The Darwin Medal is awarded by the Royal Society every alternate year for "work of acknowledged distinction in the broad area of biology in which Charles Darwin worked, notably in evolution, population biology, organismal biology and biological diversity". First awarded in 1890, it was created in memory of Charles Darwin and is presented with a £1000 prize. As with most of the Royal Society's medals, nominees must come from the Commonwealth of Nations, with the requirement that they be either a citizen of a nation within the Commonwealth or have lived in such a nation for at least three years before the nomination. Since its creation the medal has been awarded to 64 individuals, including Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin's son, and two married couples, Jack and Yolande Heslop-Harrison in 1982 and Peter and Rosemary Grant in 2002. The medal was first awarded to Alfred Russel Wallace, a noted biologist and naturalist who had independently developed the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.
Read more about Darwin Medal: List of Recipients
Famous quotes containing the word darwin:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)