Professor Michael Wooldridge elected Fellow of the Royal Society

27 May 2026

Our warmest congratulations to Professor Michael Wooldridge, Hertford fellow and Ashall Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, who is one of twelve Oxford researchers to have been elected Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, in recognition of his exceptional contribution to advancing scientific knowledge.

Over 90 outstanding researchers from across the world have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. This year’s cohort includes pioneers and leaders across a range of scientific fields, from astronomy and cancer research to mathematics and biotechnology.

Election to the Fellowship is one of the highest honours in the scientific world, with new Fellows joining the ranks of Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Dorothy Hodgkin.

Professor Wooldridge says,

‘When I started my academic journey as a PhD student in 1989, I could never have imagined that my journey would take me to Oxford, still less that my work would be recognised with this accolade. But for me, this most prestigious of awards is also recognition of the importance of the field of multi-agent systems, of which I am truly proud to have been a founder.’

In other news, Professor Wooldridge’s latest book Life Lessons from Game Theory: The Art of Thinking Strategically in a Complex World was published on 21 May, looking at the history of game theory and its present-day practical applications.

‘Game theory is relevant to every situation in which self-interested parties interact with each other,’ he says, adding, ‘It is surprising how many global events can be explained by a relatively small number of game theoretic models.’

Read the recent Guardian interview to find out more about this and Professor Wooldridge’s wider work.

 

Portrait image credit: Paul Wilkinson