Romanes Lecture
Encyclopedia
The Romanes Lecture is a prestigious free public lecture given annually at the Sheldonian Theatre
Sheldonian Theatre
The Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1668 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford. The building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, chancellor of the university at the time and the project's main financial backer...

, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The lecture series was founded by, and named after, the biologist George Romanes
George Romanes
George John Romanes FRS was a Canadian-born English evolutionary biologist and physiologist who laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and other animals.He was the youngest of Charles Darwin's...

, and has been running since 1892. Over the years, many notable figures from the Arts and Sciences have been invited to speak. The lecture can be on any subject in science, art or literature, approved by the Vice-Chancellor
John Hood
John Hood was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 5 October 2004 until 30 September 2009. He was the first Vice-Chancellor to be elected from outside Oxford's academic body, and the first to have addressed the scholars' congregation via a webcast...

 of the University
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

.

1890s

  • 1892 William Ewart Gladstone
    William Ewart Gladstone
    William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

     — An Academic Sketch (A report of the speech is available in the digital archive of The Nation.)
  • 1893 Thomas Henry Huxley  — Evolution and Ethics (See also a contemporary review of Huxley's lecture)
  • 1894 August Weismann
    August Weismann
    Friedrich Leopold August Weismann was a German evolutionary biologist. Ernst Mayr ranked him the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charles Darwin...

      — The Effect of External Influences upon Development
  • 1895 Holman Hunt — The Obligations of the Universities towards Art
  • 1896 Mandell Creighton
    Mandell Creighton
    Mandell Creighton , was a British historian and a bishop of the Church of England. A scholar of the Renaissance papacy, Creighton was the first occupant of the Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, a professorship that was established around the time that the study...

     — The English National Character
  • 1897 John Morley  — Machiavelli
  • 1898 Archibald Geikie
    Archibald Geikie
    Sir Archibald Geikie, OM, KCB, PRS, FRSE , was a Scottish geologist and writer.-Early life:Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835, the eldest son of musician and music critic James Stuart Geikie...

      — Types of Scenery and their Influence on Literature
  • 1899 Richard Claverhouse Jebb
    Richard Claverhouse Jebb
    Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, OM, FBA was a British classical scholar and politician.He was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge...

     — Humanism in Education

1900s

  • 1900 James Murray
    James Murray (lexicographer)
    Sir James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death.-Life and learning:...

     — The Evolution of English Lexicography (Also available at The Oxford English Dictonary site.)
  • 1901 Lord Acton
    John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
    John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO, DL , known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Bt from 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton, was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer...

     — The German school of history
  • 1902 James Bryce
    James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
    James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FBA was a British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...

     — The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind
  • 1903 Oliver Lodge — Modern views on matter
  • 1904 Courtenay Ilbert
    Courtenay Ilbert
    Sir Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert GCB KCSI CIE was a distinguished British lawyer and civil servant.Ilbert served as the legal adviser to the Viceroy of India's Council for many years until his eventual return from India to England...

     — Montesquieu
  • 1905 Ray Lankester
    Ray Lankester
    Sir E. Ray Lankester KCB, FRS was a British zoologist, born in London.An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was the third Director of the Natural History Museum, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal...

     — Nature and Man
  • 1906 William Paton Ker
    William Paton Ker
    William Paton Ker was a Scottish literary scholar and essayist.-Life:He was born in Glasgow in 1855. He studied at Glasgow Academy, the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford....

     — Sturla the Historian
  • 1907 Lord Curzon — Frontiers
  • 1908 Henry Scott Holland
    Henry Scott Holland
    Henry Scott Holland was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He was also a canon of Christ Church, Oxford.-Family and education:...

     — The optimism of Butler's Analogy
  • 1909 Arthur Balfour
    Arthur Balfour
    Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...

     — Questionings on Criticism and Beauty

1910s

  • 1910 Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

     — Biological Analogies in History
  • 1911 J.B. Bury — Romances of chivalry on Greek soil
  • 1912 Henry Montagu Butler
    Henry Montagu Butler
    Henry Montagu Butler was an English academic.He was the son of a previous Headmaster of Harrow School, George Butler and his wife Sarah Maria née Gray. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he married Georgina Elliot in 1861...

     — Lord Chatham as an orator
  • 1913 William Mitchell Ramsay
    William Mitchell Ramsay
    Sir William Mitchell Ramsay was a Scottish archaeologist and New Testament scholar. By his death in 1939 he had become the foremost authority of his day on the history of Asia Minor and a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament...

     — The imperial peace: an ideal in European history
  • 1914 J. J. Thomson
    J. J. Thomson
    Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS was a British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer...

     – The atomic theory
  • 1915 E. B. Poulton
    Edward Bagnall Poulton
    Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton, FRS was a British evolutionary biologist who was a lifelong advocate of natural selection...

