Academics of the University of Cambridge

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS (, German: [hans ˈʔaːdɔlf ˈkʁeːps] ; 25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that extracts energy from food and oxygen and makes it available to drive the processes of life. He is best known for his discoveries of two important sequences of chemical reactions that take place in the cells of nearly all organisms, including humans, other than anaerobic microorganisms, namely the citric acid cycle and the urea cycle. The former, often eponymously known as the "Krebs cycle", is the sequence of metabolic reactions that allows cells of oxygen-respiring organisms to obtain far more ATP from the food they consume than anaerobic processes such as glycolysis can supply; and its discovery earned Krebs a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953. With Hans Kornberg, he also discovered the glyoxylate cycle, a slight variation of the citric acid cycle found in plants, bacteria, protists, and fungi.
Krebs died in 1981 in Oxford, where he had spent 13 years of his career from 1954 until his retirement in 1967 at the University of Oxford.

Donald Delbert Clayton (March 18, 1935 – January 3, 2024) was an American astrophysicist whose most visible achievement was the prediction from nucleosynthesis theory that supernovae are intensely radioactive. That earned Clayton the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1992) for “theoretical astrophysics related to the formation of (chemical) elements in the explosions of stars and to the observable products of these explosions”. Supernovae thereafter became the most important stellar events in astronomy owing to their profoundly radioactive nature. Not only did Clayton discover radioactive nucleosynthesis during explosive silicon burning in stars but he also predicted a new type of astronomy based on it, namely the associated gamma-ray line radiation emitted by matter ejected from supernovae. That paper was selected as one of the fifty most influential papers in astronomy during the twentieth century for the Centennial Volume of the American Astronomical Society. He gathered support from influential astronomers and physicists for a new NASA budget item for a gamma-ray-observatory satellite, achieving successful funding for Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. With his focus on radioactive supernova gas Clayton discovered a new chemical pathway causing carbon dust to condense there by a process that is activated by the radioactivity.Clayton also authored a novel, The Joshua Factor (1985), a parable of the origin of mankind utilizing the mystery of solar neutrinos; a science autobiography and a memoir; and a history of the origin of each isotope, Handbook of Isotopes in the Cosmos (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).
Clayton died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 88.

Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso GCIH (19 September 1930 – 24 June 2008) was a Brazilian anthropologist and a member of the faculty of philosophy, letters and human sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP). She was the wife of 34th president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and First Lady of her country between 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2002. She too was a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of São Paulo.
As professor and researcher Cardoso taught at the Latin American College of Social Sciences (Flacso/Unesco), University of Chile (Santiago), Maison des Sciences de L'Homme (Paris), University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University (New York City). She was an associate member of the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge. With her husband, the sociologist and former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, she founded and later directed the research institute Cebrap (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento – Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning), which continues to be a leading site of social science research in Brazil.Dr. Cardoso's academic reputation rests primarily on a series of highly influential articles and book chapters on popular movements and political participation that she published in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Dr. Cardoso, Cebrap created Brazil's first research group on social movements, helping to legitimate formal academic study of the "new" (non-class) social movements that had emerged in the 1970s. At the same time, she was careful to stress the limits of identity-based and popular movements for political transformation, noting the divisions among them and their frequent dependency on clientelistic relations with the state and political parties.
Unlike many academics, Dr. Cardoso also had the opportunity to put some of her theories into practice after her husband was elected president. She transformed the traditional charity approach of other first ladies with her Comunidade Solidária (Solidary Community) programs that stressed the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in state-society partnerships. In addition to executing concrete social programs, Comunidade Solidária also facilitated broad discussions of important social topics, from agrarian reform to the legal status of NGOs, publishing the results of these dialogues. Anthony Hall of the London School of Economics told the BBC after her death that she was instrumental in developing the plan to bundle various social programs together in the way that has become characteristic of the successful Bolsa Familia social program. She published a book about these experiences, Comunidade Solidaria: Fortalecendo a Sociedade, Promovendo O Desenvolvimento (Comunitas, 2002). She transformed the Comunidade Solidaria into an NGO, Comunitas, after her husband left office.

She died in São Paulo on 24 June 2008, after suffering a cardiac arrest. She had been discharged from the Sírio-Libanês Hospital the previous day, 23 June 2008, having previously been admitted with chest pains.