Baroness Susan Greenfield

Susan Greenfield

Professor Greenfield is an advisor to the Social Issues Research Centre and is centrally involved with us in the development of a Code of Practice for science and health reporting.

Susan Greenfield was an undergraduate at St Hilda's College, Oxford and subsequently took a DPhil in the University Department of Pharmacology. She has held fellowships in the Department of Physiology, Oxford; the College de France, Paris and NYU Medical Center, New York. In 1985 she was appointed University Lecturer in Synaptic Pharmacology and Fellow and Tutor in Medicine, Lincoln College. Subsequently she has also held a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Institute o f Neuroscience, La Jolla, USA, and was the 1996 Visiting Distinguished Scholar, Queens University, Belfast. The title of Professor of Pharmacology was conferred in 1996.

In 1997 she was awarded an Honorary DSc by Oxford Brookes University, and has received Honorary DSc degrees, in 1998, from the University of St Andrew's and Exeter University.

She became Director of The Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1998.

Apart from her primary research where she heads a group of 18 scientists studying Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Disease, Greenfield has developed an interest in the physical basis o f the mind. In 1987 she edited Mindwaves with Colin Blakemore and in 1995 published her own theory of consciousness Journey to the Centers of the Mind: Toward a Science of Consciousness .

Her more recent books include The Human Brain: A Guided Tour , 1998; Inside the Body: Fantastic Images from Beneath the Skin , 2004 and Tomorrow's People: How 21st-Century Technology Is Changing the Way We Think and Feel , 2004.

Greenfield is a Trustee of the Science Museum and also makes contributions to the communication of science in the media. In 1994 she was the first woman to give the Royal Institution Christmas lectures and has subsequently made a wide range of broadcasts on TV and radio, as well as appearing as the scientist in a variety of interviews and pieces, such as "Visionaries" in Tomorrow's World and "Innovations" on BBC Breakfast TV. She has also participated in more general programmes such as "Start the Week", "Any Questions", "Desert Island Discs" and "Question Time". She has just finished a series of 4 half hour programmes for BBC Radio 4 on drugs and is currently preparing a major six part series on the brain and mind, to be broadcast on BBC2 in the year 2000.

In 1995 she was elected to the Gresham Chair of Physic, which entails giving six public lectures a year in the City of London.

In January 1998 she was consultant and "agony aunt" on a six week series on the brain, "Brainpower" in The Sunday Times magazine. She has been profiled in most of the broadsheets and was included as one of the 50 most powerful women in Britain by the Guardian and ranked number 14 in the "50 Most Inspirational Women in the World" by Harpers and Queen. She has recently received the Michael Faraday medal from the Royal Society for making the most significant contribution in 1998 to the public understanding of science, as well as receiving the "Woman of Distinction" 1998 award from Jewish Care.

She has a growing interest in the more political aspects of science research in Britain, and has spoken at a fringe meeting of the Labour Party Conference as well as being invited to the House of Commons and No.10 Downing Street, to give talks on science policy.

In January 2000 Susan Greenfield was awarded the CBE for her services to the public understanding of science and more recently was made a Baroness.