure. Patapoutian was born in Lebanon in 1967 and immigrated to the USA in 1986. He graduated from UCLA in 1990 with a B.S. and received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1996. He joined the faculty of Scripps Research in 2000, where he is currently the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) and a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020). He is a co-recipient of the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the 2021 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (all shared with David Julius).

Irene Tracey - Elected 2022

Irene Tracey

Professor Irene Tracey is Warden (Head) of Merton College, University of Oxford, her alma mater and Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience. She has just been appointed as the next Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford and will take up office in January 2023.

Subsequent to a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, she was a founding member of the world-renowned Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (now WIN). She was its director from 2005-2015 whilst holding the Nuffield Chair in Anaesthetic Sciences. She then became Head of the over-arching Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences that merged anaesthetics, neurology, ophthalmology and FMRIB prior to taking up her current role.

Her multidisciplinary research team has contributed to our understanding of pain perception and pain relief within the human central nervous system using advanced neuroimaging. They also investigate the neural basis of anaesthesia induced altered states of consciousness.

Irene has served and continues to serve science through her election to Councils of: International Association for the Study of Pain, British Neuroscience Association, and Council of the Medical Research Council. She was awarded the triennial Patrick Wall Medal (2008) and made an FRCA by the Royal College of Anaesthetists (2009); elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2015); awarded the Feldberg Foundation Prize (2017) and British Neuroscience Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience award (2018); elected to the Academia Europaea (2020); and is President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). In 2022, she was appointed by Her Majesty The Queen to a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medical Research. She is married to Professor Myles Allen, a climate physicist, and they have three children.

Honorary Members Archive - The Physiological Society

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Honorary Fellows

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Honorary Fellows

Honorary highlights

Donald M. Bers - Elected 2024

Catherine Ross - Elected 2024

Rose Anne Kenny - Elected 2023

Philip Nolan - Elected 2023

David Paterson - Elected 2023

Kim E. Barrett - Elected 2022

David Julius - Elected 2022

Gary Richard Lewin - Elected 2022

Diane Lipscombe - Elected 2022

Ardem Patapoutian - Elected 2022

Irene Tracey - Elected 2022

Honorary Fellowship is the highest honour that The Physiological Society presents to an individual. It is awarded to those individuals who are ‘persons of distinction in science who have contributed to the advancement of physiology’.

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Archie Keverall McIntyre

Bryan Harold Cabot Matthews

Charles C Michel

Charles James Martin

Edvard Ingjald Moser

Étienne-Jules Marey

Hans Horst Meyer

Jere Mitchell

John C (Ian) McGrath

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Peter Medawar

Robert Alexander McCance

Roderick MacKinnon

Rodolfo Margaria

Salvador Moncada

Thomas Hunt Morgan

Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle

Archie Keverall McIntyre

1913 - 2002

Year of election: 1987

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Bryan Harold Cabot Matthews

Year of election: 1977

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Charles C Michel

Year of election: 2001

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Charles James Martin

1866 - 1955

Year of election: 1950

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Edvard Ingjald Moser

b. 1962

Year of election: 2015

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Étienne-Jules Marey

1830 - 1904

Year of election: 1898

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Hans Horst Meyer

1853 - 1939

Year of election: 1909

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Jere Mitchell

Year of election: 2014

APS Living History Interview UT Southwestern Medical Center

John C (Ian) McGrath

b. 1949

Year of election: 2016

University of Glasgow

John Marshall

1818 - 1891

Year of election: 1882

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John McMichael

1904 - 1993

Year of election: 1974

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May-Britt Moser

b. 1963

Year of election: 2015

Wikipedia Britannica Nobel Prize

Peter B C Matthews

1928 - 2020

Year of election: 1995

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1928–2020

Peter Mansfield

1933 - 2017

Year of election: 2004

Wikipedia Britannica Nobel Prize

Peter Medawar

1915 - 1987

Year of election: 1975

Wikipedia Britannica Nobel Prize

Robert Alexander McCance

1898 - 1993

Year of election: 1975

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Roderick MacKinnon

b. 1956

Year of election: 2004

Wikipedia Britannica Nobel Prize

Rodolfo Margaria

1901 - 1983

Year of election: 1973

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Salvador Moncada

b. 1944

Year of election: 2010

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Thomas Hunt Morgan

1866 - 1945

Year of election: 1936

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Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle

Year of election: 1986

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