Cipla chairman Hamied receives UK Royal Society honour

Prominent scientist and businessman Yusuf Hamied is among a host of Indian-origin experts honoured in the 2019 list of new fellows of the UK's Royal Society.

The 82-year-old chairman of pharmaceutical major Cipla has been made an Honorary Fellow of the prestigious body, comprising of many of the world's most eminent scientists.

The Royal Society is an independent scientific academy of the UK and the Commonwealth, dedicated to promoting excellence in science.

His honorary fellowship of the world's oldest scientific academy came alongside 51 new fellows and 10 new foreign members as part of the 2019 cohort unveiled earlier this week.

"Over the course of the Royal Society's vast history, it is our Fellowship that has remained a constant thread and the substance from which our purpose has been realised: to use science for the benefit of humanity, said Prof Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel Prize-winning Indian-origin President of the Royal Society.

"This year's newly-elected Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society embody this, being drawn from diverse fields of enquiry - epidemiology, geometry, climatology - at once disparate, but also aligned in their pursuit and contributions of knowledge about the world in which we live, and it is with great honour that I welcome them as Fellows of the Royal Society," he said.

Among the Indian-origin scientists elected as fellows this year include Prof Gurdyal Besra, Bardrick Professor of Microbial Physiology and Chemistry, Institute of Microbiology and Infection, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham; Prof Manjul Bhargava, R Brandon Fradd Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Princeton University; Prof Gagandeep Kang, Executive Director, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, India; Prof Anant Parekh, Professor of Physiology, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford; and Prof Akashay Venkatesh, Professor, School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study.

The Royal Society said that its newly-elected Fellows and Foreign Members this year come from across the UK and Commonwealth, as well as international institutions in Argentina, Israel, and the Netherlands.