Susan Greenfield

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Susan Greenfield bigraphy, stories - British scientist, academic, writer

Susan Greenfield : biography

1 October 1950 –

Susan Adele Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, CBE, HonFRCP (born 1 October 1950) is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Greenfield is Senior Research Fellow in Department of Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford. From 2005 to 2012, she was Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Until 8 January 2010, she was director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Personal life

Greenfield was married to a University of Oxford Professor of Physical Chemistry, Peter Atkins; they divorced in 2005.

Patronage

She is a Patron of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.http://www.alzheimers-research.org.uk/aboutus/whoweare/people.php?type=Patrons

Career

Greenfield’s research is focused on brain physiology, particularly the etiology of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, but she is best known as a populariser of science. Greenfield has written several books about the brain and consciousness, regularly gives public lectures, and appears on radio and television.

In 1994, she was invited to be the first woman to give the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, then sponsored by the BBC. Her lecture was titled "Journey to the centre of the brain". She was appointed Director of the Royal Institution in 1998, Royal Institution website until the position was scrapped as being "no longer affordable" in 2010. Greenfield was Adelaide’s Thinker in Residence for 2004 and 2005. From 1995 to 1999, she gave public lectures as Gresham Professor of Physic.

Greenfield created three research and biotechnology companies: Synaptica, BrainBoost, and Neurodiagnostics, which research neuronal diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. She is a Patron of Dignity in Dying and a founder and trustee of the charity Science for Humanity, a network of scientists, researchers and technologists that collaborates with non-profits to create practical solutions to the everyday problems of developing communities. The idea of matching scientific capability with the needs of poor communities came to her while writing Tomorrow’s People, a book in which she imagined a future world of "techno haves and techno have-nots". She felt that the democratization and dissemination of science through organizations like Science for Humanity was a way to avoid such a future.

She has explored the relevance of neuroscience knowledge to education and has introduced the concept of "mind change", an umbrella term comparable to "climate change", encompassing the diverse issues involved on the impact of the 21st environment on the brain.

Honours

As well as having 30 honorary degrees, Greenfield has received a number of awards including the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize. She has been elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and the Science Museum.

In January 2000, Greenfield received the CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of science. Later that year, she was named Woman of the Year by The Observer.http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/dec/31/features.review67

In June 2001, she was created a Life Peer, as Baroness Greenfield, of Ot Moor in the County of Oxfordshire.

In 2003, she was appointed a Chevalier Légion d’Honneur by the French Government.

In 2006 she was made an honorary fellow of the British Science Association and was the Honorary Australian of the Year.

In 2010 she was awarded the Australian Society for Medical Research Medal. She also received the British Inspiration award for Science and Technology.

Education

Baroness Greenfield was born to a Jewish family in the west London borough of Hammersmith to Doris (Thorp), a dancer, and Reginald Myer Greenfield, an electrician. Greenfield attended the private Godolphin and Latymer School, and was the first member of her family to go on to university, at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Greenfield completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977 under the supervision of Anthony David Smith on the Origins of acetylcholinesterase in cerebrospinal fluid.