Alkis Seraphim Memorial Lecture
History of the Lecture
Alkis Seraphim was accepted by Selwyn College to read Natural Sciences in 1978 and in 1980 he took Part 2 Biochemistry. In February 1981, whilst returning from a weekend in Paris, he was killed in a car crash in Northern France.
To commemorate his life and career his parents, George and Claire Seraphim, established the Alkis Seraphim Memorial Lecture to enable the Department of Biochemistry to host leading figures from around the world in the fields of cellular and molecular biology.
List of Lecturers since inception
1982 Sir John Gurdon, FRS: "Future pathways in the molecular biology of development”
1983 Sir Walter Bodmer, FRS: "Molecular genetics of the HLA System"
1984 Dr George K. Radda, FRS: "From molecules to man: a look inside the cell by NMR”
1985 Professor R.A. Laskey, FRS; "Chromosome replication"
1986 Dr Max Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS: "Haemoglobin as a receptor of drugs and peptides"
1987 Dr Sydney Brenner, CH, FRS: "Molecular genetics of complex organisms"
1988 Sir Aaron Klug, FRS: "From DNA to chromosome"
1989 Professor G. Schatz: "How cells build their membranes"
1990 Dr Hugh B. Pelham, FRS: "How cells secrete proteins"
1992 Sir Tim Hunt, FRS: "The role of cyclins and cell division kinases in the control of the cell cycle"
1993 Professor Sir David Weatherall, FRCP, FRS: "The molecular basis for the clinical diversity of inherited diseases"
1994 Professor Philip Cohen, FRS: "The map kinases cascade; a signal transduction pathway of relevance to several major diseases"
1995 Professor John Bell: "The genetics of common disease"
1996 Professor David Lane: "Regulating and replacing suppressor gene function with small synthetic molecules: design of an active synthetic suppressor protein"
1997 Professor Thomas Lindahl, ICRF, London: "DNA Decay and Repair in Mammalian Cells"
1998 Professor Christopher Higgins, Director, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, London: "ABC Transporters, Channels and Channel Regulators”
1999 Professor Andrew Wyllie, Head, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge: "Cancer and Cell Death"
2000 Dr Simon Campbell, formerly Head of Discovery, Pfizer Worldwide: "Science, Art and Drug Discovery - a Personal Perspective"
2001 Dr Venki Ramakrishnan, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge: "Insights from the atomic structure of the 20S ribosomal subunit and its interactions with antibiotics"
2002 Professor Christer Betsholtz, Department of Medical Biochemistry, University of Goteborg: "Developmental roles of platelet-derived growth factors
2003 Professor R. (Bob) Edwards, FRS: "Molecules, embryos and ethics in human IVF today"
2005 Professor Mike Stratton, Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute: "Large Scale Searches for Somatic Mutations in Human Cancer"
2006 Professor Dame Louise Johnson, FRS, Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford: "Structural Biology of Cell Cycle Signalling through Protein Kinases"
2007 Professor Athel Cornish-Bowden, CNRS Institute of Structural Biology and Microbiology, Marseilles: "Closing the metabolic circle: towards an understanding of life"
2008 Professor Dr. Robert Huber FMRS, Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry: "A molecular basis of proteolysis and its regulation"
2009 Professor Julian Downward, FRS, Cancer Research UK: "Exploiting the defective wiring of cancer cells for the development of targeted therapies"
2010 Professor Gerard Evan, FRS, Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge: "Deconstructing cancer"
2011 Professor Kim Naysmyth, FRS, Department of Biochemistry, Oxford: "How do cells establish and maintain sister chromatid cohesion?"
2012 Professor Marc Vidal, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School: "Interactome Networks and Human Disease"
2016 Professor Karen Vousden, CBE, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci, Chief Scientist Cancer Research UK, Director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, "Serine metabolism in cancer – new therapeutic possibilities?"
2017 Professor Andrew Fire, Professor of Pathology and Genetics, University of Stanford, California: "Opportunistic RNAs and Acquisitive Genomes"
2018 Professor Lewis Cantley, Meyer Director and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Centre, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York: "PI 3-Kinase and Cancer Metabolism"
2019 Professor Philip A. Beachy, Ernest and Amelia Gallo Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine and Professor of Urology, Developmental Biology and Chemical and Systems Biology: "Hedgehog signaling: regeneration, malignancy, and regulation by membrane cholesterol redistribution"
2024 Frances Arnold, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology: "Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life"
2025 Professor Ben Lehner, Head of Generative and Synthetic Genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute: "Mutate Everything! Mapping the energetic and allosteric structures of proteins at scale"