On the advice of the Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II has awarded a Civil List Pension to Prof. Myron W. Evans, Director of the Alpha Foundation for Advanced Study (AIAS) in recognition of his contributions to science. The Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society kindly encouraged the appointment and the two Chief Executives communicated during the process. Dr. Myron Evans is the only "pure chemist" ever to have been appointed to the British Civil List. Michael Faraday was a physicist (in today's terms) rather than a chemist although the Faraday Society was later dedicated to physical chemistry and chemical physics. Other notable scientists appointed to the Civil List include James Joule, who had no formal training, and was in today's terms an engineer; Robert Brown, who was the botanist who discovered the Brownian motion; Airy, the Astronomer Royal, a physicist; and last but not least the great Michael Faraday. This is a high honour granted to few British scientists. Only two or three other leading British scientists have been awarded a Civil List Pension: these include the father of classical electrodynamics, Michael Faraday, (1797 - 1867), who was awarded a Civil List Pension in 1836, and James Prescott Joule, (1818 - 1889), the father of thermodynamics, awarded a Civil List Pension in 1878. In the arts, notable recipients of a Civil List pension include Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth. Prof. Evans was born in 1950 and was educated at Pontardawe Grammar School and University of Wales Aberystwyth, and is the author of some seven hundred papers and monographs in chemistry and physics. He is Harrison Memorial Prizewinner and Meldola Medallist of the Royal Society of Chemistry, sometime Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College Oxford, University of Wales Fellow and SERC Advanced Fellow, formerly an IBM Research Professor at IBM Kingston New York and a visiting scientist at Cornell Theory Center. He has made many contributions to both chemistry and physics, and has recently completed Einstein's work of 1925 to 1955 in the development of a unified field theory sought after by physicists for four hundred years. This achievement has been universally recognised worldwide in the past two years. He becomes the only British scientist currently on the Civil List. "I am most grateful to everyone who supported my appointment, and I regard the honour as one for the AIAS group as a whole, and for all my former students and colleagues" ~ Dr. Myron Evans A royal decree
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Award of Civil List Pension to Prof. Myron Wyn Evans