Gabor Medal

Die Gabor Medal ist ein von der Royal Society in Erinnerung an Dennis Gábor (1900–1979), einem ungarischen Ingenieur und Nobelpreisträger, vergebener Preis für interdisziplinäre Leistungen zwischen Lebenswissenschaften und anderen Disziplinen. In den ersten Jahren seit 1989 war der Preis für herausragende wissenschaftliche Beiträge auf dem Gebiet der Gentechnik und Molekularbiologie vergeben worden. Zum 350. Geburtstag der Royal Society wurde 2010 zusätzlich zur regelmäßigen Vergabe in ungeraden Jahren ein zusätzlicher Preis verliehen.

Das Preiskomitee berücksichtigt möglichst Forscher, die am Anfang oder in der Mitte ihre Karriere stehen. Voraussetzung für den Preisträger ist die Staatsbürgerschaft – oder mindestens dreijähriger ständiger Aufenthalt – in einem Land des Commonwealth of Nations oder der Republik Irland. Die Preis besteht aus einer Silbermedaille und einem Preisgeld von 2000 Britischen Pfund (Stand 2023).

Sie ist nicht mit der Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize des Institute of Physics zu verwechseln.

Preisträger

• 1989 Noreen Elizabeth Murray In recognition of her pioneering work in the field of genetic engineering, in particular for her development of the bacteriophage lambda system as a cloning [vector?] into which could be incorporated DNA fragments of over 5 kilobases in length.
• 1991 Alan Fersht In recognition of his pioneering work in the use of protein engineering to study protein structure and enzyme function.
• 1993 Charles Weissmann In recognition of his many contributions to molecular biology, including his innovative analysis of coliphage Q-beta by the introduction of methods for making site-specific mutations, and the cloning and expression of alpha-interferon genes in bacteria.
• 1995 David Hopwood In recognition of his pioneering and leading the growing field of the genetics of Streptomyces, and for developing the programming of the pervasive process of polyketide synthesis.
• 1997 Kenneth Charles Holmes In recognition of his achievements in molecular biology, in particular his pioneering analyses of biological structures and viruses, and his development of the use of synchrotron radiation for X-ray diffraction experiments, now a widely used technique not only in molecular biology but in physics and materials science.
• 1999 Adrian Peter Bird In recognition of his pioneering work in the study of global mechanisms by which transcription of the mammalian genome is regulated and for his exploration into the molecular basis of fundamental biological mechanisms, particularly his development of ways of analysing methylation patterns of eukaryotic DNA using endonucleases and the discovery of and continued research into a new class of DNA sequences found in all vertebrates.
• 2001 Azim Surani In recognition of his discovery of mammalian genomic imprinting, revealing the expression of certain autosomal genes according to the parent of origin. Genomic imprinting has major implications for human genetics and the inheritance patterns of human disease and its discovery has been a major fundamental breakthrough that has changed the way we think about genetics in mammals.
• 2003 Jean Beggs For her contributions to the isolation and manipulation of recombinant DNA molecules in a eukaryotic organism, adding a new dimension to molecular and cellular biology.
• 2005 Lionel Crawford In recognition of his work on the small DNA tumour viruses, specifically the papova virus group, papilloma, polyoma and SV40.
• 2007 Richard John Roberts For his internationally acclaimed contributions to the discovery of RNA splicing and his structural and genetic studies that have extended the range of sequence specificity of restriction and modification of enzymes.
• 2009 Gregory Challis For his highly interdisciplinary work, exploiting genomics of Streptomyces coelicolor to identify new natural products and biosynthetic enzymes.
• 2010 Gideon Davies For his highly interdisciplinary work into the three-dimensional structures and reaction coordinates of enzymes, which has transformed glycobiochemistry.
• 2011 Angela McLean For her pivotal work on the mathematical population biology of immunity.
• 2013 Christofer Toumazou For his success in applying semiconductor technology to biomedical and life-science applications, most recently to DNA analysis.
• 2015 Benjamin Simons For his work analysing stem cell lineages in development, tissue homeostasis and cancer, revolutionising our understanding of stem cell behaviour in vivo.
• 2017 Richard Durbin For his outstanding contributions to computational biology, and their impact across many areas of the life sciences.
• 2018 Cait MacPhee For her seminal contributions to understanding protein aggregation that informed our approach to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, and opened up new opportunities for creating self-assembled functional biopolymers.
• 2019 Alison Noble For developing solutions to a number of key problems in biomedical image analysis and substantially advancing automatic extraction of clinically useful information from medical ultrasound scans.
• 2020 David Stuart For his seminal contributions to understanding virus structure and application to vaccine design, as well as driving the application of engineering and physical science to the life sciences.
• 2021 Peter Donnelly For pioneering work in the genomic revolution in human disease research, transforming the understanding of meiotic recombination, and for developing new statistical methods.
• 2022 Graham Medley For leading an interdisciplinary team of biologists, clinicians, mathematicians and statisticians who provided SAGE with epidemiological modelling expertise concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 2023 Catherine Noakes For her pioneering contributions to infection risk modelling and her exceptional leadership in the field through groundbreaking research and a multidisciplinary approach.
• 2024 Emily Rayfield For pioneering a new, cross-disciplinary era of engineering-informed computational palaeobiology.

Weblinks

• Gabor Medal bei der Royal Society (royalsociety.org)