John Scott Award, created in 1816 as the John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium, is presented to men and women whose
invention
An invention is a unique or novelty (patent), novel machine, device, Method_(patent), method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It m ...
s improved the "comfort, welfare, and happiness of human kind" in a significant way.
[ "...the John Scott Medal Fund, established in 1816...".] Since 1919 the Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia provide this award, recommended by an advisory committee.
[ Eugene Garfield is member of the Advisory Committee.]
In 1822 the first awards were given to thirteen people by the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture entrusted by the "
Corporation of the city of Philadelphia".
The druggist John Scott of
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
organized a $4,000 fund which, after his death in 1815 was administered by a merchant until the first award, a copper medal and "an amount not to exceed twenty dollars", was given in 1822. (At the time, $20 could buy one ox or a 12-volume encyclopedia.) Several hundred recipients have since been selected by the
City Council of Philadelphia, which decides from the annual list of nominees made by the
Franklin Institute.
Notable recipients
Most awards have been given for inventions in science and medicine. Notable
recipients include:
*
Luis W. Alvarez
*
Frederick G. Banting
*
John Bardeen
John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American solid-state physicist. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Houser Brattain for their inventio ...
*
James Black
*
William T. Bovie
*
Ralph L. Brinster
Ralph Lawrence Brinster (born March 10, 1932) is an American geneticist, National Medal of Science laureate, and Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, School of V ...
*
Marie Curie
*
William Duane
*
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
*
Alexander Fleming
Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of wha ...
*
Peter Koch
*
Irving Langmuir
*
Edwin Land
*
Christian J. Lambertsen
*
Luther D. Lovekin
*
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of #Fractals and the ...
*
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess of Marconi ( ; ; 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Italian electrical engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegraphy, wireless tel ...
*
Edgar Sharp McFadden
*
Humberto Fernandez Moran
*
Kary B. Mullis
*
Jonas Salk
*
Glenn Seaborg
*
Richard E. Smalley
*
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla (;["Tesla"](_blank)
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 10 July 1856 – 7 ...
*
Wright brothers
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation List of aviation pioneers, pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flyin ...
*
Robert Burns Woodward
*
David Gestetner
Recent winners
See also
*
Carl Roman Abt, A past recipient (1889)
References
External links
The award webpage*{{cite web , url=http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/johnscottaward/johnscottaward%28full%29.html , title=The John Scott Award Recipients , publisher=
Eugene Garfield
Eugene Eli Garfield (September 16, 1925 – February 26, 2017) was an American linguistics, linguist and businessman, one of the founders of bibliometrics and scientometrics. He helped to create ''Current Contents'', ''Science Citation Index'' ( ...
at
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
, access-date=28 September 2018 , archive-date=15 June 2021 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210615165455/https://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/johnscottaward/johnscottaward%28full%29.html , url-status=dead Medals awarded by The Franklin Institute between 1822 and 2017.
Awards established in 1816
Invention awards
History of Philadelphia
Franklin Institute awards
American awards
1816 establishments in Pennsylvania