Winners of the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London

Originally they were awarded for the most important discoveries in the previous year. The time period was changed to five years then shortened to three years. When Victoria came to the throne in 1837 the conditions for the Royal Medals changed to operate on a three year cycle with Mathematics being one of the subjects for which a Medal could be awarded every third year.

In 1850, however, the conditions were changed again as follows:-

... the Royal Medals in each year should be awarded for the two most important contributions to the advancement of Natural Knowledge, published originally in Her Majesty's dominions within a period of not more than ten years and not less than one year of the date of the award, subject, of course, to Her Majesty's approval. ... in the award of the Royal Medals, one should be given in each of the two great divisions of Natural Knowledge.

The list of Royal Medal winners is long, and most, of course, are not mathematicians. The list given below is only a partial list to include those whose biographies are contained in this archive, or are listed among the recent Fellows of Royal Society for whom we have no biography.

1826 James Ivory 1833 John F W Herschel 1835 Sir William R Hamilton 1836 John F W Herschel 1838 Henry Fox Talbot 1839 James Ivory 1840 John F W Herschel 1844 George Boole 1845 George B Airy 1856 William Thomson 1859 Arthur Cayley 1861 James J Sylvester 1868 George Salmon 1882 Lord Rayleigh 1883 Thomas A Hirst 1884 George H Darwin 1886 Peter G Tait 1888 Osborne Reynolds 1896 Charles V Boys 1897 Andrew R Forsyth 1899 George F Fitzgerald 1900 Percy A MacMahon 1902 Horace Lamb 1904 William Burnside 1906 Alfred G Greenhill

1907 Ernest W Hobson 1909 Augustus E H Love 1911 George Chrystal 1914 Ernest W Brown 1915 Sir Joseph Larmor 1916 Hector M Macdonald 1919 James H Jeans 1920 Godfrey H Hardy 1928 Arthur S Eddington 1929 John E Littlewood 1934 Sydney Chapman 1938 Ronald A Fisher 1939 Paul A M Dirac 1941 Edward A Milne 1948 Harold Jeffreys 1957 William V D Hodge 1962 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 1964 M J Lighthill 1966 Frank Yates 1968 Michael F Atiyah 1974 Fred Hoyle 1983 John F C Kingman 1985 Roger Penrose 1992 Simon Donaldson 1996 Andrew Wiles

MacTutor links:

Royal Society of London
History of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Royal Society
Presidents of the Royal Society

Royal Society Prizes etc:

Royal Medal
Sylvester Medal
Copley Medal
Bakerian Lectures

Other Web site:

Royal Society Web site

The URL of this page is:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Societies/RoyalMedal.html