- Order:
- Duration: 4:32
- Published: 18 Jan 2009
- Uploaded: 16 May 2011
- Author: musikerdiscovery
Coordinates | 20°08′20″N101°10′47″N |
---|---|
Name | University of Cambridge |
Latin name | Academia Cantabrigiensis |
Image name | Cambridge University Crest.svg |
Motto | Hinc lucem et pocula sacra (Latin) |
Mottoeng | Literal: From here, light and sacred draughtsNon-literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge |
Established | c. 1209 |
Demonym | Cantabrigian |
Staff | 8,614 |
Chancellor | HRH The Duke of Edinburgh |
Vice chancellor | Prof Sir Leszek Borysiewicz |
City | Cambridge |
Country | England, UK |
Students | 18,396 |
Undergrad | 12,018| |
Colours | Cambridge Blue |
Athletics | The Sporting Blue |
Type | Public |
Affiliations | Russell GroupCoimbra GroupEUAG5LERUIARU |
Website | www.cam.ac.uk |
Logo |
The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University, or simply Cambridge) is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second oldest university in both England and the English-speaking world and the seventh oldest university globally. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge).
The university grew out of an association of scholars in the city of Cambridge that was formed, early records suggest, in 1209 by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute with townsfolk. The two "ancient universities" have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to cultural and practical associations as a historic part of British society, the two universities have a long history of rivalry with each other.
Academically, Cambridge ranks as one of the world's top universities. Cambridge now ranks first place in the world according to the QS university rankings, ahead of Harvard and Yale, and contends with Oxford for first place in UK league tables. Affiliates of the University have won more Nobel Prizes than those of any other institution in the world - with 88 Nobel Laureates as of October 4, 2010 - the most recent one being Robert G. Edwards for the prize in physiology or medicine.
The University is a member of the Russell Group of research-led British universities, the Coimbra Group, the League of European Research Universities and the International Alliance of Research Universities. It forms part of the 'Golden Triangle' of British universities and is a constituent of the 'G5'.
After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318, it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to come and visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse in 1284, Cambridge's first college. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college (it was previously an "Approved Society" affiliated with the university).
In medieval times, colleges were founded so that their students would pray for the souls of the founders. For that reason they were often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in the colleges’ focus occurred in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching "scholastic philosophy". In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.
As Cambridge moved away from Canon Law so too did it move away from Catholicism. As early as the 1520s, the continental rumblings of Lutheranism and what was to become more broadly known as the Protestant Reformation were making their presence felt in the intellectual discourse of the university. Among the intellectuals involved was the theologically influential Thomas Cranmer, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. As it became convenient to Henry VIII in the 1530s, the King looked to Cranmer and others (within and without Cambridge) to craft a new religious path that was different from Catholicism yet also different from what Martin Luther had in mind.
Nearly a century later, the university was at the centre of another Christian schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even common folk saw the ways of the Church of England as being all too similar to the Catholic Church and moreover that it was used by the crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement and at Cambridge, it was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St. Catherine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College. They produced many "non-conformist" graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or pulpit, the approximately 20,000 Puritans who left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), attended Sidney Sussex.
was a student of the University of Cambridge]]
Students awarded first-class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos were named wranglers. The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos was competitive and helped produce some of the most famous names in British science, including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and Lord Rayleigh. However, some famous students, such as G. H. Hardy, disliked the system, feeling that people were too interested in accumulating marks in exams and not interested in the subject itself.
Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its strength in mathematics. Cambridge alumni have won five Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics, while individuals representing Cambridge have won four Fields Medals. The University also runs a special Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics course.
Pure mathematics, however, does not have such a strong legacy at Cambridge. The pure approach had little influence in the United Kingdom until the 20th century (following the pioneering work of G. H. Hardy and his collaborator, J. E. Littlewood), despite substantial developments in continental Europe (especially France, Germany and Russia) during the nineteenth century. Indeed, even until the 1950s, mathematics at Cambridge remained relatively indifferent to the post-Bourbaki abstraction favored in continental Europe and the United States (classical analytic number theory, for instance, remained a primary focus). The Lucasian Chair has typically been occupied by physicists.
in the snow, with King's College Chapel (centre) and Clare College Chapel (right).]]
Later, women could be given a "titular degree"; although they were not denied recognised qualifications, without a full degree they were excluded from the governing of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. Starting with Churchill College, all of the men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. One women's college, Girton, also began to admit male students from 1979, but the other women's colleges did not follow suit. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining United Kingdom University with colleges which refuse to admit males, with three such institutions (Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish). In the academic year 2004–5, the university's student gender ratio, including post-graduates, was male 52%: female 48%.
over the river Cam (at Queens’ College).]]
