Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded"<ref name="goldmedal" /> and it can be awarded for any reason.<ref name="winners_2015" /> Past awards have been given for "outstanding personal researches in the fields of astronomy and geophysics" as well as general contributions to astronomy and geophysics "that may be made through leadership in research programmes, through education and through scientific administration". It has been awarded both for research that has taken a lifetime<ref name="goldmedal" /> (it has most frequently been given to recognise an extraordinary lifetime achievement),<ref name="winners_2015" /> and for specific pieces of research.<ref name="goldmedal" />

History

The RAS was founded in 1820 and the first Gold Medals were awarded in 1824. Silver medals were also awarded in 1824 and 1827,<ref name="gold_medallists" /> but that practice was quickly abandoned, instead the RAS established other awards.

In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, because many felt an award should jointly be made to John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier. A controversy arose and no award was made in 1847. The controversy was resolved by giving 12 "testimonial" awards in 1848 to various people including Adams and Le Verrier, and in 1849 awards resumed, with a limit of one per year. Adams and Le Verrier did not get their gold medals until 1866 and 1868, respectively. Adams, who was then President of the RAS, presented Le Verrier with the medal.

In some years, particularly early on, the RAS sometimes decided that there were no suitable nominations and so did not award the gold medal. There are therefore 17 years without an award, the most recent being 1942 (on that occasion due to the disruption of the Second World War). One medal per year was the usual practise, although two medals were awarded in both 1867 and 1886. To ensure balance in research areas, in 1964 the award was expanded to two medals per year, one in astronomy (including astrophysics, cosmology etc.) and one in geophysics (including planetary science, tectonics etc.), which remains the current system.<ref name="winners_2015" /> All recipients are listed below, along with the years when no award was made.

The first woman to receive the Gold Medal was Caroline Herschel in 1828. No other woman received the award until Vera Rubin in 1996. Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge were jointly awarded the 2005 Gold Medal in astronomy, the first joint award since 1886.

The medal features an image of the 40-foot telescope constructed by Sir William Herschel, the first President of the RAS.

