John Humphrey Plummer Professor

The John Humphrey Plummer Professorships were established in 1931 from a bequest of £200,000 under the will of John Humphrey Plummer, an estate agent of Southport, to the University of Cambridge for the advancement of science. The fund has been used to endow a series of professorships in various scientific fields under a number of titles.

Colloidal Physics

 * 1930–1931 Sir Eric Rideal

Colloid Science

 * 1931–1946 Sir Eric Rideal
 * 1947–1966 Francis Roughton

Mathematical Physics

 * 1932–1944 Sir Ralph H. Fowler
 * 1946–1958 Douglas Hartree

Theoretical Chemistry

 * 1932–1953 Sir John Lennard-Jones (elected Principal of the University College of North Staffordshire, later Keele University, in 1953)
 * 1954–1967 Christopher Longuet-Higgins

Physics

 * 1960–1971 Sir Brian Pippard (elected Cavendish Professor of Physics in 1971)
 * 1972–1984 Sir Sam Edwards

Biophysics

 * 1970–1981 Sir Alan Hodgkin (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963)

Applied Numerical Analysis

 * 1976–2001 Michael J. D. Powell

Cell Biology

 * 1983–2002 Sir John Gurdon (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012)

Magnetic Resonance

 * 1987–1999 Ray Freeman

Theoretical Physics

 * 1993–2009 Michael Green (elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009)

Developmental Biology

 * 2001–2008 Sir Jim Cuthbert Smith

Chemical and Structural Biology

 * 2001–2017 Sir Chris Dobson (elected Master of St John's College in 2007)

Physics of Materials

 * 2004–2014 Ullrich Steiner

Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Medicine

 * 2018–present Mihaela van der Schaar