Ernest Rutherford Medal and Prize recipients

2024

Professor Alison Bruce

For seminal contributions to the understanding of shapes and dynamical symmetries in atomic nuclei and inspirational leadership in international nuclear structure physics research. 

Find out more about Professor Alison Bruce

2023

Professor David Jenkins

For outstanding contributions to experimental nuclear physics and commitment to widening participation.

2022

Professor Kieran Thomas Flanagan
University of Manchester

For pioneering contributions to laser spectroscopy of exotic nuclei, particularly the use of resonance ionisation and its application to single-atom sensitivity in mass spectrometry and trace-metal analysis for environmental testing.

2021

Professor Michael A Bentley
University of York

For distinguished contribution to the understanding of fundamental symmetries in atomic nuclei and their relation to the underlying interaction between nucleons.

2019

Professor Philip Walker
University of Surrey
For advances in understanding metastable nuclear states: their origins, properties and applications.

2016

Professor John Simpson
STFC Daresbury Laboratory
For his outstanding leadership in the development of new detector technologies and systems for experimental nuclear physics research within the UK and Europe, and for his seminal contributions to our understanding of the structure of atomic nuclei, especially in revealing new properties of nuclei at the limits of angular momentum, deformation, and stability.

2014

Professor Paul Nolan
University of Liverpool
For his outstanding contributions to Nuclear structure at extremes of angular momentum and his leading role in the development of segmented Germanium detector technology.

2012

Professor Peter A Butler
University of Liverpool
For his outstanding work in the field of experimental nuclear physics and his dynamic contributions to the future direction of the field.

2010

Professor Martin Freer
University of Birmingham
For establishing the existence of nuclear configurations analogous to molecules and demonstrating the existence of nucleon-clustering in key light nuclei, a long-standing issue in the field.

2008

Dr Alan Copestake, Dr Stephen Walley, Mr John Stewart Kiltie, Mr Chris Weston and Mr Brian Griffin
Rolls Royce plc
For the development of a long-life nuclear reactor core for UK submarines.

2006

Ken Peach
CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
For his contributions to high energy physics as leader of key experiments at CERN investigating CP violation, and as director of particle physics at CCLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory where he has played a key role in reviving accelerator science for particle physics applications in the UK.

2004

David L Wark

2002

Peter John Dornan, David Plane and Wilber Venus

2000

William R Phillips

1998

Anthony Michael Hillas

1996

David Vernon Bugg

1994

James Philip Elliott

1992

Erwin Gabathuler and Terry Sloan

1990

Roger Julian Noel Phillips

1988

John Dowell and Peter I P Kalmus

1986

Alan Astbury

1984

Peter Ware Higgs and Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble

1982

David Maurice Brink

1980

Paul Gayleard Murphy and John James Thresher

1978

Paul Taunton Matthews

1976

Joan Maie Freeman and Roger John Blin-Stoyle

1974

Albert Edward Litherland

1973

James MacDonald Cassels

1972

Aage Bohr

1970

Samuel Devons

1968

Brian Hilton Flowers

1966

Peter Kapitza

Lecturers

1964

Peter H Fowler

1962

Denys Haigh Wilkinson

1960

Cecil Frank Powell

1958

Niels Bohr

1956

Philip I Dee

1954

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett

1952

Rudolf Ernst Peierls

1950

Alexander Smith Russell

1948

Ernest Marsden

1946

Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant

1944

John D Cockcroft

1942

Harold Roper Robinson