Recipients

Year	Astronomy	Geophysics	Notes	References
1824	Charles Babbage Johann Franz Encke		<ref group="note">Silver medalists: Jean-Louis Pons, Charles Rümker</ref>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1825	No award
1826	John Herschel James South Wilhelm Struve			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1827	Francis Baily		<ref group="note">Silver medalists: Mark Beaufoy, William Samuel Stratford</ref>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1828	Thomas Makdougall Brisbane James Dunlop Caroline Herschel		<ref group="note" name="female">The first woman to receive the Gold Medal was Caroline Herschel in 1828. No other woman did so until Vera Rubin in 1996.</ref>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1829	Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel William Pearson Heinrich Christian Schumacher			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1830	Johann Franz Encke William Richardson			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1831	Marie-Charles Damoiseau Henry Kater			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1832	No award
1833	George Biddell Airy			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1834	No award
1835	Manuel John Johnson			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1836	John Herschel			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1837	Otto August Rosenberger			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1838	No award
1839	John Wrottesley			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1840	Jean Plana			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1841	Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1842	Peter Andreas Hansen			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1843	Francis Baily			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1844	No award
1845	William Henry Smyth			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1846	George Biddell Airy			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1847	No award
1848	No award		<ref group="note">Replaced by testimonial medals, awarded to John Couch Adams, George Biddell Airy, Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander, George Bishop, George Everest, Peter Andreas Hansen, Karl Ludwig Hencke, John Herschel, John Russell Hind, John William Lubbock, Urbain Le Verrier & Maxmilian Weisse</ref>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1849	William Lassell			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1850	Otto Wilhelm von Struve			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1851	Annibale de Gasparis			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1852	Christian August Friedrich Peters			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1853	John Russell Hind			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1854	Charles Rümker			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1855	William Rutter Dawes			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1856	Robert Grant			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1857	Heinrich Schwabe			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1858	Robert Main			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1859	Richard Christopher Carrington			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1860	Peter Andreas Hansen			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1861	Hermann Goldschmidt			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1862	Warren de la Rue			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1863	Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1864	No award
1865	George Phillips Bond			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1866	John Couch Adams			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1867	William Huggins William Allen Miller			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1868	Urbain Le Verrier			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1869	Edward James Stone			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1870	Charles-Eugène Delaunay			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1871	No award
1872	Giovanni Schiaparelli			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1873	No award
1874	Simon Newcomb			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1875	Heinrich d'Arrest			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1876	Urbain Le Verrier			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1877	No award
1878	Ercole Dembowski			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1879	Asaph Hall			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1880	No award
1881	Axel Möller			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1882	David Gill			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1883	Benjamin Apthorp Gould			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1884	Andrew Ainslie Common			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1885	William Huggins			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1886	Edward Charles Pickering Charles Pritchard			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1887	George William Hill			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1888	Arthur Auwers			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1889	Maurice Loewy			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1890	No award
1891	No award
1892	George Howard Darwin			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1893	Hermann Carl Vogel			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1894	Sherburne Wesley Burnham			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1895	Isaac Roberts			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1896	Seth Carlo Chandler			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1897	E. E. Barnard			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1898	William Frederick Denning			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1899	Frank McClean			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1900	Henri Poincaré			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1901	Edward Charles Pickering			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1902	Jacobus Kapteyn			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1903		Hermann Struve		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1904		George Ellery Hale		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1905	Lewis Boss			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1906	William Wallace Campbell			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1907		Ernest William Brown		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1908		David Gill		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1909	Oskar Backlund			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1910		Friedrich Küstner		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1911	Philip Herbert Cowell			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1912	Arthur Robert Hinks			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1913		Henri-Alexandre Deslandres		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1914	Max Wolf			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1915		Alfred Fowler		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1916	John Louis Emil Dreyer			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1917	Walter Sydney Adams			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1918		John Evershed		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1919	Guillaume Bigourdan			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1920	No award
1921	Henry Norris Russell			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1922	James Jeans			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1923	Albert A. Michelson			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1924	Arthur Eddington			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1925		Frank Watson Dyson		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1926	Albert Einstein			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1927	Frank Schlesinger			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1928		Ralph Allen Sampson		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1929	Ejnar Hertzsprung			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1930	John Stanley Plaskett			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1931	Willem de Sitter			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1932	Robert Grant Aitken			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1933	Vesto Slipher			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1934	Harlow Shapley			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1935	Edward Arthur Milne			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1936		Hisashi Kimura		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1937		Harold Jeffreys		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1938	William Hammond Wright			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1939		Bernard Lyot		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1940	Edwin Hubble			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1941	No award
1942	No award
1943		Harold Spencer Jones		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1944	Otto Struve			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1945		Bengt Edlén		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1946	Jan Oort			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1947		Marcel Minnaert		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1948	Bertil Lindblad			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1949		Sydney Chapman		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1950	Joel Stebbins			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1951	Anton Pannekoek			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1952	John Jackson			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1953	Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1954	Walter Baade			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1955	Dirk Brouwer			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1956		Thomas George Cowling		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1957	Albrecht Unsöld			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1958		André Danjon		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1959	Raymond Arthur Lyttleton			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1960	Viktor Ambartsumian			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1961	Herman Zanstra			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1962	Bengt Strömgren			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1963		Harry Hemley Plaskett		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1964	Martin Ryle	Maurice Ewing		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1965	Gerald Maurice Clemence	Edward Bullard		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1966	Ira Sprague Bowen	Harold Clayton Urey		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1967	Allan Sandage	Hannes Alfvén		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1968	Fred Hoyle	Walter Munk		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1969	Martin Schwarzschild	Albert Thomas Price		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1970	Horace W. Babcock			<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1971	Richard van der Riet Woolley	Frank Press		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1972	Fritz Zwicky	Hal Thirlaway		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1973	Edwin Salpeter	Francis Birch		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1974	Ludwig Biermann	Keith Bullen		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1975	Jesse Greenstein	Ernst Öpik		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1976	William McCrea	J. A. Ratcliffe		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1977	John Bolton	David Bates		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1978	Lyman Spitzer	James Van Allen		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1979	Charles Gorrie Wynne	Leon Knopoff		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1980	Maarten Schmidt	Chaim L. Pekeris		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1981	Bernard Lovell	James Freeman Gilbert		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1982	Riccardo Giacconi	Harrie Massey		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1983	M. J. Seaton	Fred Whipple		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1984	Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich	Keith Runcorn		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1985	Stephen Hawking	Thomas Gold		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1986	Alexander Dalgarno	George E. Backus		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1987	Martin Rees	Takesi Nagata		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1988	Cornelis de Jager	Don L. Anderson		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1989	Ken Pounds	Raymond Hide		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1990	Bernard Pagel	James Dungey		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1991	Vitaly Ginzburg	Gerald J. Wasserburg		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1992	Eugene Parker	Dan McKenzie		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1993	Donald Lynden-Bell	Peter Goldreich		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1994	James Gunn	Thomas Reeve Kaiser		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1995	Rashid Sunyaev	John Houghton		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1996	Vera Rubin	Kenneth Creer	<ref group="note" name="female"/>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1997	Donald Osterbrock	Donald Farley		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1998	Jim Peebles	Robert L. Parker		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
1999	Bohdan Paczyński	Kenneth Budden		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2000	Leon Lucy	Robert Hutchison		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
2001	Hermann Bondi	Henry Rishbeth		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2002	Leon Mestel	John Arthur Jacobs		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2003	John Bahcall	David Gubbins		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2004	Jerry Ostriker	Grenville Turner		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2005	Margaret Burbidge Geoffrey Burbidge	Carole Jordan	<ref group="note">Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge received the first joint award since 1886</ref>	<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2006	Simon White	Stan Cowley		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2007	Leonard Culhane	Nigel Weiss		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2008	Joseph Silk	Brian Kennett		<ref name="gold_medallists" />
2009	David Williams	Eric Priest		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref name="2009_award">Template:Cite web</ref>
2010	Douglas Gough	John Woodhouse		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref name=RASHonours2010>Template:Cite web</ref>
2011	Richard Ellis	Eberhard Grün		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2012	Andy Fabian	John Brown		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2013	Roger Blandford	Chris Chapman		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref name=winners_2013>Template:Cite web</ref>
2014	Carlos Frenk	John Zarnecki		<ref name="gold_medallists" /><ref name=winners_2014>Template:Cite web</ref>
2015	Michel Mayor	Mike Lockwood		<ref name="winners_2015" />
2016	John Barrow	Philip England		<ref name="winners_2016" />
2017	Nick Kaiser	Michele Dougherty		<ref name="winners_2017"/>
2018	Jim Hough	Bob White		<ref name="winners_2018">Template:Cite webTemplate:Full citation needed</ref>
2019	Robert Kennicutt	Margaret Kivelson		<ref name="winners_2019">Template:Cite web</ref>
2020	Sandra Faber	Yvonne Elsworth		<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2021	Jocelyn Bell Burnell	Thorne Lay		<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>
2022	George Efstathiou	Richard B. Horne		<ref name="winners_2022"/>
2023	John Peacock	Tim Palmer		<ref name="winners_2023"/>
2024	Gilles Chabrier	John-Michael Kendall		<ref name="winners_2024"/>
2025	James Binney	Jonathan Tennyson		<ref name="winners_2025"/>

See also

• List of astronomy awards
• List of geophysics awards