A discontinued tradition is that of the wooden spoon, the ‘prize’ awarded to the student with the lowest passing grade in the final examinations of the Mathematical Tripos. The last of these spoons was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of the Lady Margaret Boat Club of St John's College. It was over one metre in length and had an oar blade for a handle. It can now be seen outside the Senior Combination Room of St John's. Since 1909, results were published alphabetically within class rather than score order. This made it harder to ascertain who the winner of the spoon was (unless there was only one person in the third class), and so the practice was abandoned.
Each Christmas Eve, BBC radio and television broadcasts The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The radio broadcast has been a national Christmas tradition since it was first transmitted in 1928 (though the festival has existed since 1918). The radio broadcast is carried worldwide by the BBC World Service and is also syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in the USA. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954.
The faculties are responsible for ensuring that lectures are given, arranging seminars, performing research and determining the syllabi for teaching, overseen by the General Board. Together with the central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor, they make up the entire Cambridge University. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the University (the Cambridge University Library), by the departments (departmental libraries such as the Squire Law Library), and by the individual colleges (all of which maintain a multi-discipline library, generally aimed mainly at their undergraduates).
, Gonville and Caius, Trinity Hall and Clare College towards King's College Chapel, seen from St John's College chapel. On the left, just in front of King's College chapel, is the University Senate House.]]
The University of Cambridge currently has 31 colleges, of which three, Murray Edwards, Newnham and Lucy Cavendish, admit women only. The other colleges are now mixed, though most were originally all-male. Darwin was the first college to admit both men and women, while Churchill, Clare and King's colleges were the first previously all-male colleges to admit female undergraduates in 1972. Magdalene was the last all-male college to become mixed in 1988. Clare Hall and Darwin admit only postgraduates, and Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish, St Edmund's and Wolfson admit only mature (i.e. 21 years or older on date of matriculation) students, including graduate students. All other colleges admit both undergraduate and postgraduate students with no age restrictions. Colleges are not required to admit students in all subjects, with some colleges choosing not to offer subjects such as architecture, history of art or theology, but most offer close to the complete range. Some colleges maintain a bias towards certain subjects, for example with Churchill leaning towards the sciences and engineering, while others such as St Catharine's aim for a balanced intake. Costs to students (accommodation and food prices) vary considerably from college to college. Others maintain much more informal reputations, such as for the students of King's College to hold left-wing political views, or Robinson College and Churchill College's attempts to minimise its environmental impact.
There are also several theological colleges in Cambridge, including Westcott House, Westminster College and Ridley Hall Theological College, that are affiliated to the university and are members of the Cambridge Theological Federation.
The concept of grading students' work quantitatively was developed by a tutor named William Farish at the University of Cambridge in 1792.
A 'School' in the University of Cambridge is a broad administrative grouping of related faculties and other units. Each has an elected supervisory body – the 'Council' of the school – comprising representatives of the constituent bodies. There are six schools:
Teaching and research in Cambridge is organised by faculties. The faculties have different organisational sub-structures which partly reflect their history and partly their operational needs, which may include a number of departments and other institutions. In addition, a small number of bodies entitled 'Syndicates' have responsibilities for teaching and research, e.g. Cambridge Assessment, the University Press, and the University Library.
Within these terms undergraduate teaching takes place within eight-week periods called Full Terms. These terms are shorter than those of many other British universities. Undergraduates are also expected to prepare heavily in the three holidays (known as the Christmas, Easter and Long Vacations).
The Regent House is the University's governing body, a direct democracy comprising all resident senior members of the University and the Colleges, together with the Chancellor, the High Steward, the Deputy High Steward, and the Commissary. The public representatives of the Regent House are the two Proctors, elected to serve for one year, on the nomination of the Colleges.
The General Board of the Faculties is responsible for the academic and educational policy of the University, and is accountable to the Council for its management of these affairs.
Faculty Boards are responsible to the General Board; other Boards and Syndicates are responsible either to the General Board (if primarily for academic purposes) or to the Council. In this way, the various arms of the University are kept under the supervision of the central administration, and thus the Regent House.
If ranked on a US university endowment table using figures reported in 2006, Cambridge would rank sixth or seventh (depending on whether one includes the University of Texas System – which incorporates nine full scale universities and six health institutions), or fourth in a ranking compared with only the eight Ivy League institutions.
Comparisons between Cambridge's endowment and those of other top US universities are, however, inaccurate because being a state-funded public university, Cambridge receives a major portion of its income through education and research grants from the British Government. In 2006, it was reported that approximately one third of Cambridge's income comes from UK government funding for teaching and research, with another third coming from other research grants. Endowment income contributes around 6%.
