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Honorary Fellow Sir Kenneth Calman (right) with RSS President David Hand (photo: Clive Sherlock)

Sir Kenneth Calman received his Honorary Fellowship of the Society on Tuesday 27 October.

It was awarded for his “contributions to enhancing public health through better use of official statistics and cancer registers in addressing health inequalities and for his encouraging wider user involvement to influence work on official health statistics for the Statistics Commission.”

Honorary Fellowships recognise the contribution by individuals of great eminence working in fields related to statistics, who are not members of the statistical profession.

Much of Sir Kenneth's career has been in medicine. He was a member of the Statistics Commission from 1999 until 2007. He is a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and President of the Institute of Medical Ethics.

The RSS bestowed the award in June but Sir Kenneth, who is chancellor of Glasgow University, had been unable to attend the 2009 awards event.

Accepting the honour, Sir Kenneth recounted that his interest in statistics started in 1964, and had progressed ever since. He'd come to the RSS event from the Cancer Research Institute, which has just commissioned a giant database.

He explained that as Chancellor at Glasgow he needed a coat of arms. As a member of the Bakers Guild he'd chosen a wheatsheaf - now he had a second reason for that motif.