The biotech company Camilla Simpson leads, Zehna Therapeutics, is at the early stages of research into the links between the microbiome and heart and kidney disease. She says, “When the clinic was researching cardiovascular disease, they found that a microbial metabolite was present in many cases of these diseases. As such, we are now targeting the pathway that produces the metabolite so we can shut it down and therefore potentially prevent the progression of cardiovascular diseases and chronic kidney disease.”

Coming from a medical family, Camilla has striven to make people’s lives better through furthering medical research. She graduated with a Master’s in Analytical Chemistry in 1994, having already completed two undergraduate degrees in science and chemistry. Her Birkbeck studies gave her the confidence she needed in public speaking to really create a platform for women in science, technology and mathematics.

Now living in the United States, Camilla advises or sits on the board of multiple biomedical research companies.

Having struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, dyspraxia and discalculia all his life and leaving school without full qualifications, Brooke Johnson applied to Birkbeck’s part-time BSc in Geology to pursue his ambition after disheartening experiences working in a call centre.

Brooke, a working-class student from Newcastle, excelled at Birkbeck once he got the diagnosis and support he needed, graduating with first class honours in 2015.

Since then, he has gone on to post-doctoral study and tutoring in earth sciences at the University of Oxford and has volunteered extensively with widening access programmes to help other working-class students develop a passion for geology and get into higher education.

He is now a sedimentary geology researcher at the University of Liège, Belgium.

Academic Registrar at Birkbeck for 30 years, Brian Harwood retired in 2008 and was then elected as a Fellow. He notably recalled the challenge of fighting government funding cuts through the 1980s, a situation that recurred more than once during his tenure.

Brian said that what made him stay so long at Birkbeck was recognising the value of adult education on students: “They were admirable – they were mature, the great majority of Birkbeck’s students had jobs, they did not have time to waste and they were business-like and courteous.”

During his time, the student body increased threefold. He established Birkbeck’s disability service, a vital department supporting students with disabilities, both visible and invisible and ensuring they were able to study without hindrance. The disability service continues to provide ongoing student support today

A lifelong equalities campaigner and former President of Birkbeck, Baroness Betty Lockwood was born in West Yorkshire in 1924. Her early educational experiences prepared her well for the presidency of Birkbeck, which she held from 1983-1989.

After studying at Eastborough Girls School, she continued her studies at night school. Then, with the support of a Mary Macarthur scholarship for working women, she read economics and politics at Ruskin College, Oxford.

In 1978, she was made a life peer. Her parliamentary roles included Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975-83 and deputy Speaker of the House of Lords from 1990-2007.

Sir Bernard Crick was the founding professor of Birkbeck’s Department (later School) of Politics and Sociology in 1971.

Crick’s three early books, The American Science of Politics (1958), In Defence of Politics (1962) and The Reform of Parliament (1964) established his reputation. His best known work was George Orwell: A Life, published in 1980. Crick established the annual Birkbeck Orwell Lecture and the Orwell Prize for political writing.

For Crick, politics was “ethics done in public”. His aphorism was another way of saying that he was an enthusiastic advocate of the unity of theory and practice. The entire raison d’être of academic politics was to forge an engaged citizenry.

Crick retired from Birkbeck in 1984, moving to Edinburgh where he was appointed Honorary Fellow of the University. His enthusiasm for active citizenship led him to the educational plans for citizenship studies in school curricula, appointed to this task in 1997 by his former Sheffield student David Blunkett, then the Secretary of State for Education. He also devised education programmes for immigrants in UK citizenship and tests for candidates seeking British naturalisation. He was knighted in 2002.

The celebrity painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, was a staunch advocate for the arts and famous for his enthusiasm for reviving British history painting on vast canvases in the first half of the nineteenth century.

He gifted his wooden palette to Birkbeck in gratitude for “opening their doors to him when every other institution had the moral cowardice to close them”, which is still on display in the Blue Corridor in Malet St.

