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President of the Australian Academy of Science, Laureate Professor Emeritus, The University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne School of Chemistry, Bio21 Institute (Laureate Professor Emeritus);
Imperial College Department of Chemistry (Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow);
Former CSIRO Fellow.

Professor Andrew Holmes AM PresAA FRS FTE is President of the Australian Academy of Science, and a Laureate Professor Emeritus of the School of Chemistry at The University of Melbourne. In October 2004 he was appointed ARC Federation Fellow and inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at The University of Melbourne and at CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies. Professor Holmes has been recognised for his groundbreaking work on light-emitting polymers. He has also been the recipient of a long list of awards including the Royal Society’s Royal Medal and the Descartes Prize. He was elected to the Academy in 2006 and served as Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014, when he became President of the Academy.

Andrew Holmes was as an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne, a PhD student (with Professor Franz Sondheimer) at University College London and Royal Society European Postdoctoral Fellow at the ETH-Zürich (with Professor A. Eschenmoser). He was appointed to a Demonstratorship at Cambridge in 1972 where he remained for thirty-two years, ultimately as Professor of Organic and Polymer Chemistry and Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis. During that time he was the beneficiary of collaborative research grants funded by the European Commission.

Experience

  • 2009–2015
    Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow, Imperial College London
  • 2009–2014
    Laureate Professor of Chemistry & CSIRO Fellow, University of Melbourne & CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering

Education

  • 2011 
    University of Oxford, DSc (by incorporation)
  • 2011 
    University of Oxford, MA (by incorporation)
  • 2010 
    Universiteit Hasselt Belgium, Dr (h.c.)
  • 1997 
    University of Cambridge, ScD
  • 1973 
    University of Cambridge, MA
  • 1971 
    University College London, PhD
  • 1967 
    University of Melbourne, MSc
  • 1964 
    University of Melbourne, BSc

Honours

AM