The Wollaston Medal is a
scientific award for geology and the highest award granted by the
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.
Fe ...
, the oldest geological society in the world. The medal is named after
William Hyde Wollaston
William Hyde Wollaston (; 6 August 1766 – 22 December 1828) was an English chemist and physicist who is famous for discovering the chemical elements palladium and rhodium. He also developed a way to process platinum ore into malleable i ...
, and was first awarded in 1831. It was originally made of
gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
(1831–1845), then
palladium
Palladium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1802 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas (formally 2 Pallas), ...
, a metal discovered by Wollaston (1846–1860). It was switched to gold again from 1861 to 1929, and then back to palladium from 1930 to present.
Laureates
Sourc
Geological Society
1831–1850
*1831
William 'Strata' Smith
*1835
Gideon Mantell
Gideon Algernon Mantell Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, MRCS Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (3 February 1790 – 10 November 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and paleontology, palaeontologist. His attempts to reconstr ...
*1836
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...
*1837
Proby Thomas Cautley
*1837
Hugh Falconer
*1838
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomy, comparative anatomist and paleontology, palaeontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkabl ...
*1839
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (19 April 1795 – 27 June 1876) was a German Natural history, naturalist, zoologist, Botany, botanist, comparative anatomist, geologist, and microscopy, microscopist. He is considered to be one of the most famous an ...
*1840
André Hubert Dumont
André — sometimes transliterated as Andre — is the French and Portuguese form of the name Andrew and is now also used in the English-speaking world. It used in France, Quebec, Canada and other French-speaking countries, as well in Portugal ...
*1841
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart
*1842
Leopold von Buch
*1843
Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont
*1843
Pierre Armand Dufrenoy
*1844
William Conybeare
*1845
John Phillips
*1846
William Lonsdale
*1847
Ami Boué
*1848
William Buckland
William Buckland Doctor of Divinity, DD, Royal Society, FRS (12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856) was an English theologian, geologist and paleontology, palaeontologist.
His work in the early 1820s proved that Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire h ...
*1849
Joseph Prestwich
*1850
William Hopkins
William Hopkins Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (2 February 179313 October 1866) was an English mathematician and geologist. He is famous as a private tutor of aspiring undergraduate University of Cambridge, Cambridge mathematicians, earning h ...
1851–1900
*1851
Adam Sedgwick
*1852
William Henry Fitton
*1853
Adolphe d'Archiac
*1853
Édouard de Verneuil
*1854
Richard John Griffith
*1855
Henry De la Beche
Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche KCB, FRS (10 February 179613 April 1855) was an English geologist and palaeontologist, the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who helped pioneer early geological survey methods. He was the ...
*1856
William Edmond Logan
*1857
Joachim Barrande
*1858
Hermann von Meyer
*1859
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
*1860
Searles Valentine Wood
*1861
Heinrich Georg Bronn
Heinrich Georg Bronn (3 March 1800 – 5 July 1862) was a German geologist and paleontologist. He was the first to translate Charles Darwin's '' On the Origin of Species'' into German in 1860, although not without introducing his own interpretat ...
*1862
Robert Alfred Cloyne Godwin-Austen
*1863
Gustav Bischof
*1864
Roderick Murchison
*1865
Thomas Davidson
*1866
Charles Lyell
*1867
George Poulett Scrope
*1868
Carl Friedrich Naumann
*1869
Henry Clifton Sorby
*1870
Gérard Paul Deshayes
*1871
Andrew Ramsay
*1872
James Dwight Dana
James Dwight Dana Royal Society of London, FRS FRSE (February 12, 1813 – April 14, 1895) was an American geologist, mineralogist, volcanologist, and zoologist. He made pioneering studies of mountain-building, volcano, volcanic activity, and the ...
*1873
Philip de Malpas Grey Egerton
*1874
Oswald Heer
*1875
Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck
*1876
Thomas Henry Huxley
*1877
Robert Mallet
*1878
Thomas Wright
*1879
Bernhard Studer
*1880
Auguste Daubrée
*1881
Peter Martin Duncan
*1882
Franz Ritter von Hauer
*1883
William Thomas Blanford
William Thomas Blanford (7 October 183223 June 1905) was an England, English geologist and natural history, naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on ''The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma''. Biogra ...
*1884
Albert Jean Gaudry
*1885
George Busk
*1886
Alfred Des Cloizeaux
*1887
John Whitaker Hulke
*1888
Henry Benedict Medlicott
*1889
Thomas George Bonney
*1890
William Crawford Williamson
*1891
John Wesley Judd
*1892
Ferdinand von Richthofen
*1893
Nevil Story Maskelyne
*1894
Karl Alfred von Zittel
*1895
Archibald Geikie
*1896
Eduard Suess
Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 – 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and ...
*1897
Wilfred Hudleston Hudleston
*1898
Ferdinand Zirkel
*1899
Charles Lapworth
Charles Lapworth Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS Fellow of the Geological Society, FGS (20 September 1842 – 13 March 1920) was a headteacher and an English geologist who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils and identified the Ordov ...
