Sylvester Medal

Winners of the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society of London


Soon after the death of Professor J J Sylvester, F.R.S., in 1897, a number of his friends considered the advisability of funding some suitable honour of his name and life-work. The suggestion met with a ready response from all parts of the world, and a representative International Comittee was formed.

A sum of nearly £900 was subscribed, and it was decided to found a medal and prize for the encouragement and reward of working mathematicians throughout the world. The Council of the Royal Society undertook the trust on condition that the medal should be awarded triennially without regard to nationality.

A bronze medal accompanied by a grant of the balance of the Sylvester Medal Fund, is accordingly awarded triennially for the Encouragement of Mathematical Research.

The winners of the medals are given below.



1901 Henri Poincaré
1904 Georg Cantor
1907 Eilhelm Wirtinger
1910 Henry F Baker
1913 James W L Glaisher
1916 Jean G Darboux
1919 Percy A MacMahon
1922 Tullio Levi-Civita
1925 Alfred N Whitehead
1928 William H Young
1931 Edmund T Whittaker
1934 Bertrand, Earl Russell
1937 Augustus E H Love
1940 Geoffrey H Hardy
1943 John E Littlewood
1946 George N Watson

1949 Louis J Mordell
1952 Abram S Besicovitch
1955 Edward C Titchmarsh
1958 Max H A Newman
1961 Philip Hall
1964 Mary L Cartwright
1967 Harold Davenport
1970 George F J Temple
1973 John W S Cassels
1976 David G Kendall
1979 Graham Higman
1982 John Frank Adams
1985 John G Thompson
1988 Charles T C Wall
1991 Klaus Roth
1997 Harold Coxeter

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


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JOC/EFR March 2008

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