In 2005, the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign was launched, aimed at raising £1 billion by 2012 – the first US-style university fund-raising campaign in Europe. £940 million of funds have been secured to date.
Cambridge is a member of the Russell Group, a network of research-led British universities; the Coimbra Group, an association of leading European universities; the League of European Research Universities; and the International Alliance of Research Universities. It is also considered part of the "Golden Triangle", a geographical concentration of UK university research.
Building on its reputation for enterprise, science and technology, Cambridge has a partnership with MIT in the United States, the Cambridge – MIT Institute.
How applicants perform in the interview process is an important factor in determining which students are accepted. Most applicants are expected to be predicted at least three A-grade A-level qualifications relevant to their chosen undergraduate course, or equivalent overseas qualifications. However, it has been confirmed that the new A* A-level grade (to be introduced in 2010) will play a part in the acceptance of applications. Due to a very high proportion of applicants receiving the highest school grades, the interview process is crucial for distinguishing between the most able candidates. The interview is performed by College Fellows, who evaluate candidates on unexamined factors such as potential for original thinking and creativity.
Both the Univeristy's central Student Union, and individual college student unions (JCRs) run student led Access schemes aimed at encouraging applications to the University from students at schools with little or no history of Oxbridge applications, and from students from families with little or no history of participation in university education.
In the last two British Government Research Assessment Exercise in 2001 and 2008 respectively, Cambridge was ranked first in the country. In 2005, it was reported that Cambridge produces more PhDs per year than any other British university (over 30% more than second placed Oxford). In 2006, a Thomson Scientific study showed that Cambridge has the highest research paper output of any British university, and is also the top research producer (as assessed by total paper citation count) in 10 out of 21 major British research fields analysed. Another study published the same year by Evidence showed that Cambridge won a larger proportion (6.6%) of total British research grants and contracts than any other university (coming first in three out of four broad discipline fields).
The university is also closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster in and around Cambridge, which forms the area known as Silicon Fen or sometimes the "Cambridge Phenomenon". In 2004, it was reported that Silicon Fen was the second largest venture capital market in the world, after Silicon Valley. Estimates reported in February 2006 suggest that there were about 250 active startup companies directly linked with the university, worth around US$6 billion.
In 2009, the marketing consultancy World Brand Lab rated Cambridge University as the 50th most influential brand in the world, and the 4th most influential university brand, behind only Harvard, MIT and Stanford University.
In 2010, Cambridge ranked sixth in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and first in the QS World University Rankings. In the 2009 Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings (in 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings parted ways to produce separate rankings), Cambridge was ranked 2nd amongst world universities, behind Harvard. It came in first in the international academic reputation peer review, first in the natural sciences, second in biomedicine, third in the arts & humanities, fourth in the social sciences, and fourth in technology. In the 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Cambridge was placed 5th amongst world universities and was ranked 1st in Europe. A 2006 Newsweek ranking which combined elements of the THES-QS and ARWU rankings with other factors that purportedly evaluated an institution's global "openness and diversity" suggested that Cambridge was ranked 6th in the world overall.
In the 2008 Sunday Times University Guide, Cambridge was ranked first for the 11th straight year since the guide's first publication in 1998. In the 2008 Times Good University Guide, Cambridge topped 37 of the guide's 61 subject tables, including Law, Medicine, Economics, Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry and has the best record on research, entry standards and graduate destinations amongst UK universities. Cambridge was also awarded the University of the Year award.
In the 2009 The Times Good University Guide Subject Rankings, Cambridge was ranked top (or joint top) in 34 out of the 42 subjects which it offers. The overall ranking placed Cambridge in 2nd behind Oxford. The 2009 Guardian University Guide Rankings also placed Cambridge 2nd in the UK behind Oxford.
The Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra explores a range of programmes, from popular symphonies to lesser known works. Membership of the orchestra is composed of students of the university and it has also attracted a variety of conductors and soloists, including Wayne Marshall, Jane Glover, and Nicholas Cleobury.
Over the course of its history, Cambridge University has built up a sizeable number of alumni who are notable in their fields, both academic, and in the wider world. Depending on criteria, affiliates of the University of Cambridge have won between 85 and 88 Nobel prizes, more than any other institution according to some counts. Former undergraduates of the university have won a grand total of 61 Nobel prizes, 13 more than the undergraduates of any other university. Cambridge academics have also won 8 Fields Medals and 2 Abel Prizes (since the award was first distributed in 2003).
