Justice Edwin Cameron is the Inspecting Judge of the South African Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services and was previously Justice of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

Justice Cameron is an outstanding human rights lawyer who has made and continues to make a huge contribution to international jurisprudence and the protection of equality and human rights.

Edwin has provided regular support for Birkbeck’ ICPR prisons research since providing a foreword to a report and delivering the annual ICPR lecture: ‘Do prisons work? If not, do prisons inspectorates do more harm than good?’ (18 January 2022)

Openly gay since the early 1980s, he was the first and is still the only senior African official to state publicly that he is living with HIV/AIDS, and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as one of South Africa’s new heroes. Edwin has been a tireless campaigner for equality for LGBTQ people and people living with HIV/AIDS. He drafted the country’s Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium (a national affiliation of non-governmental organizations), and founded and directed the AIDS Law Project. This, with other work, helped secure the express inclusion of sexual orientation in the South African Constitution.

Douglas Dakin was a British historian, academic and professor emeritus of Birkbeck. He was only 32 years old when war was declared and had just published Turgot and the Ancien Régime in France (1939), which reviewers had hailed as “one of the best studies of French eighteenth century history to come from England in many a moon”.

His research interests then moved to Greece, especially the revolution of 1821-29. When war was declared, Dakin had joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and then served in Egypt and Greece as a liaison officer to the Royal Hellenic Air Force. During the “Dekemvriana” or the 3^rd of December event, in which police fired into a crowd of ELAS (the Greek People’s Liberation Army) demonstrators in Syntagma Square, Athens, Dakin was arrested. However, his love of English democracy and his persuasive argumentative style resulted in him converting an ELAS colonel to support the British.

Dakin’s time in Greece, in which he was probably a British agent although he was later described as an “anarchist of the right”, led him to shift much of his intellectual interests after the war to modern Hellenic studies. It was a field in which he subsequently became a world-expert.

In 2011 Dickon Edwards commenced a part-time degree in English Literature at Birkbeck. He had already enjoyed a career in the music industry in the 1990s and had written the world’s longest-running online diary. But he was now a ‘classic Birkbeck student’, being around 40 years old and seeking the second chance to do a degree which had not been possible earlier in life.

Perhaps one reason for this was that he experienced dyslexia and dyspraxia, which had never been diagnosed until the Birkbeck Disability Office did this during Dickon’s first year. As a result of these diagnoses, Dickon received support which continued throughout his studies. Notwithstanding these challenges, Dickon’s commitment to study saw him through his BA degree with the prize for the best finalist.

He also received the Stephen Thomson Prize, awarded to students who had experienced adversity. In 2015 he proceeded to undertake the MA Contemporary Literature & Culture and was ultimately awarded the prize for the best finalist on this degree too.

Finally, Dickon completed a rare ‘treble’ of Birkbeck degrees in a decade by undertaking a PhD between 2017 and 2021. His thesis concerned Ronald Firbank and the Legacy of Camp Modernism. While researching the thesis, Dickon applied for government funding from the CHASE consortium, which Birkbeck had just joined, and he was given one of these immensely competitive awards to support him while he completed his studies. Indeed, Dickon was the first ever CHASE-funded Birkbeck student to complete the PhD. Dickon’s story reflects his own qualities of intelligence and scholarly dedication. But it is also a very Birkbeck story, an example of how the mission of the College could provide a platform to a gifted student who had faced adversity, and give them a second chance at the blessings of education.

Sir Derek Barton was a British chemist and is considered one of the greatest chemists of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was appointed Reader in Organic Chemistry at Birkbeck and in 1953, at the early age of 35, as Professor.

His studies revealed that organic molecules have a preferred three-dimensional form from which their chemical properties can be inferred. This research earned him the 1969 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, shared with Odd Hassel of Norway.

Barton’s scientific works in organic chemistry spanned 58 years and ranged over vast areas of the subject. He set himself a target to publish 1,000 research papers before the age of 80, and remarkably, but not surprisingly, achieved his goal.

