A British Nobel laureate has branded plans by the University of Sheffield to cut jobs at his old chemistry school “completely insane”.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news,” said Richard J. Roberts, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1993, on recently announced proposals to cut about 20 per cent of posts at Sheffield’s renowned chemistry department where he took his undergraduate degree and PhD prior to moving to Harvard University and then Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
“Chemistry is one of the most fundamentally important subjects in science so cutting jobs at one of the UK’s best chemistry departments is totally crazy, completely insane,” said Roberts, who is one of four Nobel laureates to come from Sheffield’s chemistry department, where a building is named after him.
“There are no excuses for it,” he continued, adding: “If this is about a fall in student numbers then things can be done to make it more attractive. You shouldn’t resort to cutting hard at a place which is still recognised internationally for its research excellence.”
Speaking to Times Higher Education at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, a week-long scientific meeting in southern Germany which brings together Nobelists and young scientists, Roberts said he owed his scientific career to Sheffield, which was the only university willing to take him after he failed his physics A level.
