Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford Receives Honorary Doctorate from Tsinghua
By May Yu, Special to Tsinghua News Center
On April 22 2011, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford Andrew Hamilton received an honorary doctorate from Tsinghua University before the Tsinghua Centennial Celebrations.
This is Hamilton’s second visit to Tsinghua University since April 2010 where he delivered a speech for the “Tsinghua Global Vision Lectures” series. The Tsinghua Global Vision Lectures is a lecture series to nurture a more global perspective for students. Over the past three years, about 100 distinguished scholars, university presidents, vice-chancellors, senior government officials, and world-leading entrepreneurs have participated in the Tsinghua Global Vision Lectures and enlightened over ten thousand Tsinghua university students. Today, Hamilton delivered the 101st speech, titled “The Benefits of Globalisation for the World’s Best Universities” where he discussed the importance of international linkages in strengthening the school’s core competencies, whether it is student education or faculty research. He cites his visit to Tsinghua as an exemplar of an international engagement, where Tsinghua University President Gu and he signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance faculty and student exchanges between Tsinghua and Oxford for the years to come.
Professor Andrew Hamilton is both an internationally distinguished chemist, and a leader in higher education. Professor Hamilton, BSc, MSc, PhD, FRS, read chemistry at the University of Exeter. After studying for a master's degree at the University of British Columbia, he received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1980 and then spent a post-doctoral period at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. Prior to being the Vice Chancellor of Oxford, he has served as Provost of Yale from 2004 until October 2008. In addition to serving as Provost, he was Benjamin Silliman Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in Yale where he combined a wide-range of administrative duties with teaching and research. Professor Hamilton’s academic achievements have been widely recognised internationally. In 1999 he received the Arthur C Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, and in 2004 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2010.
(Photo by Guo Haijun)
