Glittering prizes

Sir Philip Dowson, who in December retired as president of the Royal Academy of Arts and has been a royal academician since 1979, has received an honorary doctor of art degree from De Montfort University.

Arthur Dimmock, president of the Southern Deaf Sports Association, is to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton.

The University of Birmingham has announced the following prizes: Rachel Haines, postgraduate student at the school of physics and astronomy, has won first prize in the annual Student Paper Competition at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Kenneth Harris of the school of chemistry has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Medal; Rex Harris has been awarded a Madame Curie-EC Fellowship; Stephen Kukureka of the school of metallurgy and materials has won an Engineering Foresight Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering; Michael Tobin of the school of education was awarded the Louis Braille Gold Medal by the International Braille Research Center; Mike Wise, director of teaching in the school of metallurgy and materials, has been awarded the T. B. Marsden Professional Award by the Institute of Materials. Five members of the medical school have been elected as fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences. They are: David Adams, Jayne Franklyn, Alasdair Geddes, David Kerr and Bryan Turner.