Professor Anne Davis honoured by the Institute of Physics

From the Institute of Physics:

Professor Anne Davis has been awarded the Richard Glazebrook Medal and Prize for her outstanding support and leadership in physics, particularly for women and those from non-traditional backgrounds, for her leadership of the UK particle cosmology community, and her gender championship roles.

Anne Davis is an outstanding particle cosmologist, who has guided this field in the UK and the careers of many generations of researchers. Leadership is the ability to enable the enhancement of others; in theoretical physics the lifting up of others to realising their full potential as individuals, irrespective of reflected glory, is rare, but Davis displays this attribute in full.

Over many years, she has acted not just as a key role model, she was the first woman in the CERN theory group and the first full female professor in the faculty of mathematics at Cambridge, but has actively worked to break down barriers and enable physicists from under-represented backgrounds to fully participate in physics research.

Anne has shown sustained and inspiring leadership within the particle physics community nationally, and within Cambridge University. With Tom Kibble, she was one of the founding members of the UK Cosmology network in 1991, which is now a national and continually growing community, meeting regularly several times a year.

She has been influential over several academic generations of particle cosmologists in the UK, and has produced a pool of extremely talented graduates. She has been quick to recognise and support the development of talent among those who have struggled in her own institution, and has provided support more generally in the community by mentoring the students of others.

She was influential in leading the Athena Swann initiative in DAMTP, and developed the Women in Mathematics group at Cambridge. She also took on the role of Gender Champion for the science faculty, providing outstanding leadership on gender issues within the university, as well as serving as chair of the faculty board of mathematics.

Read this article on the Institute of Physics website.