Lifetime Achievement Award
There was no one more delighted and surprised at London's Dorchester Hotel on November 23 last year than Lewis Elton when it was announced that he had won the inaugural Times Higher Lifetime Achievement Award.
Our judges - the barrister and Labour peer Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws and Bernadette Porter, former vice-chancellor of Roehampton University - had been won over by Professor Elton's ability to remain at the cutting edge of educational research over a career spanning more than half a century.
"I have to say that the last thing on my mind during my life would have been the thought that I would be rewarded one day for having lived it," said Professor Elton this week.
"But six months since my Times Higher Lifetime Achievement award is time enough to reflect on it, particularly as I am constantly reminded by the trophy on the mantelpiece and the all too frequent repeats of my picture," he added.
"Helena Kennedy's remark that I 'had reinvented myself over the years' is right, although I had never thought of it that way. It was a pure pleasure to discover that Helena knows me better than I know myself."
John O'Leary, editor of The Times Higher , will join Baroness Kennedy and Dr Porter to judge this year's award.
To make a nomination, visit www.thes.co.uk/awards