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Kathy Willis awarded Michael Faraday Prize

Professor II Kathy Willis has been awarded the Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture for 2015 from the Royal Society (UK) for her outstanding work in science communication

The front cover of the book Plants - From Roots to Riches alongside a photo of Kathy Willis outside Kew Gardens and a picture of Michael Faraday and the Faraday Medal
The cover of Kathy's book that accompanied her radio programme, with Kathy outside the greenhouse at Kew Gardens and pictures of Michael Faraday and the Faraday Medal

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The Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture is a highly prestigous award from the UK's pre-eminent scientific society. It is awarded annually to "the scientist or engineer whose expertise in communicating scientific terms in lay terms is exemplary". Kathy's richly deserved award reflects, in part, her outstanding BBC Radio series last year 'Plants - From Roots to Riches' and its accompanying book.

The prize is named after the pioneering physicist and chemist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) who did much to communicate science to the public in mid-Victorian England.

Previous winners of the prize include the natural historian Sir David Attenborough, astrophysicists Jocelyn Bell Burnell (who gave a Horizons talk in Bergen in 2014) and Brian Cox, biologists Richard Dawkins and Colin Blakemore, and the palaeobiologist Richard Fortey.

The EECRG are very proud of Kathy's great achievement. Congratulations!