The UK Government’s chief scientific adviser during the Covid pandemic will be one of 10 “magnificent” individuals to get an honorary degree from a Scottish university.
Sir Patrick Vallance will be presented with the honour by Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
It comes after he was knighted last summer for his service during the pandemic, with Sir Patrick one of the key scientists updating the public in televised Downing Street briefings, sometimes alongside then-prime minister Boris Johnson.
He served as chief scientific adviser from April 2018 to April 2023 and prior to that worked at pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.
Also being honoured by the university is Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, the co-founder and global chief executive of the charity Mary’s Meals, which feeds almost 2.5 million children across 18 of the world’s poorest countries.
Dame Anne Johnson will also be awarded with an honorary degree in recognition of her work on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
Dame Anne is professor of infectious disease epidemiology and co-director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London and president of The Academy of Medical Sciences.
Also to be awarded an honorary degree is Dame Sarah Springman, an engineer and former triathlete who competed in the 1990 Commonwealth Games, who is now the principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
Strathclyde University principal and vice-chancellor Professor Sir Jim McDonald said all those receiving honorary degrees have “achieved the highest levels of success in their fields and contributed greatly to professional communities, business and industry, the economy and society at large over the course of their careers”.
He said: “These individuals are magnificent exemplars to our graduating students of what can be achieved through the application of knowledge, combined with hard work and dedication, and we are delighted to honour them in this way and have them more intimately associated with Strathclyde.”
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The university will also present honorary degrees to Colette Cohen, the chief executive of the Net Zero Technology Centre; Duncan Hawthorne, a former Strathclyde graduate who is now chief executive of Horizon Nuclear Power; and Professor Ann Skelton, a legal expert from the University of Pretoria, visiting professor at Strathclyde and member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Children.
Also being honoured are author and historian Professor Sir David Cannadine, a former president of the British Academy; Dame Nancy Rothwell, the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester who is also the chairwoman of the Russell Group and a past president of the Royal Society of Biology; and Peter Duthie, the chief executive of the Scottish Event Campus, the venue for the global Cop26 climate change summit in 2021.
They will get their honorary degrees during graduation ceremonies at the University’s Barony Hall in the last two weeks of June.