Nobel Winners

Since its inception in 1901, numerous Fellows and Honorary Fellows of the Society have been awarded the Nobel Prize. The first two recipients were Honorary Fellows Hendrik A Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman in 1902 for the Nobel Prize in Physics. The Society's first women winner was Honorary Fellow Marie Curie in 1903 for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Marie Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes, being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

In 1964, Dorothy Hodgkin became not only the first female Fellow of the Society to win a Nobel Prize (Chemistry) but also the first female member of the University of Cambridge to do so. The Nobel Prize is one of many prestigious awards in the field of science that our members have been awarded and these include; The Copley Medal, The Royal Medal, The Dalton Medal, The Lomonosov Gold Medal, Max Planck Medal, The Goethe Prize, The Dirac Medal, The Eddington Medal, and the Albert Einstein Award to name but a few.

We currently have 49 Nobel Prize winners.

Image:Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe

Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe

2019 | Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:Richard Henderson

Richard Henderson

2017 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Honorary Fellow

Image:Roger Penrose

Roger Penrose

2020 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Robert G Edwards

Robert G Edwards

2010 | Nobel Prize in Medicine
Fellow

Image:Venki Ramakrishnan

Venki Ramakrishnan

2009 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Honorary Fellow

Image:Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner

2002 | Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image: John Sulston

John Sulston

2002 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:Tim Hunt

Tim Hunt

2001 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:John Ernest Walker

John Ernest Walker

1997 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Honorary Fellow

Image:Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

1991 | Nobel Prize for Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Subramanyan Chandrasekhar

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar

1983 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Aaron Klug

Aaron Klug

1982 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam

1979 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Nevill Mott

Nevill Mott

1977 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:James Meade

James Meade

1977 | Nobel Prize in Economics
Fellow

Image:Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish

1974 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Martin Ryle

Martin Ryle

1974 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Ronald Norrish

Ronald Norrish

1967 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:George Wald

George Wald

1967 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Hodgkin

1964 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:Alan Hodgkin

Alan Hodgkin

1963 | Nobel Prize in Medicine
Fellow

Image:Francis Crick

Francis Crick

1962 | Nobel Prize in Medicine
Fellow

Image:John Kendrew

John Kendrew

1962 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:Peter B Medawar

Peter B Medawar

1960 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:Alexander Todd

Alexander Todd

1957 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:Max Born

Max Born

1954 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Archer Martin

Archer Martin

1952 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:John Cockcroft

John Cockcroft

1951 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Patrick Blackett

Patrick Blackett

1948 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Edward Appleton

Edward Appleton

1947 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:George Thomson

George Thomson

1937 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:James Chadwick

James Chadwick

1935 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Paul Dirac

Paul Dirac

1933 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Edgar Adrian

Edgar Adrian

1932 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Fellow

Image:Frederick Hopkins

Frederick Hopkins

1929 | Nobel Prize in Medicine
Fellow

Image:Owen Richardson

Owen Richardson

1928 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Arthur Compton

Arthur Compton

1927 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Charles Wilson

Charles Wilson

1927 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Francis Aston

Francis Aston

1922 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr

1922 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Jules Bordet

Jules Bordet

1919 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Honorary Fellow

Image:Max Planck

Max Planck

1918 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Lawrence Bragg

Lawrence Bragg

1915 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford

1908 | Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Fellow

Image:J. J. Thomson

J. J. Thomson

1906 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Lord Rayleigh

Lord Rayleigh

1904 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Fellow

Image:Marie Curie

Marie Curie

1903 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Pieter Zeeman

Pieter Zeeman

1902 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

Image:Hendrik A Lorentz

Hendrik A Lorentz

1902 | Nobel Prize in Physics
Honorary Fellow

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Upcoming Events

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03

02

To Bend or to Break?  — new views on the hardening of metals

Professor Lindsay Greer

  • 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre Lent Term G.I. Taylor Lecture

Kipling’s “Iron‒Cold Iron‒is master of them all” captures the familiar importance of metals as structural materials.  Yet common metals are not necessarily hard; they can become so when deformed.  This phenomenon, strain hardening, was first explained by G. I. Taylor in 1934.  Ninety years on from this pioneering work on dislocation theory, we explore the deformation of metals when dislocations do not exist, that is when the metals are non-crystalline.  These amorphous metals have record-breaking combinations of properties.  They behave very differently from the metals that Taylor studied, but we do find phenomena for which his work (in a dramatically different context) is directly relevant.

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17

02

Why there’s no such thing as “the” scientific advice

Professor Stephen John

  • 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre Lent Term

During the Covid-19 pandemic, U.K. policy-makers claimed to be "following the science". Many commentators objected that the government did not live up to this aim. Others worried that policy-makers ought not blindly "follow" science, because this involves an abdication of responsibility. In this talk, I consider a third, even more fundamental concern: that there is no such thing as "the" science. Drawing on the case of adolescent vaccination against Covid-19, I argue that the best that any scientific advisory group can do is to offer a partial perspective on reality. In turn, this has important implications for how we think about science and politics. 

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