Honorary Fellows: Professor Michael Payne

Mike Payne has made an outstanding personal contribution to the development of the Institute’s membership among students. In 1998 Mike took a personal initiative to recruit all Cambridge Natural Sciences students into IOP which involved collecting all the necessary data and, most importantly, paying the full subscriptions from his his share of the royalty payments from his CASTEP software package. He continued to do this until the Institute introduced free e-membership for students. During this period Mike recruited approximately 4,000 student members, many of whom have retained their membership. 

The example set by Mike Payne was used by IOP to encourage other departments to recruit their entire intake to the extent that within 3-4 years the majority of departments were following the example and many were including student membership of IOP in their prospectus to attract students.