Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt resigns from Royal Society post after sexist comments

Nobel Prize winner and fellow of the Royal Society Sir Tim Hunt has apologised for causing offence and resigned from the Biological Sciences Awards Committee of the Royal Society and an honorary professorship at UCL after sexist statements he made in a recent speech sparked outrage among the scientific community.

Speaking at an event ahead of the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, Sir Hunt reportedly stated that the “trouble with girls” in the laboratory environment is that “you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry”.

Sir Hunt added “I’m in favour of single-sex labs”. His comments were published on Twitter by Connie St Louis, a Director of studies in Science Journalism at City University, London, who was attending the event. Ms St Louis said that the event was “utterly ruined” by the sexist comments.

“Nobody was laughing, everybody was stony-faced,” she said in an interview with the BBC. “The Korean female scientists who hosted us looked aghast and he just ploughed on for about five to seven minutes. It was culturally insensitive and it was very sexist.

“I just thought, ‘Where in the world do you think you are that you can be making these kind of comments in 2015?’”. Ms St Louis was among around 100 guests in attendance at the lunch in South Korea on Monday 8th June.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir Hunt said he is “really sorry that I caused any offence” and that it was “a very stupid thing to do in the presence of all those journalists”, but admitted that he “did mean” what he had said.

“I just meant to be honest, actually”. With regard to his remark about women crying, he stated “It’s terribly important that you can criticise people’s ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth”.

He also said “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field”.

Sir Hunt stressed that his earlier comments were intended to be “light-hearted” and “ironic” but had been “interpreted deadly seriously by my audience”. He has subsequently been criticised by several leading members of the scientific community.

Former chief scientific adviser to the president of the European Commission Professor Anne Glover said in a statement “Tim Hunt seems to have been speaking about his personal problems in relating to women.

“What he describes is not my experience and I have never had a student (male or female, straight or gay) cry when their research was criticised. Maybe it has something to do with the way you criticise. I hope his attitudes regarding women are largely confined to a former generation”.

Chief executive of the British Science Association Imran Khan called Sir Hunt’s comments “careless” and stated: “Sadly, dealing with sexism and other forms of discrimination are a daily reality for many people, and I imagine it’s hard to find Sir Tim’s comments funny if you’ve been held back by systemic bias for years – whether those remarks were intended as a joke or not”.

Sir Hunt won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on cell division and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1991. The Royal Society were quick to distance themselves, releasing a statement that said “Sir Tim Hunt was speaking as an individual and his reported comments in no way reflect the views of the Royal Society”.

“The Royal Society believes that in order to achieve everything that it can, science needs to make the best use of the research capabilities of the entire population. Too many talented individuals do not fulfil their scientific potential because of issues such as gender and the Society is committed to helping to put this right”.

Several critics called for the organisation to take action against Sir Hunt after reports of the comments initially surfaced, including fellow fellow of the Royal Society Professor Dorothy Bishop, a professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.

“I have no doubt that, nice guy as everyone confirms he is, he does his best not to be overtly prejudiced, but he clearly has a view of women that just makes him inappropriate in these roles,” she stated.

Professor Bishop urged the Royal Society to remove Sir Hunt from committees that influence and make decisions on appointments, fellowships and policy. “If this were done, and a public statement issued to that effect by the Royal Society, this would demonstrate their seriousness about diversity”.

It was announced on Thursday 11th June that Sir Hunt had contacted the Royal Society offering to resign from its Biological Sciences Awards Committee; his resignation has been accepted. The Royal Society said that Sir Hunt now recognises that his earlier comments were “unacceptable”.

In a statement on their website, the Royal Society said “Sir Tim Hunt’s recent comments relating to women in science have no place in science,” but also noted that “Sir Tim Hunt has made exceptional contributions to science” and “over the years he has also supported the careers of many young researchers.

“It is the great respect that he has earned for his work that has made his recent comments so disappointing”. The Royal Society affirmed their commitment to “helping to put this right”.

On Wednesday 10th June University College London confirmed that Sir Hunt has resigned from his position as Honorary Professor with the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences. “UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality”.