• About the Society  |
• Our work  |
• Science news  |
• Events diary  |
• Support Us  |
• Science issues  |
• Publishing  |

Royal recent winners

2008 Sir Alan Fersht FRS for his seminal work in protein engineering, which he has developed into a fundamental tool in enzyme analysis and the problem of protein folding.

2008 Sir Philip Cohen FRS FRSE for his major contribution to our understanding of the role of protein phosphorylation in cell regulation.

2008 Professor Robert Hedges for his contribution to the rapid development of accelerator mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating techniques.

2007   Professor James Feast FRS for his outstanding contributions to chemical synthesis with far reaching implications, particularly for the field of functional polymeric materials.

2007  Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FRS for his many outstanding contributions and for continuing to use his prodigious talents on behalf of industry, government and academe to this day.

2007 Dr Tomas Lindahl FRS for making fundamental contributions to our understanding of DNA repair. His achievements stand out for their great originality, breadth and lasting influence.

2006    Professor David Baulcombe FRS for his profoundly significant recent discoveries for not only plants but for all of biology and for medicine.

2006  Sir Tim Hunt FRS, for discovering a key aspect of cell cycle control, the protein cyclin which is a component of cyclin dependent kinases, demonstrating his ability to grasp the significance of the result outside his immediate sphere of interest.

2006  Sir John Pendry FRS, for his seminal contributions in surface sciences, disordered systems, photonics and most recently in metamaterials and the concept of the perfect lens.

2005 Professor Michael Fisher FRS, for his seminal contributions to wetting transitions, dislocation melting and criticality of ionic solutions and many other topics in Statistical Mechanics.

2005 Professor Anthony Pawson OC FRS, for his discoveries which have revealed the principles underlying cell signalling, and have been pivotal in understanding pathological states such as cancer.

2005 Professor Michael Pepper FRS, for his work which has had the highest level of influence in condensed matter physics and has resulted in the creation of the modern field of semiconductor nanostructures.

2004 Lord Lewis of Newnham Kt FRS, for his distinguished career in the field of inorganic chemistry over the last 50 years, mainly in the area of the transition elements.

2004 Sir Alec Jeffreys FRS, for his outstanding discoveries and inventions which have had major impacts on large areas of genetics. He is best known for the introduction of DNA analysis to forensic science, contributing not only the theoretical framework for application but also the experimental method.

2004 Sir James Black OM FRS, for his work in both academia and industry, pioneering a new era of rational drug discovery. His work has played a major influence in elevating British pharmacology and pharmaceutical research to its current eminent international stature.

2003 Sir Nicholas Shackleton FRS, in recognition of his seminal contributions to the fields of paleoceanography and geochemistry. He made possible the analysis of stable isotopic composition of oxygen and carbon in very small samples, revolutionising our approach to climate research.

2003 Sir John Skehel FRS, for his pioneering research into virology. His studies and discoveries in the mechanisms by which influenza virus binds to the host cell, and in virus-cell membrane fusion have had a fundamental impact on the field.

2003 Professor Kenneth Johnson FRS, for his outstanding work in the field of contact mechanics. His work his characterised by elegant experiments, skilful analyses and insightful explanations of observed phenomena.

2002 Professor Raymond Freeman FRS, in recognition of his seminal contributions to the development and understanding of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods. NMR is today the prime analytical tool for the study of molecular structure and dynamics, with enormous impact in chemistry, materials science and biomedicine.

2002 Professor Suzanne Cory AC FRS , for her distinguished work on the molecular basis of cancer. She pioneered the use of transgenic mice to elucidate the role of various oncogenes in lymphoid malignancies. 

2002 Sir Richard Peto FRS, for his outstanding work on the epidemiology of smoking and chronic disease. His application of innovative methods to look at the global burden of diseases associated with smoking gave new understanding and impetus to worldwide measures to deal with smoking.

