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”.

A luminary of the Arts who was regularly seen at Birkbeck’s theatre, Arthur Wing Pinero later became one of the most distinguished dramatists and stage directors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pinero first walked into the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution in Southampton Buildings in 1870. Although he signed up to four years of legal classes, his real reason for choosing Birkbeck was its magnificent theatre and unrivalled reputation for dramatic performances. Within only a couple of years, Pinero had won the College’s prize for dramatic technique.

Upon completing his legal training, Pinero accepted a job as actor in the Edinburgh Stock Company, first appearing at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh in 1874. Two years later, he returned to London with the Lyceum Company. He became a prolific dramatist, producing over fifty dramas, some of which had over 1,000 performances.

Today, Pinero’s plays don’t seem particularly subversive, but at the time they represented a seismic shift in theatrical theme and performance. Pinero’s “new women”, for example, were sexually liberated, politically astute, career-minded and edgy.

Annie Besant left a mark on Birkbeck in the late nineteenth century because the college discriminated against her on the grounds of her radical social politics. Besant had published The Gospel of Atheism in which she said that “ignorance … imagined the supernatural, and knowledge would bring all things within the reason of common sense”.

She was a leading advocate of birth control, a revolutionary idea for the time that made her a target for the authorities: she lost custody of her two children. The Birkbeck Committee, when it learned of who she was, failed to send her a “notice of the public distribution of certificates” and removed her name from their list of successful students. She protested vehemently and, with the backing of the Students’ Union, she won her case for having her name printed in the next syllabus “with an explanation as to its being an omission”.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith was a professorial research fellow at Birkbeck’s Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development. Before moving to Birbeck, she was Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at the Institute of Child Health.  She was an expert in developmental disorders, with a particular interest in Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body and also Down’s Syndrome.

Karmiloff-Smith argued against approaches that take a modality-specific approach to developmental disorders – approaches that state, for example, that autism arises because of a failure of the “theory of mind” module, or that children with specific language impairment lack a genetically determined “language module.”

Over forty years of research, she developed a new understanding of how genetic and environmental factors interact to give rise to different outcomes in individuals and said that developmental disorders should not be understood as “normal minus something broken”.

Karmiloff-Smith authored a number of books and academic articles, most notably Beyond Modularity in 1992 and Rethinking Innateness in 1996.

Andrew Bazeley is both a Birkbeck alum and a current student, having received his Master’s in Public Policy and Management in 2011 and presently studying Law. He was a Parliamentary Researcher in the House of Commons and has also led on two key Fawcett Society commissions, on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood and on Women in Local Government, as well as campaigns on equal pay, misogyny hate crime and lobbying for equality law to be fit for the 21st century.

As a Policy, Insight and Public Affairs Manager at the Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading gender equality campaign charity, Andrew has led the organisation’s projects, through from the research stage to parliamentary and stakeholder advocacy.

Before joining Fawcett, he spent three years working in Parliament and four working on policy and research in local government.

Husband and wife Andrew and Kathleen Booth transformed the field of computer science, working at Birkbeck as one of the smallest of the early British computer groups and building some of the first electronic computers, with their pioneering work still evident today.

Their best-known machine, the All-Purpose Electronic Computer, was designed in Birkbeck’s Computer Laboratory between 1947 and 1953. The team also created the ARC (Automatic Relay Computer), the SEC (Simple Electronic Computer), remarkable achievements given the size of the team and the resources it had access to.

Andrew often built the machines and Kathleen programmed them. Kathleen is credited as being one of the first female computer pioneers and built the first assembly language for computer programming; and Andrew’s magnetic storage devices and the multiplication algorithm, pioneered at Birkbeck, form the basis of modern-day computer technology.

Birkbeck’s expertise in computer science traces its roots back to the Computer Laboratory founded by Andrew Booth as a research assistant in J.D. Bernal’s Department of Crystallography.

Amr Sobhy is best known for his digital activist role in the Arab Spring of 2011. He co-created MorsiMeter, an online platform that documented and monitored the performance of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. He also co-founded PushBots, an Egypt-based start-up that helps apps garner user engagement through personalised push notifications.

A Chevening scholar, he graduated from Birkbeck in 2015 with a Master’s in Public Policy and Management, focusing on fact-checking trends and impact in his thesis.

He has been named by Forbes as one of the 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa and by Africa Youth Awards is named one of the Top 100 Influential Young Africans. He was nominated for the Data Journalism Award 2016 and has twice won the World Summit Youth Award.