The Rank Prizes comprise the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics and the Rank Prize for Nutrition. The prizes recognise, reward and encourage researchers working in the respective fields of

optoelectronics Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radi ...

and

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemistry, biochemical and physiology, physiological process by which an organism uses food and water to support its life. The intake of these substances provides organisms with nutrients (divided into Macronutrient, macro- ...

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/ref> The prizes are funded by the charity The Rank Prize Funds, which were endowed by the industrialist, philanthropist and founder of the

Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation (founded as the J. Arthur Rank Organisation) is a British entertainment conglomerate founded in 1937 by industrialist J. Arthur Rank. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the Uni ...

, J. Arthur Rank and his wife Nell, via the Rank Foundation on 16 February 1972, not long before Arthur's death. The two Funds, the Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry Fund and the Optoelectronics Fund, support sciences which reflect Rank's business interests through his "connection with the flour-milling and cinema and electronics industries", and which Rank believed would be of great benefit to humanity. The Rank Prize Funds also recognise, support and foster excellence among young and emerging researchers in the two fields of

and

. The Funds aim to advance and promote education and learning for public benefit.

Rank Prize for Optoelectronics

The Rank Prize for Optoelectronics supports, encourages, and rewards researchers working at the cutting edge of optoelectronics research, initially (from 1976) awarded annually, now a

biennial Biennial means (an event) lasting for two years or occurring every two years. The related term biennium is used in reference to a period of two years. In particular, it can refer to: * Biennial plant, a plant which blooms in its second year and t ...

prize worth £100,000. Optoelectronics relates to the interface between optics and electronics, and related phenomena. The Committee on Optoelectronics consists of the following people: *

Donal Bradley Donal Donat Conor Bradley is the Vice President for Research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. From 2015 until 2019, he was head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the Univer ...

CBE FRS (Chairman) *

Roberto Cipolla Roberto Cipolla (born 3 May 1963) , FREng, is a British researcher in computer vision and Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Education Cipolla was born in Solihull, England and attended Langley School in ...

FREng *Martin D. Dawson FRSE * Helen Gleeson OBE *Anya Hurlbert *

Simon Laughlin Simon may refer to: People * Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon * Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon * Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...

FRS,

neurobiologist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist specializing in neuroscience that deals with the anatomy and function of neurons, neural circuits, and glia, and their behavioral, biological, and psychological roles in health and disease. ...

John Mollon Professor John Dixon Mollon DSc FRS.
List of Fellows of the Royal Society (born 12 September 1944)

DSc FRS * Miles Padgett FRSE FRS * Wilson Sibbett CBE FRS FRSE * Maurice Skolnick FRS Past winners include: * 1978 –

Charles K. Kao Sir Charles Kao Kuen () (November 4, 1933 – September 23, 2018) was a Chinese physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed to the development and use of fibre optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s, Kao created various methods to ...

* 1980 – George Gray * 1982 – C. Thomas Elliott and

Calvin Quate Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was an American electrical engineer and physicist, who was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering ...

* 1988 –

T. Peter Brody T. P. "Peter" Brody (18 April 1920 Budapest, Hungary – 18 September 2011 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States) was a British-naturalised physicist and the co-inventor of Active Matrix Thin-Film Transistor display technology together with Fa ...

* 1991 – David N. Payne and William Alexander Gambling * 1992 –

William Newsome William Thomas Newsome (born June 5, 1952) is a neuroscientist at Stanford University who works to "understand the neuronal processes that mediate visual perception and visually guided behavior." He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences ...

and

Semir Zeki Semir Zeki FMedSci Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (born 8 November 1940) is a British and French Neuroscientist, neurobiologist who has specialised in studying the primate visual brain and more recently the neural correlates of affective stat ...

