Glittering prizes

David Atkinson , director of academic affairs at the Scottish Agricultural College, has been awarded a British Crop Protection Council medal.

The Society for General Microbiology has awarded the Fleming prize lecture to Ben Berks , a lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and Tracy Palmer , a project leader in the molecular microbiology department at the John Innes Centre.

The University of London has conferred honorary degrees on: Lord Briggs , historian, former vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex and former provost of Worcester College, Oxford; Mary Douglas , anthropologist and emeritus professor at University College, London; Sir Colin Dollery , senior consultant at SmithKline Beecham research and development and former dean of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School; Albie Sachs , member of South Africa's constitutional court; Sir Roger Gibbs , former chairman of the Wellcome Trust; and Muriel Spark , fiction writer, poet and literary critic.

Canterbury Christ Church University College is to make George Carey , the archbishop of Canterbury, an honorary fellow of the college.

St Andrews University will award honorary degrees to: Tam Dalyell MP; Sheena Wellington , the Fife singer who performed at the opening of the Scottish Parliament; Scottish businessman Ronald Alexander ; Peter Burt , governor of the Bank of Scotland; Sir Philip Ledger , principal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama; and Lord Patel , chair of the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland and a consultant and honorary professor at Ninewells Hospital.

George Gray , chemist and professor emeritus at the University of Hull, has been awarded an honorary degree by the University of Aberdeen .

Christopher Parsons , former head of the BBC's Natural History Unit, has been awarded an honorary degree by the University of the West of England .

Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh , has awarded an honorary degree to Clive Perry , director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre and a former professor of drama at the college.

John Venables , professor of physics at Arizona State University and honorary professor of physics at the University of Sussex, will next week receive an honorary degree from the Université de la Mediterranée in Marseille, France.