2001 Sir Sam Edwards FRS, in recognition of his enormous influence across a wide spectrum of physical sciences, particularly theoretical condensed matter physics. His clear vision has had a major impact on experimentation and on scientific and industrial policy and he is largely responsible for the recognition of the fundamental challenges of complex materials and the provision of theoretic tools to tackle them and the inspiration for their application.

2001 Professor Gabriel Horn FRS, for his work on the neurobiological mechanisms of behavioural imprinting, embracing molecular, cellular, anatomical, electrophysiological and ethological approaches to learning and memory.  There is now widespread international interest in the cellular basis of learning and memory and Professor Horns work represents a major scientific achievement in this branch of neuroscience.

2001 Professor Richard Gardner FRS, for his pioneering work on microsurgery of the mouse blastocyst which laid the foundation for major advances in biological knowledge, both in developmental biology and in understanding of gene function.  His work also provided the inspiration for the development of other transgenic and micromanipulation techniques, including those used more recently for mammalian cloning.

2000 Keith Usherwood Ingold, in recognition of his work in elucidating the mechanism of reactions involving free radicals. His ingenuity in devising key tests and in developing the necessary experimental tools for the determination of reaction pathways of peroxy and other organic compounds has greatly clarified the nature of processes such as the autoxidation of hydrocarbons.

2000 Geoffrey Burnstock, in recognition of his development of new hypotheses challenging the accepted views on autonomic neurotransmission, leading to new advances in the understanding of purinergic neurotransmission. There is now universal recognition of the importance of purinergic mechanisms, not only in the nervous system but also in vascular, secretory and immune systems.

2000 Timothy Berners-Lee, in recognition of his invention and subsequent development of the World Wide Web, designing the universal resource locator (URL), an addressing system to give each Web page a unique location and the two protocols HTTP and HTML. His work has revolutionised communication via the internet, enabling universal access to information placed on the Web.

1999 Archibald Howie, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development and application of electron microscopy of materials, and to the underlying theories of electron scattering, in particular his extensive contributions to inelastic scattering theory, his systematic high resolution microscope studies of amorphous materials, his introduction of the concept of coherence volume for hollow cone dark field imaging and his pioneering use of a high angle annular dark field detector to image small catalyst particles.

1999 Patrick David Wall, in recognition of his fundamental contributions to our knowledge of the somatosensory system and, in particular, pain mechanisms, where his insights led to the therapeutic use of electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves, dorsal columns of the spinal cord, and brain stem for the control of pain, methods that are now in widespread use. He is noted also for his major contribution to the study of plasticity of the adult nervous system showing that connections in spinal cord, thalamus and cortex which had previously been viewed as static, could be altered, in some cases by nerve impulses and in others by chemical transport.

1999 John Frank Davidson, in recognition of his distinguished work over many years in chemical engineering, including fluid flow, process dynamics, gas absorption and fluidization technology which has been concerned with real problems of industrial significance.

1998 Donald Charlton Bradley, in recognition of his pioneering work on the molecular chemistry of metal-alkoxides and metal-amides, their synthesis, structure and bonding, and for his studies of their conversions to metal-oxides and metal-nitrides, processes which now find common place applications in materials science, especially in the fields of microelectronics and chemical vapour deposition.

1998 Ricardo Miledi, in recognition of his many important discoveries in cellular and molecular physiology which have greatly advanced our knowledge of synaptic transmission in the nervous system and of long term effects of trophic interaction between neurones and effector cells.

1998 Edwin Mellor Southern, in recognition of his development of the method of transferring spatial patterns of DNA fragments from the electrophoretic separation medium to membranes on which the hybridisation could occur known as southern blotting, now a fundamental technique in molecular biology. He is noted also for his leading role in investigating the relationship between specific sequences and chromosome structure and sequence analysis by oligonucleotide hybridisation.

