A small number of Irish scientists have now been elected as new Fellows of the Royal Society, latter the prestigious British based Academy of distinguished international scientists whose past Fellows and Members have included Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Robert Darwin and Albert Einstein.
Fellowship of the Royal Society is therefore made up of the most eminent of scientists, engineers and technologists in the UK and Commonwealth and is considered a significant scientific accolade, with only a small number of other Irish scientists having been afforded this honour in recent years.
Dr Michael Richard Lynch
Among the new Irish fellows now elected is Tipperary born Dr Michael Richard Lynch, co-founder and former chief executive of Britain’s largest software company Autonomy, latter company purchased by Hewlett-Packard in 2011, for some $11bn. Dr Lynch is married with two daughters.
Dr Lynch was born in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1965, before his family moved to England, where he grew up near Chelmsford, Essex. In 1976, then aged 11, he won a scholarship to Bancroft’s School, Woodford, before moving on to Christ’s College, Cambridge to study Natural Sciences.
Following graduation he went on to do a PhD in Signal Processing and Communications research at the University of Cambridge, before undertaking a research fellowship in Adaptive Pattern Recognition.
In December 2006, he was appointed as a non-executive director to the Board of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). He is also on the investment committee and Board of the British Library.
Regarded as Britain’s most successful technology entrepreneur, he is a trustee of NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) and is chairman of their investment committee. He is also a non-executive Director of Cambridge Enterprise, advising on technology transfer for Cambridge University and a supporter of The Prince’s Trust technology group. He is also a member of the Council of the Foundation for Science and Technology and on the Enterprise Committee of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
His philanthropic interests include being a trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a member of the board of the ‘Create the Change’ Campaign at the Crick Institute, for Cancer Research UK.
He is a non executive director of Blinkx PLC and an advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, in the area of science policy.
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