Psychologist whose 50-year study transformed attitudes to people with Down’s syndrome

In 1964, Janet Carr, a clinical psychologist, was asked to work on a follow-up study of 54 six-week-old babies with Down’s syndrome at the Maudsley hospital in London. Initially Carr, who has died aged 92, was going to track the children only until they were four, but it became one of the longest follow-up studies in the world.

In 2014, a party was held at the House of Lords to celebrate the study running for 50 years. Chris Oliver, the director of the Cerebra centre for neurodevelopmental disorders at Birmingham University, commented: “The longest follow-up studies we have are usually five to seven years. So that 50-year follow-up is absolutely remarkable.”

Renowned Welsh physicist whose work helped to forge Britain’s reputation as a global leader in climate science

The late 1980s marked a key moment for environmental science, matching triumph with looming disaster. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had been observed since the late 1950s, at the remote Pacific observatory of Mauna Loa, but it was only after three decades of further research that concern over what this rapid accumulation of greenhouse gases might mean reached the desks of the world’s leaders.

At the time, politicians appeared receptive to scientific warnings in a way they rarely have been since. In 1987, world governments concluded the Montreal protocol, which still stands today as probably the most successful environmental intervention, phasing out the use of the ozone-depleting chemicals that had threatened to destroy the planet’s protective atmospheric layer.

Pioneering musician, whose songs Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally were among the most flamboyant of the rock’n’roll era, has died aged 87. We look back over his life and career

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