Denis Healey was a British Labour politician and President of Birkbeck from 1993 to 1999, contributing significantly to the life of the College during that time.

Lord Healey was Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 under Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. He became deputy party leader in opposition, under Michael Foot, in 1980. His keen intellectual brain and sharp wit marked him out as a giant of British post-war politics.

Lord Healey took up the honorary role of President of Birkbeck in 1993. Professor David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck, said: “He was a great friend and supporter of Birkbeck and passionately believed in the power of education to transform lives. He will be greatly missed.”

David Ruebain is a law professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Culture, Equality and Inclusion at the University of Sussex. He is also an adviser to the football premier league on equalities, diversity and inclusion, the former director of legal policy at the equality and human rights commission and has been in the top 25 most influential disabled people in the UK.

In 2019, David joined Birkbeck as a Visiting Professor in the School of Law, continuing his interests in the intersection of law and policy, particularly relating to equality and human rights.

He has said: “issues are predominantly structural, by which I mean they are not only to do with behaviours, but are related to systemic arrangements, contexts and histories, which are often common across sectors.”

Bohm was one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century and contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. It was said that Einstein called him his “spiritual son”.

He was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck in 1961, where he remained until he retired in 1987. Bohm laid the foundations for the modern understanding of plasma, the gas of ions and electrons, and developed a mathematical formula to explain how, as free particles, electrons could coordinate their movements. He argued that quantum theory predicted “entanglement”: two entangled particles appear to have a “direct interaction between them” irrespective of their distance apart.

An early systems thinker, Bohm blamed fragmented thinking about the problems of the environment for the “destruction of forests and agricultural lands”, deserts, and “the melting of the ice caps”. He lamented the fact that too many scientists believed that the solution could be found only in the study of ecology. He died too soon (in 1992) to be recognised for the Nobel Prize in physics.

An outspoken pacifist during the interwar years, C. E. M. Joad was head of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at Birkbeck during the 1930s.

While at Birkbeck, Joad played a leading role in The King and Country debate. The motion, debated on Thursday 9 February 1933, was “that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”  His ardent pacifism resulted in political controversy, and he became unpopular with many who were trying to encourage men to enlist as soldiers to fight for their country.

Joad was also involved in the National Peace Council, which he chaired, 1937–38. With his two books, Guide to Modern Thought and Guide to Philosophy, he became a well-known figure. He also appeared on The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio wartime discussion programme.

Costas Douzinas LLB (Athens) LLM PhD (London) is a Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

Costas joined the Department in 1992 and was Head of Department from 1996 to 2002. Costas was educated in Athens during the Colonels’ dictatorship where he joined the student resistance. He left Greece in 1974 and continued his studies in London, where he received his Master’s in Law and PhD degrees from LSE and, in Strasbourg, where he received the degree for teachers of Human Rights. He taught at Middlesex, Lancaster and Birkbeck where he was appointed in 1992 as a member of the team which established the Birkbeck School of Law.

Costas has argued that the human rights as enacted in law do nothing to tie ethics to justice. As he expressed it in The End of Human Rights (2000), “a law without justice is a body without a soul and a legal education that teaches rules without spirit is intellectually barren and morally bankrupt”.

The eminent statistician, economist and champion of the arts and sciences, Claus Moser was a Governor and later Fellow of Birkbeck, and a strong supporter of the College. In recent years he took a keen interest in the work of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism (now the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism), based at Birkbeck.

Claus and his family moved to the UK from Germany in 1936 to flee persecution from the Nazis. He had been offered a place at the London School of Economics when, in 1940 he, his father and brother were interned for three months as enemy aliens. Most of their fellow internees were cultured German or Austrian refugees from Nazism.

Claus Moser became an assistant to a professor of mathematics who spent his time conducting a survey of the inmates, and it was from this that his love of statistics was born. After being released and serving in the Royal Air Force, he began his academic career at the London School of Economics, going on to specialize in social statistics.

Lord Moser was made a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB) in 1973 and a life peer in 2001.