Centre-left social commentator Rabbi Julia Neuberger was Britain's second woman rabbi at the age of 27 and the first in the world to have her own congregation. She served for 12 years and now writes on women's issues, healthcare ethics and on caring for the terminally ill. When she took over last year as chief executive of the King's Fund, Britain's leading health policy think tank, she gave up 47 voluntary posts. She said she became a rabbi almost by mistake - she had planned to become an archaeologist. But she studied Hebrew at Cambridge and became outraged that women were thought unable to do the job. As a judge for the 1994 Booker Prize, Julia Neuberger said the winning book, How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman, was "dull" and "repetitious." She said at the time: "If more women had been on the panel this would never have happened." She is Chancellor of the University of Ulster and enjoys swimming, gardening, family life and opera.