     – Science and the Great War
  • 1916
  • 1917
  • 1918 Herbert Henry Asquith — Some Aspects of the Victorian Age
  • 1919

1920s

  • 1920 William Ralph Inge
    William Ralph Inge
    William Ralph Inge was an English author, Anglican priest, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, which provided the appellation by which he was widely known, "Dean Inge."- Life :...

     — The Idea of Progress
  • 1921 Joseph Bédier
    Joseph Bédier
    Joseph Bédier was a French writer and scholar and historian of medieval France.-Biography:Bédier was born in Paris, France to Adolphe Bédier, a lawyer of Breton origin, and spent his childhood in Réunion. He was a professor of medieval French literature at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland ...

     — Roland à Roncevaux
  • 1922 Arthur Stanley Eddington
    Arthur Stanley Eddington
    Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS was a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. He was also a philosopher of science and a popularizer of science...

     — The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought
  • 1923 John Burnet
    John Burnet (classicist)
    John Burnet was a Scottish classicist.-Education, Life and Work:Burnet was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, receiving his M.A. degree in 1887...

     — Ignorance
  • 1924 John Masefield
    John Masefield
    John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

     — Shakespeare & spiritual life
  • 1925 William Henry Bragg
    William Henry Bragg
    Sir William Henry Bragg OM, KBE, PRS was a British physicist, chemist, mathematician and active sportsman who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son William Lawrence Bragg - the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics...

     — The Crystalline State
  • 1926 G.M. Trevelyan — The Two-Party System in English Political History
  • 1927 Frederick George Kenyon — Museums and National Life
  • 1928 D. M. S. Watson — Palaeontology and the Evolution of Man
  • 1929 Sir John William Fortescue

1930s

  • 1930 Winston Churchill
    Winston Churchill
    Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

     — Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem
  • 1931 John Galsworthy
    John Galsworthy
    John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...

     — The Creation of Character in Literature
  • 1932 Berkley Moynihan
  • 1933
  • 1934 William Rothenstein
    William Rothenstein
    Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, draughtsman and writer on art.-Life and work:William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry...

     — Form and content in English Painting
  • 1935 Gilbert Murray
    Gilbert Murray
    George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...

     — Then and Now
  • 1936 Donald Francis Tovey
    Donald Francis Tovey
    Sir Donald Francis Tovey was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist...

     — Normality and Freedom in Music
  • 1937 Harley Granville-Barker
    Harley Granville-Barker
    Harley Granville-Barker was an English actor-manager, director, producer, critic and playwright....

     — On Poetry in Drama
  • 1938 Lord Robert Cecil
    Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
    Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood CH, PC, QC , known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923, was a lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom...

     — Peace and Pacifism
  • 1939 Laurence Binyon
    Laurence Binyon
    Robert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....

     — Art and freedom

1940s

  • 1940
  • 1941 William Hailey — The position of colonies in a British commonwealth of nations
  • 1942 Norman H. Baynes
    Norman H. Baynes
    Professor Norman Hepburn Baynes was a noted 20th century British historian of the Byzantine Empire.-Career:Baynes was Professor of Byzantine History at University College London from 1931 until 1942...

     — Intellectual liberty and totalitarian claims
  • 1943 Julian Huxley
    Julian Huxley
    Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...

     — Evolutionary Ethics (50 years after his grandfather gave the lecture)
  • 1944
  • 1945
  • 1946 John Anderson
    John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley
    John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, PC, PC was a British civil servant then politician who served as a minister under Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill as Home Secretary, Lord President of the Council and Chancellor of the Exchequer...

     — The machinery of government
  • 1947 Lord Samuel
    Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
    Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...

     — Creative Man
  • 1948 Lord Brabazon of Tara — Forty years of flight
  • 1949 Claud Schuster
    Claud Schuster, 1st Baron Schuster
    Claud Schuster, 1st Baron Schuster, GCB, CVO, KC was a British barrister and civil servant noted for his long tenure as Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Office. Born to a middle-class Mancunian family, Schuster was educated at St. George's School, Ascot and Winchester College before...

     — Mountaineering

1950s

  • 1950 John Cockcroft
    John Cockcroft
    Sir John Douglas Cockcroft OM KCB CBE FRS was a British physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atomic nucleus with Ernest Walton, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power....

     — The development and future of nuclear energy
  • 1951 Maurice Hankey
    Maurice Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey
    Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC was a British civil servant who gained prominence as the first Cabinet Secretary and who later made the rare transition from the civil service to ministerial office.-Life and career:The third son of R. A...

     — The science and art of government
  • 1952 Lewis Bernstein Namier
    Lewis Bernstein Namier
    Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier was an English historian. He was born Ludwik Niemirowski in Wola Okrzejska in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is today in Poland.-Life:...

