University of York honours eight
Posted on 28 June 2006
The University confers honorary degrees each year on people who have made a significant contribution to society. Honorary graduates are selected from nominations by members of the University and often have links with departments or are alumni.
Professor Bernard Rands
Professor Rands is one of the most performed composers in America and his music has been performed in many countries throughout the world.
Born in Sheffield, Professor Rands lectured at the University of York between 1969 to 1975. In 1970, he was responsible for setting up the University’s New Music Group which continues to perform today.
He has taught at Oxford University, the University of California in San Diego, Boston University and the Julliard School in New York. Professor Rands was appointed to the position of Walter Bigelow Professor of Music at Harvard University in 1988. From 1989 to 1996 he was also Composer in Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In 1994, he attended a gala concert of his music given by the University of York to celebrate his 60th birthday.
Professor Benita Parry
Professor Parry has been a leading figure in the field of the empire and postcolonialism and has been in the process of developing an MA in Cultures of Empire, Resistance, and Postcoloniality with the University’s Department of English and Related Literature.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1930s into an immigrant Jewish family from Lithuania and Poland, Professor Parry moved to England in 1958.
She studied at the University of Cape Town and for a number of years after leaving university, Professor Parry worked as a social worker in the District 6 area of Cape Town. Professor Parry continued her anti-apartheid activities while working in a Trotskyist bookshop in Johannesburg until new legislation in 1958 prompted her move to England.
After returning to academic study, Benita Parry obtained an MA in History in 1962 from Birmingham University. Her MA thesis was developed into a groundbreaking book, published in 1972 called Delusions and Discoveries: India in the British Imagination 1880 - 1930.
Denise O’Donoghue OBE
Denise O’Donoghue co-founded Hat Trick Productions Ltd in 1986, known for popular shows such as Have I Got News For You, Father Ted, Drop the Dead Donkey, The Kumars at No 42 and Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Ms O’Donoghue, who is an alumnus of York, having graduated in 1979 with a BA in Politics, has had a distinguished career in modern television.
She began her television career as the first Director of the Independent Programme Producers Association (now PACT). Hat Trick Productions, which Ms O'Donoghue has now left, has won a string of industry awards and has also had a substantial impact on broadcasting outside the UK, with its programmes viewed across all five continents.
In 1998 Ms O’Donoghue was made a Fellow of the Royal Television Society. The following year she received the British Academy Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Television, as well as an OBE for her services to television.
John G P Barnes
John Barnes is internationally recognised as one of the founders of the influential Ada programming language which was commissioned by the US Department of Defense to allay fears of a programming crisis in the 1970s. It now is used in safety critical applications, including defence, railway signalling, astronautics and avionics and air traffic control. From 1986 to 1996 he was Chairman of Ada Language (UK) Ltd and was President of Ada-Europe between 1992 to 2001.
John Barnes worked for ICI during the 1960s and 1970s, and was a part-time consultant for the Department of Trade and Industry in 1976/77, advising on the funding of research projects in industry. He has links with the University of Edinburgh, the Wolfson College at Oxford University, Imperial College London and the University of York, where he has close connections with the Department of Computer Science.
Professor Brian Barry
Professor Brian Barry is often regarded as the greatest living political philosopher. He has held positions at the Universities of Birmingham, Keele, Southampton, Oxford, Essex and LSE in the UK and at British Columbia, Chicago and California Institute of Technology in North America.
Professor Barry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. He has won the WJM Mackenzie Prize, of the Political Studies Association (UK) three times for the best book published in the previous year. In 2000 the Association presented him with an award for Lifetime Achievement in Political Studies. In 2001, he was awarded one of the highest accolades for political scientists, the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.
Professor Barry has been a frequent visitor to the University’s Politics Department, giving papers and taking an active interest in the graduate and research student community.
Professor Sir Roger Penrose
Professor Penrose is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
He has research interests in geometry, having made contributions to the theory of non-periodic tiling, relativity theory and the foundation of quantum theory. His main research programme is to develop the theory of twistors, which he originated over 30 years ago as an attempt to unite Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.
Professor Penrose has received numerous awards during his career, including the Wolf Prize for Physics, which he shares with Professor Stephen Hawking for their understanding of the universe, the Royal Society Royal medal and the Albert Einstein prize. In 1994 he was knighted for his services to science.
Sir Paul Nurse
Sir Paul was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2001.
He has been President of Rockefeller University, New York since 2003 and between 2002 to 2003 he was Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and after joining the Cancer Research Fund in 1996, he doubled its funding in five years.
His work, which started with postgraduate experiments on yeast and led to the discovery of the gene which controls cell division, has gained him a world-wide reputation. His discoveries have led to new treatments and medicines for cancer.
Dame Marjorie Scardino
Dame Marjorie became the first female executive of one of the UK’s FTSE 100 companies. She is Chief Executive of the Pearson Group, with a turnover of around £4 billion. She was born in Texas, USA and trained as a lawyer at George Washington and San Francisco Universities. After joining a Georgia law firm, she went on to found the Georgia Gazette before becoming President of the Economist Newspaper Group in New York from 1985 to 1992 and its Chief Executive in London from 1992 to 1996.
Dame Marjorie was named businesswoman of the year in 1998.
Notes to editors:
- Professor Bernard Rands will be presented for his honorary degree by Professor Roger Marsh of the Department of Music, in ceremony one, 12.00pm on Wednesday 12 July.
- Professor Benita Parry will be presented for her honorary degree by Professor Derek Attridge, Department of English and Related Literature, in ceremony two, 3pm, Wednesday 12 July.
- Denise O’Donoghue (OBE) will be presented for her honorary degree by Professor Michael Cordner, Department of English and Related Literature, in ceremony three, 9.30am, Thursday 13 July.
- John G P Barnes will be presented for his honorary degree by Professor Alan Burns, Department of Computer Science in ceremony four, 12.00pm, Thursday 13 July.
- Professor Brian Barry will be presented for his honorary degree by Professor Matt Matravers, Department of Politics in ceremony five, 3pm, Thursday 13 July.
- Professor Sir Roger Penrose will be presented for his honorary degree by Dr Bernard Kay, Department of Mathematics in ceremony six, 9.30am, Friday 14 July.
- Sir Paul Nurse will be presented for his honorary degree by Professor Peter Young, Department of Biology in ceremony seven, 12.00pm, Friday 14 July.
- Dame Marjorie Scardino will be presented for her honorary degree by Professor Steve Toms, Department of Management Studies in ceremony eight, 3.00pm, Friday 14 July.