Congratulations to Univ Fellows Professor Tamsin Mather, Supernumerary Fellow in Earth Sciences and Professor of Earth Sciences, and Professor Laura Herz, Supernumerary Fellow in Physics, who have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society.

Each year, the Fellows of the Royal Society elect around 90 new Fellows, each of whom have made “a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science”. The Royal Society is the UK’s national academy of sciences and the oldest science academy in continuous existence, and being elected a Fellow is an extremely prestigious honour. Amongst its most celebrated fellows are Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, Stephen Hawking, and Inge Lehmann. Professor Tamsin Mather and Professor Laura Herz are two of the nine University of Oxford researchers elected this year.

Professor Laura Herz

Professor Laura Herz

Professor Herz’s research interests lie in the area of organic, inorganic and hybrid semiconductors, with a strong current focus on advanced materials for solar energy conversion. Her work explores a range of scientific themes, including fundamental light-matter interactions, charge-carrier dynamics, energy transfer, bio-mimetic light-harvesting, molecular self-assembly, nanoscale electronic phenomena and interfacial effects. Through collaboration with industrial and academic partners, she works towards translating these insights into highly efficient and durable renewable energy solutions.

Laura has received several awards for her research, including the Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division Mid-Career Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics and the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Bessel Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has been listed by Clarivate Analytics as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2018. Laura is also a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Professor Tamsin Mather – photo Kristjan Karlsson

Professor Tamsin Mather

Tamsin Mather’s research centres on volcanoes and is motivated by understanding them as hazards, resources and agents of local to planetary-scale environmental change or maintenance. She has established novel ways in which the chemistry occurring in or near high-temperature volcanic vents influences the wider environmental impacts of fuming/erupting volcanoes. Further, she uses key lessons from present-day volcanic emissions to reinterpret signals left deep in Earth’s geological record, unlocking new insights into the potential links between large-scale magmatism and past crises such as mass extinctions.

Tamsin won the 2018 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, is a member of the Academia Europaea and a Geochemical Fellow. She has been an advocate for equality and diversity throughout her career and believes passionately in communicating science to wider audiences. Her activities include sitting on several advisory committees for government and venture capital, participating in numerous science festivals, TV and radio programmes and collaborating on several children’s books. Her debut trade book Adventures in Volcanoland was published in 2024.

View Professor Mather’s profile interview.

Published: 17 May 2024

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