From the stage to the boardroom, from Millbank to feminism, the NS celebrates the nation's most promising young (under 35) achievers

Scientist
Selected by: Susan Greenfield, director, The Royal Institution

Haimei Chen, 28. Science Graduate of the Year Award winner who's in the third year of her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Chen's research incorporates new design features into ruthenium compounds to target specific genes on the DNA of cancer cells - a new approach that could lead to the development of a new class of drugs to fight cancer.

Entrepreneur
Selected by: Martha Lane Fox, co-founder, lastminute.com

Lucy Lake, 29, head of CamFed, a UK-based charity dedicated to extending girls' access to education in Africa. Although it is not standard practice to nominate someone working in the charity sector, I feel strongly that charities should be run more like businesses. So does Lucy, who has helped to transform the revenues of this fantastic charity from a few thousand to a couple of million - allowing her and the team to improve the lives of hundreds of women in Africa.

Novelist
Selected by: Jason Cowley, New Statesman literary editor

Alain de Botton, 33. De Botton is not strictly a novelist. What he is, rather, is an essayist, with his own whimsical, idiosyncratic world-view. In six books - three novels, three of indeterminate form - he has established himself as a writer of elegance, wit and charm. There is no one else quite like him, in this country. I expect him one day to produce a great book.

Trade unionist
Selected by: Francis Beckett, former union president

Out of a strong field, I'm nominating the youngest ever official for the shop workers' union Usdaw, 23-year-old Joanne Thomas, an area official in Newcastle, does the grinding bread-and-butter work of unions: getting members out of prosaic but distressing bits of trouble, representing them at disciplinary hearings, trying to convince people that they are better off inside the union than out.

Pop musician
Selected by: Richard D Cook, New Statesman pop music critic

Ms Dynamite (real name: Niomi Daley), 22.

New mistress of British inner-city R&B. Kentish Town kid turned MC, she puts a genuine Anglo spin on an American pulse.

Actor
Selected by: Michael Granage, director, Donmar Warehouse

Claire Price, actress, 30 years old and already won the Ian Charleson Award for best actress under 30 in a classical role for her performance in Trevor Nunn's production of The Relapse.

Networker
Selected by: Carole Stone, networker

Joy McKenzie, 33, who set up the International Design Eco Awards three years ago, to promote ecological design and innovation worldwide.

Poet
Selected by: Adam Newey, New Statesman poetry editor

Tobias Hill, who, at the age of 32, has published three fine collections of poetry: Midnight in the City of Clocks, Year of the Dog and Zoo.

Advertising star
Selected by: Peter York, style guru and director, Brunswick

The most original and unusual advertising brain belongs to Crispin Jameson, 34, who heads Heresy, a group that, under the umbrella of the advertising company HHCL, never fails to surprise in a market where this is key to success.

Historian
Selected by: Antony Beevor, author, Berlin: the downfall and Stalingrad

Mary Laven, 32, for her book The Virgins of Venice; Lucy Moore, 32 for Amphibious Thing and The Thieves' Opera.

Feminist
Selected by: Yvonne Roberts, feminist and author

Dawn Butler, 32, regional organiser of the general workers' union GMB, responsible for 100,000 members, is black and was born in east London. Her long-term goal? To encourage a fundamental shift on race and equality issues over the next 20 years. She'll probably do it, too.

Tory politician
Selected by: Roy Hattersley, former Labour deputy leader

Much to my regret, it has to be Boris Johnson, 35. Whatever the medium in which he operates, he offers robust and often interestingly controversial opinions. I am told that he is neither in command of, or at his ease in, the House of Commons. These days, that is only a minor disadvantage. What matters is confidence and ideas. The Tory party lacks both. Johnson has an excess of one and at least a modicum of the other.

Labour politician
Selected by: Ann Widdecombe, Conservative MP

David Lammy, born 1972, an outstanding performer in parliament with an innate sense of good parliamentary conduct.

Lib Dem politician
Selected by: John Kampfner, New Statesman political editor

Nick Clegg, 35, is the nearest the Liberal Democrats get to a heart- throb. He's touted as a possible next leader, even though he's not yet an MP. He's a leading light in the Liberal group in the European Parliament. A very modern European, he's half-Dutch, married to a Spaniard and speaks five languages.

Comedian
Selected by: Mark Thomas, New Statesman columnist and comedian

Shazia Mirza, 32. I saw her last year at Edinburgh doing great routines that exposed Muslim culture in the UK, as well as the myths and false perceptions that surround it. Shazia is the only practising Muslim woman comic in Britain. Not only is she breaking new ground, but anyone who can start her act in the aftermath of 11 September with the line "My name's Shazia Mirza - at least, that's what it says on my pilot's licence" gets my vote.

Film director
Selected by: Philip Kerr, New Statesman film critic and novelist

Guy Ritchie, 33. His Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which he wrote and directed in 1998, was an extraordinary debut that showed a young man's complete mastery of his medium.

Minority voice
Selected by: Trevor Phillips, deputy mayor of London

In our communities, the few who have access to the airwaves can be powerful forces for good. None more so than Choice FM's Geoff Schumann, 35. His Saturday morning Schumann Shuffle combines politics, celebrity, satire, phone-in, music and debate in a not-to-be-missed account of where urban Britain stands.

Cricketer
Selected by: Robert Winder, author of Hell for Leather

The Surrey all-rounder Ricky Clarke, 20. It is part of the cruelty of sport that his first-team chance has come partly because of the dreadful death last winter of the classy Ben Hollioake. But he hasn't half seized it. A big-hitting batsman and a lively bowler, Clarke has an inside track, through the assortment of international players at the Oval, to cricket's high table. If he carries on as he has begun, he might not need it.

Classical musician
Selected by: Tom Sutcliffe, opera critic

The conductor Daniel Harding, still only 26, prefers working out of the limelight in Bremen and Norrkoping when he is not conducting major orchestras all over the world. His fresh thinking about music is a real tonic, an individual ear that players and audiences respond to equally. An iconoclast as well as a virtuoso.

Footballer
Selected by: Hunter Davies, New Statesman football columnist

It's so hard to tell which young footballers will make it. They can be doing brilliantly at 16, in the youth team of a Premier League club, playing for England, yet still end up nowhere. England's under-17 team does look good, high in technique for a change, not just muscle. I'm tipping Aaron Lennon of Leeds. He's only 15, a small, weedy winger, but what a scorcher . . .

Philosopher
Selected by: Alain de Botton, author of The Consolation of Philosophy

I nominate Christopher Hamilton, 34, author of Living Philosophy: reflections on life, meaning and morality. Hamilton is interested in philosophy's greatest calling: the search for wisdom. He is so good, no university department in Britain has deigned to give him a job, let alone the professorship he deserves.

Painter
Selected by David Lee, editor of the Jackdaw

Paul Reid, 27. It is easy to be a conceptual artist, but it requires bravery and application to excel at figurative painting. Any fool can tell when a figurative painter is rotten, whereas none of us has the vaguest idea how to judge a conceptual artist. Reid is methodically self-taught and is already a more varied artist, and a more fluent painter, than the ridiculously over-rated Lucian Freud. His work "challenges" nothing, "subverts" nothing, "raises issues concerning" nothing: he is a painter.

Broadcaster
Selected by Rod Liddle, editor of the Today programme, Radio 4

Raphael Rowe, 33, served 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He is now a Today reporter, and an extraordinarily good one. He learned the job astonishingly quickly. He writes with great grace and integrity and he has an impeccable news sense. And he has that hunger for a story which characterises all the best reporters.

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