Sir Philip’s discoveries in the role of protein phosphorylation and its deregulation in major diseases, particularly diabetes, have led to the development of a new scientific investigation and also to the development of new therapeutic drugs.  Philip Cohen was born in Middlesex in 1945. His first degree was from the University of London . He attained his doctorate in Biochemistry in 1969. Sir Philip went to the USA to work with Edmond Fischer and returned to the UK in 1971 to a lectureship in Biochemistry at the University of Dundee , becoming Reader in 1978 and receiving a Personal Chair in 1981. Sir Philip is a Royal Society of London Research Professor, Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit and the Wellcome Trust Biocentre, and Director of Research at the School of Life Sciences , University of Dundee .  

At the University of Dundee Sir Philip Cohen has played a major part in the remarkable recent development of Life Sciences at the University. His enthusiasm, energy and influence have been crucial in the recruitment of many leading life scientists to Dundee and the establishment of the new Wellcome Trust Building and the associated Biocentre. His efforts have had a significant effect on the economy of Dundee , both in terms of direct employment at the Biocentre and in the establishment of industrial spin-offs.  In recognition of these contributions, Sir Philip was awarded the City of Discovery Rosebowl by Dundee District Council.  He is leading the construction of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, a new research building for the School of Life Sciences due to open in 2005.  Sir Philip has made, and continues to make, a major contribution to the Life Sciences in Scotland .

Professor Sir Neil MacCormick FRSE, FBA , QC  for his outstanding contribution to academic life in Scotland and internationally, particularly in the field of legal philosophy.

Neil MacCormick was born in 1941. Classical dux of Glasgow High School in 1959, he went to Glasgow University, obtaining a First Class Honours Degree in Philosophy and English Literature in 1963 and then to Balliol College Oxford, where he took a first in the Jurisprudence BA. He took up a lectureship in Jurisprudence at Queen’s College, Dundee, in 1965 returning to become a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1967 before becoming Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations in the University of Edinburgh in 1972.  Sir Neil is one of the world’s leading philosophers of law. His central contribution to the scholarship of the philosophy of law has been the concept of law as “institutional fact”. Sir Neil has built upon and critically revised the work of the leading legal philosopher of the mid twentieth century, H L A Hart, but has also established his own reputation with five major books and numerous essays, notably on the legal theory of the Scottish Enlightenment; legal reasoning as a branch of practical reason; the theory of sovereignty in the context of the European Union, and on social democracy, liberalism and nationalism.

As a member of the recent Convention that drafted the proposed Constitutional Treaty for the European Union, he has had an opportunity to bring together theory and practice in an unusual way.  Sir Neil has a worldwide reputation and has received many academic and other honours, including most recently the rank of honorary QC, and a knighthood for services to scholarship in law. His boundless personal generosity has won him a host of friends and admirers everywhere, but he has never lost sight of, or touch with, Scotland in either academic or political terms. He is one of the most distinguished Scots of his generation.

His first major contribution to computer science was to invent the notion of a proof assistant whereby one could give the computer the structure of the proof via so-called tactics, and have it carry out the details.  His Calculus of Communicating Systems (CCS) was one of the first to demonstrate the power of a small formalism tuned to a particular area, in contrast to a large mathematically unwieldy programming language. His next major contribution was pi-calculus, a language which has been extremely influential in the scientific study of mobile computation and has also found numerous applications e.g. in languages for the worldwide web and for computer security protocols. He is the fourth most cited author in computing science according to the NEC citation index.  Robin Milner is one of the world’s leading computer scientists, developing and applying mathematical logic. His contributions to computer science have been enormous.