1997 Donald Hill Perkins, in recognition of his contributions to experimental particle physics, in particular the elucidation of the structure of the nucleon on the basis of observations of neutrino interactions, the quark substructure of the nucleon, and production of the first quantitative evidence for the validity of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).

1997 John Maynard Smith, in recognition of his theoretical contributions to evolutionary biology, combining mathematics and biology to develop a sound understanding in such fields as population dynamics, paleobiology, ethology, behavioural ecology, bacteriology and genetics.

1997 Geoffrey Eglinton, in recognition of his contribution to our understanding of the way in which chemicals move from the living biosphere to the fossil geosphere, in particular the origin, genesis, maturation and migration of oil which has had great repercussions on the petroleum industry. He is one of the founders of the subject of Organic Geochemistry.

1996 AJ Wiles, in recognition of his achievements in number theory, in particular Fermats Last Theorem and his achievements in algebraic number theory particularly the celebrated main conjecture on cyclotomic fields.

1996 J Heslop-Harrison, in recognition of his pioneering work in plant reproductive biology, in particular the areas of taxonomy and ecology, whole plant physiology, development of sub-cellular systems in somatic and reproductive cells, pollen/stigma interactions and acto/myosin transport systems within the pollen tube.

1996 RA Hinde, in recognition of his contributions to the field of animal behaviour and the dominant influence it achieved on the emerging field of ethology.

1995 RJP Williams, in recognition of his contributions in clearly presenting the role of inorganic elements in biological systems.

1995 PM Nurse, in recognition of his work on the control of the cell cycle in eukaryotic cells by his discovery of the identity and function of genes that regulate the key control points in the process of cell proliferation.

1995 D Metcalf, in recognition of his discovery of colony stimulating factors which regulate the growth and differentiation of normal hematopoietic and leukemic cells.

1994 Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar, for his many new discoveries in the understanding of liquid crystals, for a synthesis of the subject of his seminal book, "The invention of discotic liquid crystals", and for elucidating their remarkable properties.

1994 EH Mansfield, renowned for his many fundamental and analytical contributions to our knowledge of advanced aeronautical structures, and more recently to the biological sciences.

1994 S Moncada, for his contributions to pharmacology and the discovery of basic mechanisms of signal transmission relevant to drug action.

1993 V Heine, in recognition of his contributions to solid state theory, in particular the bonding and structure of solids.

1993 HB Barlow, for his outstanding and original contributions to electrophysiological, computational and psychophysical study of visual sensation and perception.

1993 R Hill, for his outstanding contribution to the theoretical mechanics of solids, and especially the plasticity of solids.

1992 SK Donaldson, distinguished for his work which has revolutionized our understanding of four-dimensional geometry.

1992 Anthony Epstein, distinguished for the isolation of the Epstein-Barr virus which is closely associated with Burkitts lymphoma.

1992 D Tabor, distinguished for his seminal contributions to the basic study of friction and wear between solids, of considerable relevance to the design of machines.

1991 DP McKenzie, in recognition of his seminal role in developing a quantitative understanding of a wide range of geophysical and geological processes, including plate tectonics, mantle convection, continental deformation and melt segregation.

1991 MJ Berridge, in recognition of his discovery that inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate functions as a second messenger to mobilize calcium.

1991 John Mason, in recognition of his distinguished research on cloud physics and, as Director-General of the Meteorological Office, his broadening and strengthening of research in meteorology in the UK.

1990 Michael Victor Berry, in recognition of his deep and innovatory researches in classical and quantum physics, especially the discovery of the "Berry phase".

1990 Anne Laura McLaren, in recognition of her distinguished research on mammalian embryology, particularly for providing much of the scientific basis for in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, and for analysing sex determination in mammals.

1990 Olgierd Cecil Zienkiewicz, in recognition of his pioneering development of the finite element method as a general procedure of solving problems of engineering physics and for demonstrating its success in applications to stress analysis, fluid mechanics, electromagnetics and many other situations.