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:
“It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)