Glittering prizes

Manic Street Preacher Nicky Wire has been awarded an honorary fellowship by the University of Wales, Swansea, as a "much-lauded contributor to the modern British music scene".

Ravinder Maini, director of the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology in West London, and Marc Feldmann, a research immunologist at the institute, have been awarded the Crafoord Prize for developing new therapies for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The prize, awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for research in areas not covered by the Nobel prizes, consists of a gold medal each and $500,000 (Pounds 300,000) between them.

The Geological Society has made the following awards: The Wollaston Medal goes to William Fyfe, at the University of Western Ontario; the Lyell Medal to Derek Briggs, University of Bristol; the Murchison Medal to David Green, Australian National University; the William Smith Medal to Denys Brunsden, University of London King's College; the Coke Medal to Colin Graham, University of Edinburgh; the Aberconway Medal to Gordon Gluyas, Lasmo plc; the Sue Tyler Friedman Medal to James Secord, University of Cambridge and the R H Worth Prize to Geoffrey Cox. The society's Wollaston Fund goes to John Underhill, University of Edinburgh; the Lyell Fund to Robert Holdsworth, University of Durham, and the William Smith Fund to Kevin Hiscock, University of East Anglia. President's Awards go to Eliza Calder, Geological Survey of Chile, Temuco, and James Hilton, University College Cardiff.

Shortlisted for the 1999 James Tait Black Memorial Prizes, Scotland's oldest book awards, are, for fiction: Julia Blackburn, The Leper's Companions; David Dabydeen, A Harlot's Progress; Michael Frayn, Headlong; Christopher Hart, The Harvest; Timothy Mo, Renegade or Halo2. Shortlisted for biography are: Gillian Darley, John Soane: An Accidental Romantic; Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment; Kathryn Hughes, George Eliot: The Last Victorian; Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life; Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography. The prizes, each worth Pounds 3,000, are awarded annually.

The University of Sussex this week awards honorary degrees to: Bob Copper, Sussex folk singer, (MA); Max Kochmann, chairman of the support group for the German-Jewish Centre at the university, (DUniv); Humphrey Spender, photographer and designer, (DLitt); George Poste, chief science and technology officer at SmithKline Beecham, (DSc).