The Rank Prizes comprise the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics and the Rank Prize for Nutrition. The prizes recognise, reward and encourage researchers working in the respective fields of

optoelectronics Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radiat ...

and

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient ...

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/ref> The prizes are funded by the charity The Rank Prize Funds, which were endowed by the industrialist, philanthropist and founder of the

Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distrib ...

, J. Arthur Rank and his wife Nell, via the Rank Foundation on 16 February 1972, not long before Arthur's death. The two Funds, the Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry Fund and the Optoelectronics Fund, support sciences which reflect Rank's business interests through his "connection with the flour-milling and cinema and electronics industries", and which Rank believed would be of great benefit to humanity. The Rank Prize Funds also recognise, support and foster excellence among young and emerging researchers in the two fields of

and

. The Funds aim to advance and promote education and learning for public benefit.

Rank Prize for Optoelectronics

The Rank Prize for Optoelectronics supports, encourages, and rewards researchers working at the cutting edge of optoelectronics research, initially (from 1976) awarded annually, now a

biennial Biennial means (an event) lasting for two years or occurring every two years. The related term biennium is used in reference to a period of two years. In particular, it can refer to: * Biennial plant, a plant which blooms in its second year and th ...

prize worth £100,000. Optoelectronics relates to the interface between optics and electronics, and related phenomena. The Committee on Optoelectronics consists of the following people: *

Donal Bradley Donal Donat Conor Bradley is the Vice President for Research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. From 2015 until 2019, he was head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the Univers ...

CBE FRS (Chairman) *

Roberto Cipolla Roberto Cipolla (born 1963), , FREng, is a British researcher in computer vision and Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Education Cipolla was born in Solihull, England and attended Langley School in Soli ...

FREng *Martin D. Dawson FRSE * Helen Gleeson OBE *Anya Hurlbert * Simon Laughlin FRS, neurobiologist * John Mollon DSc FRS * Miles Padgett FRSE FRS *

Wilson Sibbett Wilson Sibbett (born 1948) is a British physicist noted for his work on ultrashort pulse lasers and Streak cameras. He is the Wardlaw Professor of Physics at St Andrews University. Early life and education He was born in Portglenone in County ...

CBE FRS FRSE * Maurice Skolnick FRS Past winners include: *1978 –

Charles K. Kao Sir Charles Kao Kuen Charles K. Kao was elected in 1990
as a memb ...

*1982 – C. Thomas Elliott *1982 –

Calvin Quate Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Education He earned his bachelo ...

*1988 – T. Peter Brody *1991 –

David N. Payne Sir David Neil Payne CBE FRS FREng (born 13 August 1944) is a British professor of photonics who is director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton. He has made several contributions in areas of optical fibre ...

and

William Alexander Gambling William Alexander Gambling FRS, FREng (11 October 1926–9 January 2021) was a British electrical engineer. Life From 1950 to 1955, he was lecturer in electric power engineering at the University of Liverpool. He taught at the University of Sou ...

*1993 – Arthur Ashkin *1995 – William Bradshaw Amos *1998 –

Federico Capasso Federico Capasso (born 1949, Rome, Italy), a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over ...

*1998 –

Isamu Akasaki was a Japanese engineer and physicist, specializing in the field of semiconductor technology and Nobel Prize laureate, best known for inventing the bright gallium nitride ( GaN) p-n junction blue LED in 1989 and subsequently the high-brightness ...

Hiroshi Amano is a Japanese physicist, engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology. For his work he was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura for "the invention of efficient bl ...

and

Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese-born American electronic engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology, professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and is rega ...

*2006 - Charles H. Bennett,

Gilles Brassard Gilles Brassard, is a faculty member of the Université de Montréal, where he has been a Full Professor since 1988 and Canada Research Chair since 2001. Education and early life Brassard received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell Unive ...

and Stephen Wiesner *2006 -

Paul Alivisatos Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American chemist who serves as the 14th president of the University of Chicago. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use i ...

