Penelope Endersby

Education and early career Endersby grew up in north London with an engineer father, who worked for British Gas, and a mother who was a full-time homemaker folllowing a degree in classics at Oxford. She was privately educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, Elstree. She studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and was an undergraduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge. She remains an associate of Newnham. Here she became interested in materials science and metallurgy. She was sponsored by British Gas, researching fuel cells.

Research and career After graduating, she joined the Royal Armament and Research Development Establishment in 1993.

She holds visiting professorships at University of Southampton in computer science and at Exeter University in Physics and the Environment.

One of the first engineers chartered to the Institute of Physics (IoP), Endersby joined the council of the IoP in 2017.

Endersby was appointed chief executive at the Met Office in December 2018, the first woman to fill that role.

In 2021 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and awarded the British Computer Society medal for her outstanding contribution to green technology.

Endersby was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to meteorology, defence science and technology. and a member of their Executive Council. As UK delegate to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast she was elected president (the first female in the role) in 2023.

Personal life Endersby is an expert choir singer. A member of the St Peter’s Singers, she has also recorded with The Farrant Singers, Chamber Choir, Salisbury.

A lay canon, Endersby is the first Canon Scientist at Exeter Cathedral. She is chair of the Dartmoor Steering Group