The Society is the world's oldest scientific academy and has been at the forefront of enquiry and discovery since its foundation in 1660. Past and present members include Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, and Stephen Hawking.
Peter Green, Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics has been elected in recognition of his wide-ranging achievements in computational statistics. He has worked on spatial statistics, agricultural field experiments, reference curves for human growth, and emission tomography.
Most recently, he has made various contributions to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that are making a major impact in computational Bayesian statistics. He has been at the University since 1989, has served as Royal Statistical Society president between 2001 and 2003 and is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
Stephen Mann, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the School of Chemistry has been elected for his work on micro-crystals. In his early work, he elucidated the precise crystal features of several biological micro- or nano-particles of minerals including bacterial magnetite, coccolith calcite, and silica in plants.
Later he showed several routes to the preparation of similar synthetic materials by designing surface layers and polymers as nucleation and growth centres for micro-crystals. Very recently he has synthesised hollow materials of simple salts such as barium sulphate. Professor Mann has become an international authority in this new chemical field which is of considerable biological, medical and industrial importance.
Peter Wells, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Clinical Medicine has been elected for his distinguished contributions to the application of engineering and physics in medicine. Specifically, he is the originator and developer of instruments for ultrasonic surgery, ultrasonic power measurement, the two-dimensional articulated-arm ultrasonic general purpose scanner and the water-immersion ultrasonic breast scanner.
He has investigated ultrasonic bioeffects and formulated safety guidelines and conditions for the prudent use of ultrasonic diagnosis. He has also led multidisciplinary studies of ultrasonic diagnosis, as well as making major contributions to the advancement of light transmission, electrical impedance and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.
These latest elections brings to 30 the number of academics currently at Bristol University whose work has been honoured in this way.
Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of the University said: "This is a major triumph for these three distinguished academics who have worked so hard and achieved such eminence. The University is proud of them and of their other colleagues who also share this distinction. It's a measure of the University's international quality to have so many of our academics honoured in this way."
Professors Green, Mann and Wells are three of the 42 new Fellows of the Royal Society whose election was announced today. There are currently 1300 Fellows in total.