Perhaps most of all, the university is renowned for a long and distinguished tradition in mathematics and the sciences.
Among the most famous of Cambridge polymaths is Sir Isaac Newton, who spent the majority of his life at the university and conducted many of his now famous experiments within the grounds of Trinity College. Sir Francis Bacon, responsible for the development of the Scientific Method, entered the university when he was just twelve, and pioneering mathematicians John Dee and Brook Taylor soon followed.
Other ground-breaking mathematicians to have studied at the university include Hardy, Littlewood and De Morgan, three of the most renowned pure mathematicians in modern history; Sir Michael Atiyah, arguably the most important mathematician of the last half-century; William Oughtred, the inventor of the logarithmic scale; John Wallis, the inventor of modern calculus; Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught genius who made incomparable contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions; and, perhaps most importantly of all, James Clerk Maxwell, who is also considered to have brought about the second great unification of Physics (the first being accredited to Newton) with his classical electromagnetic theory.
Another Cambridge scholar responsible for major developments in scientific understanding was Charles Darwin, the biologist who first suggested the theory natural selection. Later Cambridge biologists include Francis Crick and James D. Watson, who developed a model for the three-dimensional structure of DNA whilst working at the university's Cavendish Laboratory along with Maurice Wilkins and leading female X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. More recently, Sir Ian Wilmut, the man who was responsible for the first cloning of a mammal with Dolly the Sheep in 1996, was a graduate student at Darwin College.
The university is also the essential birthplace of the computer with mathematician Charles Babbage having designed the world's first computing system as early as the mid-1800s. Alan Turing went on to invent what is essentially the basis for the modern computer and Maurice Wilkes later created the first programmable computer. The webcam was also invented at Cambridge University, as a means for scientists to avoid interrupting their research and going all the way down to the laboratory dining room only to be disappointed by an empty coffee pot.
Ernest Rutherford, the man generally regarded to be the father of nuclear physics spent much of his life at the university, where he worked closely with the likes of Niels Bohr, a major contributor to the understanding of the structure and function of the atom, J. J. Thompson, discoverer of the electron, Sir James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, and Sir John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, the partnership responsible for first splitting the atom. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project and de facto inventor of the atomic bomb, also studied at Cambridge under Rutherford and Thompson.
Major astronomers John Herschel and Sir Arthur Eddington both spent much of their careers at Cambridge, as did Paul Dirac, the discoverer of antimatter and one of the pioneers of Quantum Mechanics; Stephen Hawking, the founding father of the study of singularities and the university's long-serving Lucasian Professor of Mathematics; and Lord Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College.
A number of other significant Cambridge scientists include Henry Cavendish, the discoverer of Hydrogen; Frank Whittle, co-inventor of the jet engine; Lord Kelvin, who formulated the original Laws of Thermodynamics; William Fox Talbot, who invented the camera, Alfred North Whitehead, Einstein's major opponent; Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the man dubbed "the father of radio science"; Lord Rayleigh, one of the most pre-eminent physicists of the 20th century; Georges Lemaître, who first proposed the Big Bang Theory; and Frederick Sanger, the last man to win two Nobel prizes.
Other Cambridge academics include major economists such as John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall, Milton Friedman, Piero Sraffa and Amartya Sen, another former Master of Trinity College. Significant Philosophers Desiderius Erasmus, Sir Francis Bacon, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, George Santayana, Sir Karl Popper, Allama Iqbal and G. E. Moore were all Cambridge scholars, as were renowned historians such as Lord Acton, E. H. Carr, Hugh Trevor-Roper, E. P. Thompson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr and the great lawyers Glanville Williams and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.
Religious figures at the university have included Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury and many of his predecessors; William Tyndale; the early biblical translator; William Paley, the Christian philosopher known primarily for formulating the teleological argument for the existence of God; William Wilberforce, the man responsible for the abolition of the slave trade; John Bainbridge Webster, a theologian of significant repute; and six winners of the prestigious Templeton Prize, the highest accolade for the study of religion since its foundation in 1972.
Composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, William Sterndale Bennett, Orlando Gibbons and, more recently, Alexander Goehr, Thomas Adès and John Rutter were all at Cambridge. The university has also produced members of contemporary bands such as Radiohead, Hot Chip, Henry Cow, and the singer-songwriter Nick Drake.
Artists Quentin Blake, Roger Fry and Julian Trevelyan also attended as undergraduates, as did sculptors Antony Gormley, Marc Quinn and Sir Anthony Caro, and photographers Antony Armstrong-Jones, Sir Cecil Beaton and Mick Rock.
