John Humphrey Plummer Professor

The John Humphrey Plummer Professorships were established in 1931 from a bequest of £200,000 under the will of John Humphrey Plummer, an estate agent of Southport, to the University of Cambridge for the advancement of science. The fund has been used to endow a series of professorships in various scientific fields under a number of titles.

John Humphrey Plummer Professors

Colloidal Physics

• 1930–1931 Sir Eric Rideal

Colloid Science

• 1931–1946 Sir Eric Rideal
• 1947–1966 Francis Roughton

Mathematical Physics

• 1932–1944 Sir Ralph H. Fowler
• 1946–1958 Douglas Hartree

Theoretical Chemistry

• 1932–1953 Sir John Lennard-Jones (elected Principal of the University College of North Staffordshire, later Keele University, in 1953)
• 1954–1967 Christopher Longuet-Higgins

Physics

• 1960–1971 Sir Brian Pippard (elected Cavendish Professor of Physics in 1971)
• 1972–1984 Sir Sam Edwards

Biophysics

• 1970–1981 Sir Alan Hodgkin (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963)

Applied Numerical Analysis

• 1976–2001 Michael J. D. Powell

Cell Biology

• 1983–2002 Sir John Gurdon (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012)

Magnetic Resonance

• 1987–1999 Ray Freeman

Theoretical Physics

• 1993–2009 Michael Green (elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009)

Developmental Biology

• 2001–2008 Sir Jim Cuthbert Smith

Chemical and Structural Biology

• 2001–2017 Sir Chris Dobson (elected Master of St John's College in 2007)

Physics of Materials

• 2004–2014 Ullrich Steiner

Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Medicine

• 2018–present Mihaela van der Schaar