London - The Nobel Prize winner who sparked outrage with his "joke" about women in science yesterday resigned from a senior position within the Royal Society and from an honorary professorship.
Sir Tim Hunt had found himself condemned as "crass, rude and openly sexist" after telling the World Conference of Science Journalists: "Three things happen when [women] are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry."
Sir Tim later insisted his remarks were meant to be "light-hearted".
After the Royal Society, where Sir Tim is a fellow, sought to distance itself from his remarks, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner resigned from its Biological Sciences Awards Committee.
In a statement accepting Sir Tim's resignation, the Royal Society said: "His comments have no place in science."
The resignation followed Sir Tim's decision to relinquish his unpaid honorary professorship in University College London's faculty of life sciences - where his wife, Professor Mary Collins, served as dean from 2009 to 2014.
The Independent