Hauser heads dominant Cambridge contingent in 2012 Royal Society fellowships

Dr Hermann Hauser: ‘An inspiration and role-model for generations of entrepreneurs’, according to the Royal Society

Though Cambridge-led innovation may have featured rather weakly in this year’s Queen’s Awards, the Royal Society gave the UK’s top technology centre its dues by electing nine of 44 new Fellows from the city.

The most high profile was Dr Hermann Hauser, the entrepreneur turned VC who co-founded Acorn Computers, the company that delivered the BBC Micro and ARM among others.

Another scientist turned entrepreneur was Dr Jeremy Burroughes whose advances in the science and engineering of semiconducting polymers was taken to full commercial exploitation at Cambridge Display Technology, the company sold to Sumitomo for $285m in 2007 where Dr Burroughes is chief technology officer.

The link between Doctors Hauser and Burroughes and the seven other newly elected Fellows is of course Cambridge University, though in the case of Professor Gordon Dougan the role is honorary professor, the day job takes place at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute where his outstanding contribution to the understanding of infectious diseases was rewarded.

Only one Cambridge woman made the selection, Professor of Molecular Cell Biology at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Margaret Robinson, for her work on intracellular membrane traffic.

The other five Fellows are Professor Shankar Balasubramanian, Professor David Klenerman, Professor Tony Kouzarides, Professor Mark Warner, and Professor Daniel Wolpert.