A proud tradition of prize giving since 1862
The Society is always looking for ways to help further the work of today’s scientists and it awards a number of prizes for new publications, inventions, investigations or discoveries in the fields of mathematics, physics and the natural sciences. Awards given are the Sir Isaac Newton Bursary, the William Bate Hardy Prize and the William Hopkins Prize.
The following are the regulations for the William Hopkins Prize
1. That the Prize be called ‘The William Hopkins Prize’.
2. That the Prize be adjudged once in three years.
3. (a) That the Prize be awarded in connection with work in Mathematico-Physical or Mathematico-Experimental science or Mathematics alone or Experimental Physics alone by a member of the University of Cambridge, either
(b) Each Prize for the best publication, invention, investigation or discovery may be awarded to the laboratory or group responsible for it (or to an individual in the case of individual work). It may be restricted to a laboratory or group in or closely associated with, the University of Cambridge.
4. That the fund be vested in the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and the Prize be adjudged by three Fellows of the Society, nominated by the Council of the Society for each occasion.
5. That, in the event of any difficulty arising in carrying out the above provisions in any particular instance, either from lack of a prize-subject of sufficient merit, or from any other cause, the Council of the Cambridge Philosophical Society be at liberty to carry over the amount of the Prize for that term towards augmenting the fund for future prizes, or to award it to someone not a member of the University.
6. That the value of the Prize be £1000, or such sum as shall from time to time be determined by the Council.
The following are the regulations for the William Bate Hardy Prize
1. That the Prize be called the 'William Bate Hardy Prize'.
2. That this Prize be adjudged once in three years.
3. (a) That the Prize be awarded in connection with work in Biological Science by a member of the University of Cambridge, either
(i) for the best publication, invention, investigation or discovery that has been published during the three years immediately preceding (but that the adjudicators may, if it seem to them advisable in any particular case, award the prize for a publication, invention, investigation or discovery which has not been published within the aforementioned period) or
(ii) to an individual for an especially distinguished contribution in early career, or
(iii) in recognition of a lifetime contribution.
4. That the Prize be adjudged by three Fellows of the Society, nominated by the Council of the Society for each occasion.
5. That, in the event of any difficulty arising in carrying out the above provisions in any particular instance, either from lack of a prize-subject of sufficient merit, or from any other cause, the Council of the Cambridge Philosophical Society be at liberty not to award the Prize or to award it to someone not a member of the University.
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
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Volcanoes are hazardous and beautiful manifestations of the dynamic processes that have shaped our planet. Volcanoes impact our environment in numerous ways. Over geological time volcanic activity has resurfaced the Earth and provided life with a terrestrial substrate upon which to proliferate. Volcanic degassing has shaped our secondary atmosphere and as part of the process of plate tectonics, maintained just the right amount of water and carbon dioxide at the surface to produce a stable and equitable climate. Magma in the subsurface in volcanic environments today gives Society geothermal energy. The fluids degassed from magmas in the plumbing systems of volcanoes give rise to hydrothermal ore deposits, the source of much of our copper and other metals, critical to the energy transition. In this lecture I will describe the nature and importance of magma degassing for our atmosphere and oceans, as a source of both pollutants and nutrients, and in the formation of mineral deposits. I will describe my own research in carrying out measurements of volcanic gases (using a range of spectroscopic methods, from the ground and using drones), and analysis of erupted lavas, to understand the chemistry and physics of volcanic outgassing and its role in sustaining our planetary environment.
One of the many outstanding achievements of G I Taylor was the discovery of relatively simple statistical laws that apply to highly complex turbulent flows. The emergence of simple laws from complexity is well known in other branches of physics, for example the emergence of the laws of heat conduction from molecular dynamics. Complexity can also arise at large scales, and the structural vibration of an aircraft or a car can be a surprisingly difficult phenomenon to analyse, partly because millions of degrees of freedom may be involved, and partly because the vibration can be extremely sensitive to small changes or imperfections in the system. In this talk it is shown that the prediction of vibration levels can be much simplified by the derivation and exploitation of emergent laws, analogous to some extent to the heat conduction equations, but with an added statistical aspect, as in turbulent flow. The emergent laws are discussed and their application to the design of aerospace, marine, and automotive structures is described. As an aside it will be shown that the same emergent theory can be applied to a range of problems involving electromagnetic fields.
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