Honorary Fellowships

Honorary Fellows are persons, whether medically qualified or not, who have made notable contributions to ophthalmology. There should not be more than one hundred Honorary Fellows at any one time.

All members are invited to submit nominations for Honorary Fellowships each year. The award of Honorary Fellow is the highest accolade that the RCOphth can bestow, recognising individuals who have made a significant contribution to ophthalmology.

Nomination for Honorary Fellowship form

Individuals can be from any field of ophthalmic science, research and medicine or a member of the general public, so long as their work has inspired, contributed to or made an impact in the field of ophthalmology and the wider eye health sector. Generally, awards are made to one or two individuals each year.

The honour is conferred at the Admissions Ceremony held every year in September. A citation summarising the recipient’s achievement is delivered at the ceremony and edited versions appears in College News, or you can view a link to the citations against the Honorary Fellow name in the table below.

Honorary Fellows cannot vote or hold RCOphth office.

Our current Honorary Fellows

1990:

Michael J Roper-Hall

1992:

Wallace S Foulds CBE

1993:

Richard Keeler

Sir Terence English

1995:

Stephen M Drance OC

1996:

Jean Jacques de Laey

1997:

Lord Turnberg KBE

1998:

Alexander L Crombie

Björn Thylefors

Brian Martin

1999:

Eva M Kohner OBE

Sidney I Davidson

Sir Kenneth C Calman KCB

2001:

Michael D Sanders

Terry R Tarrant

William R Lee CBE

2002:

Alan Bird

George Borthwick CBE

Jean, Lady Wilson OBE

2003:

Desmond Archer OBE

Gordon Johnson

Gottfried O H Naumann

2005:

John Marshall

Alec Garner

Margaret Hallendorff MBE

2006:

Anthony Chignell MBE

Keith M Waddell

David Taylor

2007:

Anthony J Bron

2008:

Jeffrey L Jay CBE

2009:

John E Wright

Sohan Singh Hayreh

2010:

Paul A Hunter

Timothy John ffytche

2011:

Michael Brace CBE

Stanley Piers B Percival

2012:

Alistair R Fielder

2013:

Nicholas J Astbury

2014:

John Forrester

2015:

Brenda Billington OBE

2016:

Richard Collin

Allen Foster

2017:

Roger Hitchings

Harry Willshaw

2018:

Harminder Dua

Marcia Zondervan

2019:

Usha Chakravarthy

Carrie MacEwen

2020:

Professor Clare Gilbert

Professor Ian George Rennie

2021: 

Dr Santosh Honavar

Professor Sir Peng Khaw

2022:

Larry Benjamin RCOphth(Hon) 

Michael Burdon

David Spalton

2023:

Professor Sarah Ellen Coupland

Andrew Jacks

Fiona Spencer