     — Monarchy and the party system
  • 1953 Viscount Simon
    John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
    John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon GCSI GCVO OBE PC was a British politician who held senior Cabinet posts from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second. He is one of only three people to have served as Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer,...

     — Crown and Commonwealth
  • 1954 Kenneth Clark
    Kenneth Clark
    Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...

     — Moments of Vision
  • 1955 Albert Richardson
    Albert Richardson
    Sir Albert Edward Richardson K.C.V.O., F.R.I.B.A, F.S.A., was a leading English architect, teacher and writer about architecture during the first half of the 20th century...

     — The significance of the fine arts
  • 1956 Thomas Beecham
    Thomas Beecham
    Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...

     — John Fletcher
  • 1957 Ronald Knox
    Ronald Knox
    Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was an English priest, theologian and writer.-Life:Ronald Knox was born in Kibworth, Leicestershire, England into an Anglican family and was educated at Eton College, where he took the first scholarship in 1900 and Balliol College, Oxford, where again...

     — On English translation
  • 1958 Edward Bridges
    Edward Ettingdene Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges
    Edward Ettingdene Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges, KG, GCB, GCVO, PC, MC, FRS was a British civil servant.Born in Yattendon in Berkshire, Bridges was the son of Robert Bridges, later Poet Laureate, and Mary Monica Waterhouse, daughter of the architect Alfred Waterhouse. He was educated at Eton and...

     — The State and the Arts
  • 1959 Lord Denning — From Precedent to Precedent

1960s

  • 1960 Edgar Douglas Adrian — Factors in mental evolution
  • 1961 Vincent Massey
    Vincent Massey
    Charles Vincent Massey was a Canadian lawyer and diplomat who served as Governor General of Canada, the 18th since Canadian Confederation....

     — Canadians and Their Commonwealth
  • 1962 Cyril Radcliffe
    Cyril Radcliffe, 1st Viscount Radcliffe
    Cyril John Radcliffe, 1st Viscount Radcliffe GBE, PC, QC was a British lawyer and Law Lord most famous for his partitioning of the British Imperial territory of India.-Background, education and early career:...

     — Mountstuart Elphinstone
  • 1963 Violet Bonham Carter
    Violet Bonham Carter
    Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, DBE was a British politician and diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908-1916, and later became active in Liberal politics herself, being a leading opponent of appeasement, standing for Parliament and being...

     — The impact of personality in politics (45 years after her father gave the lecture)
  • 1964 Harold Hartley
    Harold Hartley
    Sir Harold Brewer Hartley GCVO CH FRS was a British physical chemist. He moved from academia to important positions in business and industry.He was educated at Dulwich College, and Balliol College, Oxford...

     — Man and Nature
  • 1965 Noel Annan
    Noel Annan
    Noel Gilroy Annan, Baron Annan, OBE was a British military intelligence officer, author, and academic. During his military career, he rose to the rank of Colonel and was appointed OBE...

     — The Disintegration of an Old Culture
  • 1966 Maurice Bowra
    Maurice Bowra
    Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...

     — A case for humane learning
  • 1967 Rab Butler
    Rab Butler
    Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG CH DL PC , who invariably signed his name R. A. Butler and was familiarly known as Rab, was a British Conservative politician...

     — The Difficult Art of Autobiography
  • 1968 Peter Medawar
    Peter Medawar
    Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CBE FRS was a British biologist, whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants...

     — Science and Literature
  • 1969 Lord Holford — A World of Room


1970s

  • 1970 Isaiah Berlin
    Isaiah Berlin
    Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...

     — Fathers and Children: Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament (Broadcast on BBC Radio 3
    BBC Radio 3
    BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

     on 14 February 1971
    )
  • 1971
  • 1972 Karl Popper
    Karl Popper
    Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...

     — On the Problem of Body and Mind
  • 1973 Ernst Gombrich
    Ernst Gombrich
    Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE was an Austrian-born art historian who became naturalized British citizen in 1947. He spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom...

     — Art History and the Social Sciences
  • 1974 Solly Zuckermann — Advice and Responsibility
  • 1975
  • 1976 Iris Murdoch
    Iris Murdoch
    Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

     — The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the artists
  • 1977
  • 1978 George Porter
    George Porter
    George Hornidge Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham, OM, FRS was a British chemist.- Life :Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, South Yorkshire. He was educated at Thorne Grammar School, then won a scholarship to the University of Leeds and gained his first degree in chemistry...

     — Science and the Human Purpose
  • 1979 Hugh Casson
    Hugh Casson
    Sir Hugh Maxwell Casson, KCVO, RA, RDI, was a British architect, interior designer, artist, and influential writer and broadcaster on 20th century design. He is particularly noted for his role as director of architecture at the 1951 Festival of Britain on London's South Bank.Casson's family...