*1900
Grove Karl Gilbert
1901–1950
*1901
Charles Barrois
*1902
Friedrich Schmidt
*1903
Heinrich Rosenbusch
*1904
Albert Heim
*1905
Jethro Teall
*1906
Henry Woodward
*1907
William Johnson Sollas
*1908
Paul Heinrich von Groth
*1909
Horace Bolingbroke Woodward
*1910
William Berryman Scott
*1911
Waldemar Christofer Brøgger
*1912
Lazarus Fletcher
*1913
Osmond Fisher
*1914
John Edward Marr
*1915
Edgeworth David
*1916
Alexander Karpinsky
*1917
Alfred Lacroix
*1918
Charles Doolittle Walcott
*1919
Aubrey Strahan
*1920
Gerard De Geer
*1921
Ben Peach
*1921
John Horne
*1922
Alfred Harker
Alfred Harker Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (19 February 1859 – 28 July 1939) was an English geologist who specialised in petrology and interpretive petrography. He was lecturer in petrology at the University of Cambridge for many years, a ...
*1923
William Whitaker
*1924
Arthur Smith Woodward
*1925
George William Lamplugh
*1926
Henry Fairfield Osborn
*1927
William Whitehead Watts
*1928
Dukinfield Henry Scott
*1929
Friedrich Johann Karl Becke
*1930
Albert Seward
*1931
Arthur William Rogers
*1932
Johan Herman Lie Vogt
*1933
Marcellin Boule
*1934
Henry Alexander Miers
*1935
John Flett
*1936
Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff
*1937
Waldemar Lindgren
*1938
Maurice Lugeon
*1939
Frank Dawson Adams
*1940
Henry Woods
*1941
Arthur Louis Day
*1942
Reginald Aldworth Daly
*1943
Alexander Fersman
*1944
Victor Goldschmidt
Victor Moritz Goldschmidt (27 January 1888 – 20 March 1947) was a Norwegian mineralogist considered (together with Vladimir Vernadsky) to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classificatio ...
*1945
Owen Thomas Jones
*1946
Emmanuel de Margerie
*1947
Joseph Tyrrell
*1948
Edward Battersby Bailey
*1949
Robert Broom
Robert Broom Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FRSE (30 November 1866 6 April 1951) was a British- South African medical doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University ...
*1950
Norman L. Bowen
1951–2000
*1951
Olaf Holtedahl
*1952
Herbert Harold Read
*1953
Erik Stensiö
*1954
Leonard Johnston Wills
*1955
Arthur Elijah Trueman
Sir Arthur Elijah Trueman (26 April 1894 – 5 January 1956) was a British geologist.
Life
Trueman was born in Nottingham, the son of Elijah Trueman, a lacemaker, and his wife Thirza Newton Cottee.
He was educated at High Pavement School in N ...
*1956
Arthur Holmes
*1957
Paul Fourmarier
*1958
Pentti Eskola
*1959
Pierre Pruvost
*1960
Cecil Edgar Tilley
*1961
Roman Kozłowski
*1962
Leonard Hawkes
*1963
Felix Andries Vening Meinesz
*1964
Harold Jeffreys
Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS (22 April 1891 – 18 March 1989) was a British geophysicist who made significant contributions to mathematics and statistics. His book, ''Theory of Probability'', which was first published in 1939, played an importan ...
*1965
D. M. S. Watson
*1966
Francis Parker Shepard
*1967
Edward Crisp Bullard
*1968
Raymond Cecil Moore
*1969
William Maurice Ewing
*1970
Philip Henry Kuenen
*1971
Ralph Alger Bagnold
*1972
Hans Ramberg
*1973
Alfred Sherwood Romer
*1974
Francis J. Pettijohn
*1975
Hollis Dow Hedberg
*1976
Kingsley Charles Dunham
*1977
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
*1978
John Tuzo Wilson
*1979
Hatton Schuyler Yoder
*1980
Augusto Gansser
*1981
Robert Minard Garrels
*1982
Peter John Wyllie
*1983
Dan Peter McKenzie
*1984
Kenneth J. Hsu
*1985
Gerald Joseph Wasserburg
*1986
John G. Ramsay
*1987
Claude Jean Allègre
*1988
Alfred Ringwood
*1989
Drummond Hoyle Matthews
*1990
Wallace S. Broecker
*1991
Xavier Le Pichon
*1992
Martin Harold Phillips Bott
*1993
Samuel Epstein
*1994
William Jason Morgan
*1995
George P. L. Walker
*1996
Nicholas John Shackleton
*1997
Douglas James Shearman
*1998
Karl Karekin Turekian
*1999
John Frederick Dewey
*2000
William Sefton Fyfe
2001–
*2001
Harry Blackmore Whittington
*2002
Rudolf Trümpy
*2003
Ikuo Kushiro
*2004
Geoffrey Eglinton
*2005
Ted Irving
*2006
James Lovelock
*2007
Andrew Knoll
*2008
Norman Sleep
*2009
Paul F. Hoffman
*2010
Richard H. Sibson
*2011
Robert Stephen John Sparks
*2012
Christopher Hawkesworth
*2013
Kurt Lambeck
*2014
Maureen Raymo - first woman to receive the Wollaston Medal
*2015
James A. Jackson
*2016
Susan L. Brantley
*2017
Richard Alley
*2018
Terry Plank
*2019
Edward Stolper
*2020
Barbara Romanowicz
*2021
David D. Pollard
*2022
Tanya Atwater
*2023
Kathryn Whaler
*2024
Trond Helge Torsvik
*2025
Barbara Sherwood Lollar
See also
*
List of geology awards
*
List of awards named after people
*
Geology of Great Britain
References
External links
List of Wollaston Medal Winners
{{Geological Society of London
Geology awards
Palladium
Awards established in 1831
Awards of the Geological Society of London
British science and technology awards