A theological student at Birkbeck when the First World War was declared, Clements enlisted early in the University and Public Schools Brigade, which later merged into the Royal Fusiliers. Injured while on guard duty at Arras by a stray wire, he wrote poetry during his recuperation. He later published his poems in Salisbury Plain and Other Poems. His style was along more heroic and romantic lines than the more cynical war poets that are lauded today, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon – though at the time it was more fashionable to revere great sacrifice on behalf of the “Motherland.” Having been recognised with the Military Cross for gallantry in 1918, Clements died five months later during the Battle of Amiens. 

Ramsay MacDonald was one of three founders of the British Labour party. Before going into politics, he studied for a scientific career at Birkbeck, but ill health interrupted his examinations and changed the course of his life. He remained a lifelong advocate of Birkbeck’s mission to educate working people.  

In 1894 he became a member of the Independent Labour Party and, later, Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee. When the Labour party formed, he was elected Labour MP for Leicester and became party leader. He took on the prime ministerial position after a vote of no confidence in the Conservative government in 1924 led King George V to call on MacDonald to form a minority government. This was short-lived but he again became prime minister five years later.  

He presided over some of the most turbulent years in British history, including the Great Depression and the rise of German Nazism. He was criticised for abandoning the Labour government to lead a National Government formed mostly of Conservatives in 1931 and for his pacifism in the face of the Hitler regime, but more recently scholars have praised his astute decision-making and socialist policies. 

Professor Philip Dewe was Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the Department of Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck. Having joined the College from Massey University in his native New Zealand in 2000, for 11 years Professor Dewe also gave outstanding service to Birkbeck as Vice-Master, stepping down from the role in summer 2014. 

Philip was a much-loved member of the Birkbeck community for many years.  He drove the Stratford project while also acting for many years as head of department for Organizational Psychology.  Despite his busy role, Philip made time for everyone, and greatly inspired those who knew or worked with him. 

Patrick Blackett was an accomplished British scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1948. He joined Birkbeck to head the physics department and to run his own laboratory.  

Although he was only at Birkbeck between 1933 and 1937 (when he left for a Chair at the University of Manchester), these were important years for him as a scientist and a leftist commentator. For Birkbeck, Blackett’s appointment would have been a major coup, especially since he brought with him a sizable grant from The Royal Society part of which was used to design an electromagnet. The largest magnet in the UK, “Josephine” weighed 11,000 kilos and was originally used to “study the energy spectrum of the cosmic rays”. It was so unwieldy that a wooden hut had to be constructed on the land set aside for building Malet Street.  

Along with J. D. Bernal, Aldous Huxley, and Leonard Woolf, Blackett organised the “For Intellectual Liberty” group, a popular front movement aiming to publicize the difficulties experienced by German Jews. He also established with Bernal the Academic Assistance Council, which continues today under its new name of Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), aiming to assist academics fleeing tyrannical regimes. 

Birkbeck has been at the forefront of work to improve the quality of life for women with breast cancer through evidence-based research into the best ways to reduce anxiety and depression. 

Professor Nazanin Derakhshan led this work through Birkbeck’s Building Resilience in Breast Cancer (BRiC) Research Centre until recently, a centre she founded in 2015 after her own diagnosis of breast cancer. The Centre has helped many women who have been in direct contact with it to address some of the emotional challenges of breast cancer, and it has also reached thousands more indirectly through an ever-growing community of breast cancer survivors who have benefited from the Centre’s immensely influential research and continue to build their own mutually-supportive networks.