     — The arts and the academies

1980s

  • 1980 Jo Grimond — Is political philosophy based on a mistake?
  • 1981 A.J.P. Taylor — War in Our Time
  • 1982
  • 1983 Owen Chadwick
    Owen Chadwick
    William Owen Chadwick, OM, KBE, FBA, FRSE is a British professor, writer and prominent historian of Christianity. He was also a rugby union player.-Early life and education:Chadwick was born in Bromley in 1916...

     — Religion and Society
  • 1984–5 Miriam Louisa Rothschild — Animals and Man
  • 1986 Nicholas Henderson
    Nicholas Henderson
    Sir John Nicolas Henderson, GCMG, KCVO was a distinguished British career diplomat and writer, who served as British Ambassador to the United States from 1979 to 1982....

     — Different Approaches to Foreign Policy
  • 1987 Norman St. John-Stevas
    Norman St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley
    Norman Anthony Francis St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley, PC, FRSL , is a British politician, author, constitutional expert and barrister. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as the Leader of the House of Commons in the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1981...

     — The Omnipresence of Walter Bagehot
  • 1988 Hugh Trevor-Roper
    Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton
    Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper was an English historian of early modern Britain and Nazi Germany. He was made a life peer by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton.-Early life and education:...

     — The Lost Moments of History (A revised version at the NYRB
    The New York Review of Books
    The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...

    .
    )
  • 1989

1990s

  • 1990 Saul Bellow
    Saul Bellow
    Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

     — The Distracted Public
  • 1991 Gianni Agnelli
    Gianni Agnelli
    Giovanni Agnelli , better known as Gianni Agnelli , was an Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat. As the head of Fiat, he controlled 4.4% of Italy's GDP, 3.1% of its industrial workforce, and 16.5% of its industrial investment in research...

     — Europe: Many Legacies, One Future
  • 1992 Robert Blake
    Robert Blake, Baron Blake
    Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake was an English historian. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lectures...

     — Gladstone, Disraeli and Queen Victoria (The Centenary Lecture)
  • 1993 Henry Harris — Hippolyte's club foot: the medical roots of realism in modern European literature
  • 1994 Lord Slynn of Hadley — Europe and Human Rights
  • 1995 Walter Bodmer
    Walter Bodmer
    Sir Walter Bodmer is a German-born British human geneticist. His father being Jewish, the family left Germany in 1938 and settled in Manchester. Bodmer has developed models for population genetics and done work on the human leukocyte antigen system and the use of somatic cell hybrids for human...

     — The Book of Man
  • 1996 Roy Jenkins
    Roy Jenkins
    Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...

     — The Chancellorship of Oxford: A Contemporary View with a Little History
  • 1997 Mary Robinson
    Mary Robinson
    Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate...

      — Realizing Human Rights:"Take hold of it boldly and duly..."
  • 1998 Amartya Kumar Sen — Reason before identity
  • 1999 Tony Blair
    Tony Blair
    Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

      — The Learning Habit

2000s

  • 2000 William G. Bowen
    William G. Bowen
    William G. Bowen is President Emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where he served as President from 1988 to 2006. He was the president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988....

      — At a Slight Angle to the Universe: The University in a Digitized, Commercialized Age
  • 2001 Neil MacGregor
    Neil MacGregor
    Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, FSA is an art historian and museum director. He was the Editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, the Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, and was appointed Director of the British Museum in 2002...

     — The Perpetual Present. The Ideal of Art for All
  • 2002 Tom Bingham — Personal Freedom and the Dilemma of Democracies
  • 2003 Paul Nurse
    Paul Nurse
    Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, PRS is a British geneticist and cell biologist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R...

     — The great ideas of biology
  • 2004 Rowan Williams
    Rowan Williams
    Rowan Douglas Williams FRSL, FBA, FLSW is an Anglican bishop, poet and theologian. He is the 104th and current Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he has held since early 2003.Williams was previously Bishop of Monmouth and...

     — Religious lives
  • 2005 Shirley M. Tilghman
    Shirley M. Tilghman
    Shirley Marie Tilghman, FRS is a scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator, the President of Princeton University. She is the first woman to hold the position and only the second female president in the Ivy League...

     — Strange bedfellows: science, politics, and religion
  • 2007 Dame Gillian Beer
    Gillian Beer
    Dame Gillian Beer, DBE , King Edward VII Professor of English Literature and President, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, is a British literary critic and academic.-Career:...

     — Darwin and the Consciousness of Others
  • 2008 Muhammad Yunus
    Muhammad Yunus
    Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. In 2006 Yunus and Grameen received the Nobel Peace Prize...

     — Poverty Free World: When? How?
  • 2009 Gordon Brown
    Gordon Brown
    James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...

     — Science and our Economic Future
  • 2010
  • 2011 Andrew Motion
    Andrew Motion
    Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...

    Bonfire of the Humanities
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