Leicester cosmic explosion expert among exceptional scientists elected as Royal Society Fellows

A scientist who studies the Universe’s largest and brightest explosion is to become a bright light himself, as he receives one of science’s highest honours.

Professor Nial Tanvir from the University of Leicester has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences. 

An expert on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most luminous and violent explosions known to science, Professor Tanvir studies the most distant objects in the universe, peering back in time to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.  In 2017, he and colleagues discovered a slower type of explosion known as a kilonova created by the first neutron star merger to be detected by its gravitational wave emissions, thus opening up the new field of multi-messenger astronomy. 

In 2019 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him its prestigious Herschel Medal for investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics.  

Professor Nial Tanvir FRS from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester said: "It is both a delight and honour to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. I already feel lucky that my career has allowed me to spend time exploring the Universe, and particularly its most powerful explosions, so this recognition is quite humbling.  I'd like to add that nearly all the work I have done has involved large teams of researchers, both in Leicester and around the world, so I am naturally immensely grateful to all my collaborators who have been essential to any scientific successes that I have had."

Professor Tanvir joins a number of distinguished figures associated with the University of Leicester to be honoured with the Fellowship of the Royal Society, including current Fellows Professor Ken Pounds (Physics & Astronomy), Professor Stan Cowley (Physics & Astronomy) and Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys (Genetics).

Over 90 outstanding researchers from across the world have this year been elected to the Fellowship. This year’s cohort include trailblazers across a wide range of fields, from artificial intelligence and electron microscopy to global health and neuroscience. Among them are a public health expert working to prevent HIV in young women, a Nobel Prize winner whose team created the transformative AI model, AlphaFold, an immunologist whose work has led to new insights into how the immune system can distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes, and the first Sudanese scientist to be elected to the Fellowship. 

Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said: 

“It is with great pleasure that I welcome the latest cohort of outstanding researchers into the Fellowship of the Royal Society. 

“Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament to the power of curiosity-driven research and innovation. 

“The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.” 

The Fellows and Foreign Members join the ranks of Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Dorothy Hodgkin. 

Statistics about this year’s intake of Fellows: 

• 25% of this year’s intake of Fellows, Foreign Members and Honorary Fellows are women. 
• New Fellows have been elected from more than 20 UK institutions, including The University of Hull, the National Physical Laboratory, University of Dundee and Google DeepMind. 
• They have been elected from countries including, South Africa, China, Switzerland, Singapore and Malaysia.