* 1993 –

Horace W. Babcock Horace Welcome Babcock (September 13, 1912 – August 29, 2003) was an American astronomer. He was the son of Harold D. Babcock. Career Babcock invented and built several astronomical instruments and was the first to propose adaptive optic ...

and

Arthur Ashkin Arthur Ashkin (September 2, 1922 – September 21, 2020) was an American scientist and Nobel laureate who worked at Bell Labs. Ashkin has been considered by many as the father of optical tweezers, "LaserFest – the 50th anniversary of the firs ...

* 1995 –

William Bradshaw Amos William Bradshaw Amos (born 1945) One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is a British biologist, Emeritus Scientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biolog ...

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist, cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

and

Chuck Hull Chuck Hull (Charles W. Hull; born May 12, 1939) is an American inventor who is the co-founder, executive vice president and chief technology officer for regenerative medicine of 3D Systems. He is one of the inventors of the SLA 3D printer, t ...

* 1997 –

Peter Mansfield Sir Peter Mansfield (9 October 1933 – 8 February 2017) was an English physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Paul Lauterbur, for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Mansfie ...

* 1998 –

Federico Capasso Federico Capasso (born 1949) is an Italian-American applied physicist and is one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. Biography Federico C ...

Isamu Akasaki was a Japanese engineer and physicist, specializing in the field of semiconductor technology and Nobel Prize laureate, best known for inventing the bright gallium nitride (GaN) p-n junction blue LED in 1989 and subsequently the high-brightness G ...

Hiroshi Amano is a Japanese physicist, engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology. For his work he was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura for "the invention of efficient b ...

and

Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese electronic engineer, inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. Nakamura specializes in the field of semiconductor technology, and he is a professo ...

* 2000 –

Winfried Denk Winfried Denk (born November 12, 1957, in Munich) is a German physicist. He built the first two-photon microscope while he was a graduate student (and briefly a postdoc) in Watt W. Webb's lab at Cornell University, in 1989. Early life and educ ...

and Watt W. Webb * 2006 ** Charles H. Bennett,

Gilles Brassard Gilles Brassard is a faculty member of the Université de Montréal, where he has been a Full Professor since 1988 and Canada Research Chair since 2001. Education and early life Brassard received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell Univers ...

and

Stephen Wiesner Stephen J. Wiesner (1942 – August 12, 2021) was an American-Israeli research physicist, inventor and construction laborer. As a graduate student at Columbia University in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he discovered several of the ...

(for research on the original concept of quantum cryptography) **

Paul Alivisatos Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is a Greek and American chemist and academic administrator who is the President of the University of Chicago, 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nan ...

, M.P. Bruchez, W.C.W. Chan, S.M. Nie, S. Weiss (for realisation of quantum dot nanocrystals as biological labels) * 2008 – Mandyam Srinivasan and

Peter B. Denyer Peter Brian Denyer (27 April 1953 – 22 April 2010) was a British electronics engineer, academic, scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who pioneered CMOS image sensor chips for many applications including mobile phones, webcams, video-conferen ...

* 2014 – Alf Adams and

Eli Yablonovitch Eli Yablonovitch (born 15 December 1946) is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987.M.Kapoor (2013Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures page 58 He and his team were the first ...

* 2018 – Jonathan C. Knight, Philip Russell and Tim Birks * 2022 − Michael Graetzel and Nam-Gyu Park

Rank Prize for Nutrition

The Rank Prize for Nutrition is for research in

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

and

animal nutrition Animal nutrition focuses on the dietary nutrients needs of animals, primarily those in agriculture and food production, but also in zoos, aquariums, and wildlife management. Constituents of diet Macronutrients (excluding fiber and water) provide ...

(distinct from

animal husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, animal fiber, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, management, production, nutrition, selective breeding, and the raising ...

