Dr. Adrian Dixon is stepping down from his post as master of Peterhouse, the oldest college at the University of Cambridge, according to a report posted by the Telegraph.
Dixon has served the college since June 2008 -- and is only the second medical master in the college's history. He will be replaced in July by Bridget Kendall, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent. Kendall will be the first female master of the college.
Dixon graduated in medicine from King's College in 1969 and pursued general medicine in Nottingham before specializing in radiology. After stints in pediatric radiology at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital and in CT at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, he became a radiology lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1979.
His areas of special interest are abdominal and musculoskeletal CT and MRI. He developed practice guidelines as chair of the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) Guidelines Working Party from 1993 to 1998, and co-edited the fifth edition of Diagnostic Radiology -- A Textbook of Medical Imaging. He served on the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) from 1999 to 2002, as editor of Clinical Radiology from 1998 to 2002, as warden of the faculty of clinical radiology of the RCR from 2002 to 2006, and as MR clinical guardian to the U.K. Department of Health from 2004 to 2007.
In 1998, he was elected as a founding fellow of the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences, one of very few radiologists to be so recognized. He received the President's Medal of the RCR in 2007 and the Barclay Prize of the British Institute of Radiology (BIR) in 2008.
Peterhouse will only benefit from Kendall's appointment, Dixon said in the Telegraph report.
"Bridget will bring to the college her exceptional skills in communication and knowledge of international affairs," he said. "She also provides an outstanding role model for students and young academics alike."