Haydon became well known as a lecturer, teaching art at Birkbeck in 1835. His classes were popular, often attracting hundreds of people, including one in which he brought along a model to pose nude for the duration of his lecture on the subject of the nude in art. He campaigned vigorously for the wider appreciation of art, contending that governments had a responsibility to buy works of artistic merit and to allow the general public, as opposed to patrons and connoisseurs only, to view them.

Pimlott joined the Department of Politics and Sociology in 1981 and, during his two decades at Birkbeck, published distinguished biographies on Hugh Dalton, Harold Wilson, and the Queen. Pimlott’s aim was to communicate the importance of politics beyond the academy.

For Pimlott, writing was a “mechanism for revolution”. His sensitivities towards the political sensibilities of the wider British public were revealed in the immediate aftermath of the death of Princess Diana. When Number Ten telephoned him in panic, asking “what can we do? what is the mood?”, Pimlott is reported to have responded “’we could call her the People’s Princess’, which was … what he had called Princess Elizabeth in The Queen”.

When Tony Blair used those words in his address to the nation, they became the touchstone for a nation in mourning.

Barbara was professor of English literature at Birkbeck from 1970 to 1989, specialising in nineteenth century literature. In 1962, Hardy was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy for her monograph The Novels of George Eliot.

In 1988 she delivered the British Academy’s Sarah Tryphena Phillips Lecture in American Literature and History. In 1997, she was awarded the Sagittarius Prize by the Society of Authors for her novel London Lovers.

Barbara was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1997, and a Senior Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2006.

B.S. Johnson is a legendary ‘underground’ figure: an ‘experimental’ novelist whose work is only now being recognised and celebrated for its ground breaking and provocative originality.

Johnson studied a pre degree level course in English, Latin and History at Birkbeck in 1955/6 whilst working at Standard Oil. His first novel was published in 1963, but it was later works, such as The Unfortunates (1969) that perhaps best show Johnson’s innovations with form: the book was published in a cardboard box, and readers could read it in more or less any order. Receiving early accolades from Samuel Beckett, Johnson went on to establish his reputation both nationally and internationally. He worked across diverse fields of cultural production: active in film making, TV, theatre and acting as poetry editor of Transatlantic Review. Johnson won the Eric Gregory Award in 1962 and the Somerset Maughan award in 1967. As he predicted, his fame came posthumously- Jonathan Coe’s biography (2004) certainly helped establish Johnson’s reputation. His worked has since been turned into films, has provided the focus for conferences and has also been celebrated musically, Luke Haines’ 2001 album being a good example of Johnson’s continuing cultural reach.

Scholars in English and law at Birkbeck have worked on, are working on- and publishing on Johnson’s work.

Born in Hammersmith, Johnson was from a humble background (his mum was a barmaid and his dad a stock keeper). He remained proud of his working class roots, and working class culture- and saw no contradiction between this and his interest in European and avant garde traditions. Birkbeck enable Johnson to get a degree (he actually graduated from Kings). As Coe’s biography shows, studying literature was central to Johnson’s career as a novelist and a poet. Johnson is evidence of the ‘Birkbeck effect’– a figure of international and ongoing cultural importance. He exemplifies the way in which Birkbeck encourages creativity, and provides a trajectory for those who have vision and talent to realise their trajectory.

Hiley is a British quantum physicist and professor emeritus of the University of London.

Hiley is known for his work with fellow scientist David Bohm, co-authoring the book The Undivided Universe with Bohm, which is considered the main reference for Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory.

In 1961 Hiley was appointed assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Bohm had taken the chair of Theoretical Physics shortly before.  Hiley wanted to investigate how physics could be based on a notion of process, and he found that Bohm held similar ideas. Hiley worked with David Bohm for many years on fundamental problems of theoretical physics.

In 1995, Basil Hiley was appointed to the chair in physics at Birkbeck. He was awarded the 2012 Majorana Prize in the category The Best Person in Physics for the algebraic approach to quantum mechanics and furthermore in recognition of ″his paramount importance as natural philosopher, his critical and open minded attitude towards the role of science in contemporary culture”.