Master’s Notes
The year has been one of good progress with the aims we have set ourselves, punctuated by some wonderful highlights and yet tinged by the sadness of the death in service of a member of the Governing Body The untimely death of Professor David Mason, a serving member of the Governing Body as a Fellow by Special Election, was a real blow. David truly loved the College and gave it exceptional commitment. A full obituary appears elsewhere in this Record, together with comments from colleagues. I simply repeat here what I said at his Memorial Service: “David always thought Pembroke was distinctive in having a tender heart as well as keen minds. I believe he was right: that does indeed capture the essence of Pembroke. Having a tender heart and a keen mind also captures the essence of David.” As to particular highlights, we had much to celebrate on the academic side of the College. We learned the wonderful news that Dr Helen Small had won the 2008 Truman Capote Award, believed to be the largest prize in the world for literary criticism. Helen received this for her book The Long Life, which examines old age in literature and moral philosophy ranging from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams and others, and from Shakespeare’s King Lear through to Balzac and Dickens and more recent writing by Philip Roth and J M Coetzee. This is a great feather in her cap and was one of two outstanding academic achievements in
the University during the past year singled out by the Vice-Chancellor in his recent Oration to Congregation. Our warmest congratulations go to Helen. Other academic achievements of our Fellows are referred to elsewhere in this Record. We have a high calibre and extremely interesting group of Fellows. Last year we reported the good news of having secured the permanent endowment of a new Fellowship in Chinese Studies; and we have now welcomed the first incumbent, Dr Hilde De Weerdt. Hilde has already made a major impact in the University and in the College as a distinguished scholar of Chinese history and Tutorial Fellow for our substantial cohort of students reading Chinese. We are delighted that the Nuffield Professorship of Anaesthetic Science, which is associated with Pembroke but had been vacant for a few years, has been filled by Professor Irene Tracey; and as a result she has become a Professorial Fellow of the College. Irene is an international leader in the use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to determine which brain regions are responsible for the different aspects of pain perception and the selective modulation of these regions via pharmacological or behavioural means. She leads a large team in Oxford of clinical and non-clinical scientists, funded by the Medical Research Council and other bodies. The Governing Body was also very pleased to elect as an Official Fellow and member of Governing Body our Chaplain,
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