Honorary Fellows, Benefactors and notable alumni | Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

Sir Kenneth Olisa OBE (Natural Sciences, SPS and Management 1971) and his wife Julia made gifts of over £2 million to support the College’s new Library & IT Centre – which is known as 'The Olisa Library'. Ken started his career with IBM and Wang before setting up listed technology merchant bank Interregnum and – more recently – Restoration Partners.

Ken served as the first British-born black director of a FTSE-100 company (Reuters) and on the Boards of major companies including Open Text, ENRC, Huawei (UK) and Interswitch. His charitable passions include President of London homeless charity Thames Reach (for which he received an OBE), Chair of welfare to work charity Shaw Trust, and founding Chair of the Aleto Foundation, which supports future leaders from tough reality backgrounds.

His wider public service roles have included inaugural membership of the Postal Services Commission and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. In 2015 Her Majesty the Queen appointed Ken as her Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London. He was knighted in the 2018 New Year’s Honours for services to business and philanthropy.

Lady Julia Olisa is an alumna of Homerton (1971) and Newnham (1974) Colleges, where she studied Education. She has a Masters degree in Educational Psychology (London), and a Diploma in Specific Learning Difficulties (Kingston).

Early in her career, Julia specialised in the field of dyslexia, working across the primary and secondary school sectors. At London University’s Institute of Education, she assessed and supported dyslexic students, trained teachers, and was a member of teams researching aspects of early literacy development.

Since 2006, Julia has run a literacy service for users of the homelessness charity Thames Reach. The provision of support for adults with inadequate reading and writing skills across the whole sector is inadequate. In recognition of this need, Julia and colleagues from Crisis set up a charitable trust in 2019, Literacy100, to share and promote good practice throughout the UK. This is now the focus of her professional life.

Peter Selman (Economics 1991) made a gift of £1 million, split between bursaries to support undergraduates of limited means who might otherwise be discouraged from applying to the University, and teaching in Economics. Peter, who is based in New York, made the gift through the donor-advised fund.

Chris Xie (Engineering 2006) donated US $1.4 million in 2016, the majority of which was allocated to support Engineering students through the Fitzwilliam Engineers' Fund. The remainder was allocated towards general College use. After working in high frequency trading in London, Chris established hedge fund TianYan Capital in Shanghai.

Nobel Prize winners

The College counts six Nobel Prize winners among its alumni.

2015 - Sir Angus Deaton (1945- ) joined Fitzwilliam as an undergraduate in 1964, undertook his PhD here, and was a Fellow of the College from 1972 to 1976. He is an Honorary Fellow of the College. He is Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Department of Economics, Princeton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics – The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 2015 – for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.

Professor Deaton gave the Foundation Lecture, on The Wellbeing of the World: Global Patterns of Health, Wealth and Happiness, in November 2010.

2001 - Joseph Stiglitz (1943- ) was born in Indiana and came to Fitzwilliam College in 1965 as a Fulbright Scholar. He became a professor at Yale and Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia University. Stiglitz (with George Akerlof and Michael Spence) was awarded the 2001 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information. He is an Honorary Fellow of the College.

1984 - César Milstein (1927-2002) joined Fitzwilliam College in 1958 from the University of Buenos Aires, researching a second PhD (obtained in 1961) and working in the Cambridge Department of Biochemistry. The 1984 Nobel Prize (shared with Georges Köhler and Nils Jerne) was for the discovery of the principle for the production of monoclonal antibodies.

1945 - Sir Ernst Boris Chain (1906-1979) was a German refugee and biochemist, whose PhD studies were made possible by a Fitzwilliam House maintenance grant. Chain completed this second PhD at Cambridge in 1935, and a subsequent collaboration with Howard Florey led to the world’s first practical antibiotic drug. The 1945 Nobel Prize was awarded (to Chain, Florey and Alexander Fleming) for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.

1937 - Albert von Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986) came to Fitzwilliam College from Hungary as a PhD student in 1928; and received his PhD in 1929. He received the 1937 Nobel Prize for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion process with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid.

1932 - Charles Sherrington (1857-1952) joined Fitzwilliam as an undergraduate to study Physiology in 1879, continued his studies at Gonville and Caius, and went on to be elected an FRS in 1893. The 1932 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to him and Edgar Adrian (later Chancellor of the University) for discoveries regarding the functions of neurons.