Alec Broers, Baron Broers

The Right Honourable
The Lord Broers
Sir Alec Broers, then President of the Royal Academy of Engineering (far left), and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (centre) welcome Dr Hitoshi Narita as fellow of the Academy in 2002.
Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge
In office
1996-2003
Chancellor HRH The Duke of Edinburgh
Preceded by David Glyndwr Tudor Williams
Succeeded by Alison Richard
Personal details
Born 17 September 1938 (1938-09-17) (age 73)
Calcutta, India
Alma mater Geelong Grammar School
Melbourne University
University of Cambridge

Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, Kt, FRS, FREng (born 17 September 1938) is an Anglo-Australian electrical engineer.

Broers was born in Calcutta, India and educated at Geelong Grammar School and Melbourne University in Australia, and then University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College) in England.

He then worked in the research and development laboratories of IBM in the United States for 19 years before returning to Cambridge in 1984 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering (1984–96) and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1985–90). He is a pioneer of nanotechnology.

Broers subsequently became Master of Churchill College, Cambridge (1990–96) and Head of the Cambridge University Engineering Department (1993–96). He was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1996–2003, knighted in 1998 and created a life peer in 2004, as Baron Broers, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire. Lord Broers is Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords and was President of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2001 to 2006.

In September 2008, Lord Broers took over from Sir David Cooksey as chairman of the board of directors at the Diamond Light Source, the United Kingdom's largest new scientific facility for 30 years.

Lord Broers has received more than twenty honorary degrees and fellowships from universities, colleges, and academic and professional institutions. He is a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and the American Philosophical Society.

Contents

Summary of important events of Lord Broers

See also

References

External sources

Academic offices
Preceded by
Hermann Bondi
Master of Churchill College
1990–1996
Succeeded by
John Boyd
Preceded by
Sir David Williams
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
1996–2003
Succeeded by
Alison Richard