), and crop husbandry. The Committee on Nutrition consists of the following people: * John Mathers PhD Hon FAfN (Chairman) * Malcolm Bennett * Michael Gooding * Peter Gregory FRASE * Sarah Gurr * Anne-Marie Minihane * Susan Ozanne * Ann Prentice OBE PHD * John Wilding The Rank Prize for Nutrition was awarded at various intervals since 1976, but is now also awarded biennially, worth £100,000. In 2014 Australian biophysicist

Graham Farquhar Graham Douglas Farquhar, (born 8 December 1947) is an Australian biophysicist, Distinguished Professor at Australian National University, and leader of the Farquhar Lab. In 2018 Farquhar was named Senior Australian of the Year. Life Farquhar a ...

and the

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

agronomist Richard Richards were awarded the Rank Prize in Nutrition, for "pioneering the understanding of isotope discrimination in plants and its application to breed wheat varieties that use water more efficiently", which related to a discovery the pair made in the 1980s. Other winners include: *1981 − Hugo Kortschak, Marshall (Hal) Davidson Hatch and

Roger Slack Charles Roger Slack (22 April 1937 – 24 October 2016) was a British-born plant biologist and biochemist who lived and worked in Australia (1962–1970) and New Zealand (1970–2000). In 1966, jointly with Marshall Hatch, he discovered C4 pho ...

, for "outstanding work on the mechanism of

photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...

which established the existence of an alternative pathway for the initial fixation of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

in some important food plants". *1982 − Hamish Munro, for his work on the

protein metabolism Protein metabolism denotes the various biochemical processes responsible for the synthesis of proteins and amino acids (anabolism), and the breakdown of proteins by catabolism. The steps of protein synthesis include transcription, translation, an ...

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

s. *1984 −

Elsie Widdowson Elsie Widdowson (21 October 1906 – 14 June 2000), was a British dietitian and nutritionist. Alongside her research partner, Dr. Robert McCance (pediatrician, physiologist, biochemist, and nutritionist), they were responsible for overseeing ...

, for her work on the values of foods as nutrient sources, the effects of long-term undernutrition and starvation and the nature and control of the growth process. *1989 −

Vernon R. Young Vernon Robert Young (November 15, 1937 – March 30, 2004) was an expert on protein and amino acid requirements and researched how the human body processes nutrients into protein. Young was a principal organizer of amino acid Workshops sponsor ...

, for his work on the amino acid metabolism of man. *1992 − Kenneth Blaxter, lifetime award given posthumously. *1995 – Richard Smithells and B.M. Hibbard, for "pioneering studies into the role of

micronutrient Micronutrients are essential chemicals required by organisms in small quantities to perform various biogeochemical processes and regulate physiological functions of cells and organs. By enabling these processes, micronutrients support the heal ...

deficiencies, principally

folic acid Folate, also known as vitamin B9 and folacin, is one of the B vitamins. Manufactured folic acid, which is converted into folate by the body, is used as a dietary supplement and in food fortification as it is more stable during processing and ...

deficiency, and

neural tube defects Neural tube defects (NTDs) are a group of birth defects in which an opening in the spine or cranium remains from early in human development. In the third week of pregnancy called gastrulation, specialized cells on the dorsal side of the embry ...

". *2006 − J.C. van Lenteren, Marcel Dicke, and Louise E.M. Vet for "fundamental studies of plant-pest-natural enemy interactions and the development of practical methods of pest control". *2010 − Peter E. Hartmann and Robyn Owens for their "research on human lactation, including methods for the non-invasive measurement of the rate of milk secretion". *2020 –

Stephen O'Rahilly Sir Stephen Patrick O'Rahilly (born 1 April 1958) is an Irish-British physician and scientist known for his research into the molecular pathogenesis of human obesity, insulin resistance and related metabolic and endocrine disorders. Early li ...

*2022 –

Cathie Martin Catherine Rosemary Martin (born April 1955) is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and ho ...

"for outstanding research into plant genetics and metabolism leading to enhanced nutritional qualities of fruits and vegetables".

References

{{reflist Awards established in the 1970s British science and technology awards Optoelectronics Nutrition