The Nevada Medal was established in 1988 by the

Desert Research Institute Desert Research Institute (DRI) is the nonprofit research campus of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), the organization that oversees all publicly supported higher education in the U.S. state of Nevada. At DRI, approximately 460 resea ...

. It is awarded for "outstanding achievement in science and engineering", and is presented by the

Governor of Nevada A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political r ...

. The previous recipients are: # Verner Suomi #

Dwight Billings William Dwight Billings (December 29, 1910 – January 4, 1997) was an American ecologist. He was one of the foundational figures in the field of plant physiological ecology and made major contributions to desert and arctic/alpine ecology. Billi ...

# James A. Van Allen # Benoit Mandelbrot #

Carl Djerassi Carl Djerassi (October 29, 1923 – January 30, 2015) was an Austrian-born Bulgarian-American pharmaceutical chemist, novelist, playwright and co-founder of Djerassi Resident Artists Program with Diane Wood Middlebrook. He is best known for his ...

Margaret Bryan Davis Dr. Margaret Bryan Davis (''née'' Margaret Bryan; born October 23, 1931) is an American palynologist and paleoecologist, who used pollen data to study the vegetation history of the past 21,000 years (i.e. since the last ice age). She showed concl ...

# John N. Bahcall #

Charles Elachi Charles Elachi (born April 18, 1947
. ''Cedars Network''. Retrieved on February 20, 2008.) is a ...

# Hector F. DeLuca # F. Sherwood Rowland #

Lynn Margulis Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Ma ...

# Wallace Broecker # Harold Mooney # John H. Seinfeld #

M. Gordon Wolman Markley Gordon Wolman (August 16, 1924 – February 24, 2010) was an American geographer, son of Abel Wolman. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Haverford College before being drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the wa ...

# Charles Goldman # Fakhri A. Bazzaz #

Farouk El-Baz Farouk El-Baz ( arz, فاروق الباز, ''Pronunciation'': ) (born January 2, 1938) is an Egyptian American space scientist and geologist, who worked with NASA in the scientific exploration of the Moon and the planning of the Apollo program. ...

Donald Grayson Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of the ...

Walter Alvarez Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in ...

Susan Lindquist Susan Lee Lindquist, ForMemRS (June 5, 1949 – October 27, 2016) was an American professor of biology at MIT specializing in molecular biology, particularly the protein folding problem within a family of molecules known as heat-shock proteins ...

James E. Hansen James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1942) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the The Earth Institute, Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research ...

Francis Collins Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health (N ...

Robert Ballard Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology o ...

Steven Squyres Steven Weldon Squyres (born January 9, 1956) is an American geologist and planetary scientist. He was the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a f ...

Nina Fedoroff Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff (born April 9, 1942) is an American molecular biologist known for her research in life sciences and biotechnology, especially transposable elements or jumping genes. and plant stress response.Elder, Andy (Fall 2002Faces of ...

Albert Yu-Min Lin Albert Yu-Min Lin is an American engineer, scientist, technologist, explorer and television host. He is a senior lecturer and an associate research scientist of mechanical and aerospace engineering at University of California, San Diego. Since 201 ...

# Christopher McKay #

Missy Cummings __NOTOC__ Mary Louise "Missy" Cummings (born 1966) is an American academic who is a professor at Duke University and director of Duke's Humans and Autonomy Laboratory. She was one of the United States Navy, United States Navy's first female fight ...

Marcia McNutt Marcia Kemper McNutt (born February 19, 1952) is an American geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States. Previously, she served as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal ''Science'' fro ...

Kathryn Sullivan Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan (born October 3, 1951) is an American geologist, oceanographer, and a former NASA astronaut and US Navy officer. She was a crew member on three Space Shuttle missions. A graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz ...

(2020)

References

{{Reflist Awards established in 1988 American science and technology awards