Apple’s Chief Design Officer awarded Professor Hawking Fellowship

Honorary Fellow Sir Jonathan Ive has been awarded the Professor Hawking Fellowship by the Cambridge Union Society.

Sir Jonathan is the second recipient of the award, which was created last year to recognize contributions to STEM fields and social discourse.

Varsity reports that Charles Connor, Cambridge Union Society President for Michaelmas 2018, described Sir Jonathan as one of the “most influential individuals in modern technology”. He speculated that Sir Jonathan’s lecture in Michaelmas term would include “reflection on his career, split with a more general reflection on technology and design as a whole”.

Sir Jonathan read Industrial Design at Newcastle Upon Tyne Polytechnic, now Northumbria University. Shortly after graduating in 1989, he co-founded the London-based design consultancy Tangerine. In 1992 he moved to the United States and joined Apple’s headquarters, where the founder Steve Jobs subsequently referred to him as "his creative partner".

Now Apple’s Chief Design Officer, Sir Jonathan leads the team that has been credited with introducing elegance, purity and beauty to the design of personal computers. Sir Jonathan was made a Knight Commander (KBE) in 2013 for services to design and enterprise. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in 2016.