Professor Hugh Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, received the Lister Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry at a public lecture at the Kings Conference Centre, Old Aberdeen, on Friday 20 November at 17.30.
Professor Pennington’s Lister Award Lecture was titled ‘Learning Lessons is Hard; Making Predictions Difficult’. He will discuss in particular, E. coli outbreaks and influenza pandemics, and how the treatment of these has been influenced by evolution and history. The lecture was free and open to the public. The Lister medal is named after Sir Joseph Lister, the British surgeon who first introduced antisepsis into hospital routine and pioneered the field of bacteriology in the late 19th century. The medal was first awarded to Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, in 1944, and has subsequently been awarded a further 14 times to eminent scientists working at the interface of chemistry and medicine.
Professor Pennington held the Chair of Bacteriology at Aberdeen from 1979 until his retirement with Emeritus status in 2003. As a high profile researcher in the field of bacteriology, an expert consultant to government on microbiology and food safety and a frequent public spokesperson on bacterial infection, he is a worthy successor to Sir Joseph Lister.
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