News

Honours for Religion, health and the garden of Eden

(7 April 2003)

The Bishop of Durham, a top British cancer specialist and the Chief Executive of the Eden Project meet up at the University of Durham in the summer to receive honorary degrees.

Rt Rev Michael Turnbull, Sir Paul Nurse and Mr Tim Smit will receive their honorary degrees from Sir Peter Ustinov, Chancellor of the University on Friday 4 July in Durham Cathedral.

The ceremonies take place during the annual three-day period of summer Congregations when about 3,000 newly-graduating students receive their degrees.

Sir Kenneth Calman, Vice-Chancellor said, “Honorary degrees are the University’s way of recognising special contributions to the wider community. In this case: a Bishop who has given personal service to the University as its official Visitor, as well as to the people of the Durham diocese and the region as a whole; a very distinguished figure in medical research, and one of our own graduates who has produced one of the environmental marvels of modern times. We look forward to celebrating their expertise and accomplishments.”

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Notes for editors

• On 4 July Rt Rev Michael Turnbull’s degree will be conferred at the 9.00 am ceremony, Sir Paul Nurse’s at 11.00 am and Mr Tim Smit’s at 2.00 pm. More details will be issued in a media operations note nearer the day.
• See below for biographical summaries on all three men.
• The University has already announced degrees to be conferred on Sir Nick Scheele and Peter Mimpriss and is due to confer other honorary degrees to be announced later.

Further information:
Claire West, Public Relations, tel: 0191 334 6074 or Keith Seacroft, Head of Public Relations, tel: 0191 334 6077

Biographical details

DD Rt Rev Michael Turnbull
• Bishop of Durham 1994-2003
The Bishop of Durham is also the Visitor of the University, in addition to his pastoral and leadership roles in the Church. Bishop Michael retires in 2003 after nine years at Durham, and before that, six years as Bishop of Rochester. He was Chairman of the “Turnbull Commission” which reorganised the National Institutions of the Church of England and subsequently was Chairman of the Archbishops’ Council’s Ministry Division. In Durham he has been responsible for take the Diocese into a new era of Clergy deployment and pastoral delivery. He has been active in the House of Lords as the lead bishop on constitutional affairs and has been prominent in the movement towards regional government in the North East.

He is a graduate of Oxford University, trained for ordination in Durham, was Chaplain at York University and has an honorary D.Litt from the University of Greenwich. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Chad’s College, Durham.

DSc Sir Paul Nurse
• Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine
Sir Paul Nurse is one of the outstanding British Scientists of the Late Twentieth Century, with a career spanning thirty years. He is best known for his contribution to the discovery of the mechanism which controls cell division in most living organisms, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2001. He has also been awarded the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize and Medal, as well as sharing the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. He is currently the Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, and prior to this spent six years as the Director General of Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He is also head of the Cell Cycle Laboratory at the CR-UK London Research Institute, where research has greatly enhanced the understanding of the nature of cancer cells. At the end of this year he will step down from CR-UK to become President of the Rockefeller University in New York. He received a knighthood for services to cancer research and cell biology in 1999 and his work has brought him a reputation as one of the world's leading scientists: according to the Sun newspaper he is 'the David Beckham of Science'.

DCL Timothy Bartiel Smit • Co-founder and Chief Executive of the Eden Project
After graduating at the University of Durham in Archaeology and Anthropology, Tim Smit started a successful career in the record business. In 1987 he moved to Cornwall, where he stumbled upon his first major project, the restoration of a forgotten Victorian estate internationally known as ‘ The lost gardens of Heligan’, which now attracts 300,000 visitors each year. His next venture was the Eden Project, also hailed as the eighth wonder of the world, which contains two ‘biomes’. These – the world’s biggest greenhouses - are honeycomb domes, more than 150 feet high containing whole ecosystems of trees and plants from all over the planet. The project has hosted already 1.5 million visitors since its official opening and is becoming an important employer in Devon, Cornwall and parts of Somerset. With the Eden Project, Tim Smit wants to give visitors a greater understanding of the world’s environmental problems by learning how plants underpin the very basis of life. He received a Special Award in the South West Region Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2001.