Acclaimed writers such as E. M. Forster, Charles Kingsley, C. S. Lewis, Christopher Marlowe, Vladmir Nabokov, Christopher Isherwood, Samuel Butler, W. M. Thackeray, Lawrence Sterne, Sir Hugh Walpole, Jin Yong, Sir Kingsley Amis, C. P. Snow, J. G. Ballard, John Fletcher, E. R. Braithwaite, Iris Murdoch, J. B. Priestley, Patrick White, M. R. James and A. A. Milne were all at Cambridge.
More recently A. S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Douglas Adams, Sir Salman Rushdie, Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Howard Jacobson, Robert Harris, Michael Crichton, Sebastian Faulks, Stephen Poliakoff, Michael Frayn, Alan Bennett and Sir Peter Shaffer were all at the university.
Poets A. E. Housman, Robert Herrick, William Wordsworth, John Donne, Alfred Tennyson, Lord Byron, Rupert Brooke, John Dryden, Siegfried Sassoon, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, John Milton, George Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Gray, Edmund Spenser, Cecil Day-Lewis and Sir Muhammad Iqbal are all associated with Cambridge, as are renowned literary critics F. R. Leavis, Sir William Empson, Lytton Strachey, I. A. Richards, Harold Bloom, Terry Eagleton, Stephen Greenblatt and Peter Ackroyd. Furthermore, at least nine of the Poet Laureates graduated from Cambridge.
Actors and directors such as Lord Richard Attenborough, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir Michael Redgrave, James Mason, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Simon Russell Beale, Tilda Swinton, Thandie Newton, Rachel Weisz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne and David Mitchell all studied at the university, as did recently acclaimed directors such as Mike Newell, Sam Mendes, Stephen Frears, Paul Greengrass and John Madden.
The University is also known for its prodigious sporting reputation and has produced many fine athletes, including more than 50 Olympic medalists (6 in 2008 alone); the legendary Chinese six-time world table tennis champion Deng Yaping; the sprinter and athletics hero Harold Abrahams; the inventors of the modern game of Football, Winton and Thring; and George Mallory, the famed mountaineer and possibly the first man ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Andrew Gower was a student at Cambridge University. He is the author of RuneScape which has over 130 million registered accounts and is therefore the world's most popular MMORPG game.
Notable educationalists to have attended the university include the founders and early professors of Harvard University, including John Harvard himself; Emily Davies, founder of Girton College, the first residential higher education institution for women, and John Haden Badley, founder of the first mixed-sex school in England.
Cambridge also has a strong reputation in the fields of politics and governance, having educated:
Category:Educational institutions established in the 13th century Category:Organisations based in England with royal patronage Category:Visitor attractions in Cambridge Category:Culture in Cambridge Category:History of Cambridge Category:Russell Group Category:Coimbra Group Category:1209 establishments Category:Oxbridge Category:Association of Commonwealth Universities Category:Exempt charities
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 20°08′20″N101°10′47″N |
---|---|
Image width | 150px | |
Name | Cynthia Kenyon |
Field | Biologist |
Work institutions | University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) |
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Doctoral advisor | Graham Walker |
Notable students | Andrew Dillin |
Known for | Aging in Caenorhabditis elegans. |
Prizes | National Academy of Sciences |
Since 1986 she has been at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she was the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and is now an American Cancer Society Professor.
Her early work led to the discovery that Hox genes, which were known to pattern the body segments of the fruit fly Drosophila, also pattern the body of C. elegans. These findings demonstrated that Hox genes were not simply involved in segmentation, as thought, but instead were part of a much more ancient and fundamental metazoan patterning system.
Although it was already known from the work of M. Klass that lifespan of C. elegans could be altered by mutations, in 1993, Dr. Kenyon's discovery that a single-gene mutation (daf-2) could double the lifespan of C. elegans and that this could be reversed by a second mutation in daf-16m, sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. Dr. Kenyon's findings have led to the discovery that an evolutionarily-conserved hormone signaling system influences aging in other organisms, perhaps also including mammals.
Kenyon has received many honors, including the King Faisal Prize for Medicine, the American Association of Medical Colleges Award for Distinguished Research, the Ilse & Helmut Wachter Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and La Fondation IPSEN Prize, for her findings. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is now the director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at UCSF.
Kenyon follows a low glycemic index diet similar to the Atkins diet
In the past, Kenyon had also briefly experimented with a calorie restriction diet for two days, but couldn't stand the constant hunger.
Category:1955 births Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Living people Category:American biologists Category:American geneticists Category:Biogerontologists Category:Women biologists Category:University of Georgia alumni Category:University of California, San Francisco faculty
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.