Salam, a pioneering Pakistani theoretical physicist, earned his PhD in Cambridge, UK. He made significant contributions to the field of particle physics and his groundbreaking work in electroweak unification theory earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, shared with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg. He played a crucial role in developing Pakistan’s scientific infrastructure, including founding the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and the Theoretical Physics Group. In 1964, he established the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, to support scientists from developing countries, and served as its director until 1993. In 1983, Salam also founded TWAS—the Third World Academy of Sciences, as it was originally known—and was a leading figure in the creation of a number of international centres dedicated to the advancement of science and technology. He was a Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and also a member of many other prestigious academies and societies in the world, among which the Royal Society (UK), the USSR Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and the Accademia dei Lincei (Italy).

Dasgupta is Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Univ. of Cambridge and fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Memberships include: fellow, British Academy and the Royal Society; member, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; hon. fellow, London School of Economics and Trinity College, Cambridge, for. hon. member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; for. assoc., US National Academy of Sciences; and for. member, American Philosophical Society and Royal Swedish Academy of Science. His honours include: Volvo Environment Prize (2002), John Kenneth Galbraith Prize of the American Agricultural Economics Association (2007), Zayed International Prize for the Environment (2011), Blue Planet Prize (2015), and Tyler Prize (2016). He was made Knight Bachelor in 2002, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by, among other universities, University of Bologna in 2012 and Harvard University in 2013.

Littlewood took a BA in 1976 and a PhD in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1980, with a one-year intermediate sojourn at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1980 he moved to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and remained as a member of technical staff to become head of the Theoretical Physics Research Department in 1992. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Physics, and from 2005 to 2010 he was head of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 2011 he became Associate Laboratory Director at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA, and in 2014 Laboratory Director, retiring in 2017. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and Trinity College Cambridge. He has extensive collaborations in India, at Bangalore, TIFR, and Kolkata. He has over 200 publications and six patents.

Professor Moncada’s scientific career began at the Royal College of Surgeons, where he was part of the team that discovered the mechanism of action of aspirin-like drugs, thus explaining how they act to relieve pain, control temperature, reduce inflammation and cause gastric damage. During his time at the Wellcome Research Laboratories he led the team that discovered thromboxane synthase and the vasodilator prostacyclin. This work is the basis for the understanding of how low doses of aspirin prevent cardiovascular cardiovascular disease and events such as heart attacks and strokes. In the 1980’s he discovered nitric oxide as a biological mediator, the mechanism of its biosynthesis and many of its biological functions. As Director of Research at Wellcome, he also presided over the work that resulted in the development of several new medicines, including Lamotrigine, Atovaquone, Somig and La