*2008 –

Mandyam Srinivasan Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan AM FRS, also known as "Srini", (born 1948) is an Australian bioengineer and neuroscientist who studies visual systems, particularly those of bees and birds. A faculty member at the University of Queensland, he is ...

*2008 – Peter B. Denyer *2014 –

Alf Adams Alfred ("Alf") Rodney Adams, FRS (born 1939) is a British physicist who invented the strained-layer quantum-well laser. Most modern homes will have several of these devices in their homes in all types of electronic equipment. He served as a D ...

*2014 −

Eli Yablonovitch Eli Yablonovitch (born 15 December 1946) is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987.M.Kapoor (2013Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures page 58 He and his team were the first t ...

*2018 – Jonathan C. Knight *2018 – Philip Russell *2018 – Tim Birks *2022 − Michael Graetzel and

Nam-Gyu Park Nam-Gyu Park (born 1960, Hangul: 박남규) is Distinguished Professor and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)-Fellow at School of Chemical Engineering, SKKU. His research focuses on high efficiency mesoscopic nanostructured solar cells. Education ...

Rank Prize for Nutrition

The Rank Prize for Nutrition is for research in

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...

and

animal nutrition Animal nutrition focuses on the dietary nutrients needs of animals, primarily those in agriculture and food production, but also in zoos, aquariums, and wildlife management. Constituents of diet Macronutrients (excluding fiber and water) provide ...

(distinct from animal husbandry), and crop husbandry. The Committee on Nutrition consists of the following people: * John Mathers PhD Hon FAfN (Chairman) * Malcolm Bennett * Michael Gooding * Peter Gregory FRASE * Sarah Gurr * Anne-Marie Minihane * Susan Ozanne * Ann Prentice OBE PHD * John Wilding The Rank Prize for Nutrition was awarded at various intervals since 1976, but is now also awarded biennially, worth £100,000. In 2014 Australian biophysicist Graham Farquhar and the CSIRO agronomist Richard Richards were awarded the Rank Prize in Nutrition, for "pioneering the understanding of isotope discrimination in plants and its application to breed wheat varieties that use water more efficiently", which related to a discovery the pair made in the 1980s. Other winners include: *1981 − Hugo Kortschak, Marshall (Hal) Davidson Hatch and Roger Slack, for "outstanding work on the mechanism of

photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored i ...

which established the existence of an alternative pathway for the initial fixation of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...

in some important food plants". *1982 − Hamish Munro, for his work on the

protein metabolism Protein metabolism denotes the various biochemical processes responsible for the synthesis of proteins and amino acids (anabolism), and the breakdown of proteins by catabolism. The steps of protein synthesis include transcription, translation, ...

of mammals. *1984 − Elsie Widdowson, for her work on the values of foods as nutrient sources, the effects of long-term undernutrition and starvation and the nature and control of the growth process. *1989 − Vernon R. Young, for his work on the

amino acid metabolism Protein metabolism denotes the various biochemical processes responsible for the synthesis of proteins and amino acids (anabolism), and the breakdown of proteins by catabolism. The steps of protein synthesis include transcription, translation, and ...

of man. *1992 − Kenneth Blaxter, lifetime award given posthumously. *1995 – Richard Smithells and B.M. Hibbard, for "pioneering studies into the role of micronutrient deficiencies, principally

folic acid Folate, also known as vitamin B9 and folacin, is one of the B vitamins. Manufactured folic acid, which is converted into folate by the body, is used as a dietary supplement and in food fortification as it is more stable during processing and ...

deficiency, and

neural tube defects Neural tube defects (NTDs) are a group of birth defects in which an opening in the spine or cranium remains from early in human development. In the third week of pregnancy called gastrulation, specialized cells on the dorsal side of the embryo b ...

". *2006 −

Charles H. Bennett (physicist) Charles Henry Bennett (born 1943) is a physicist, information theorist and IBM Fellow at IBM Research. Bennett's recent work at IBM has concentrated on a re-examination of the physical basis of information, applying quantum physics to the problem ...

and Stephen Wiesner for research on the original concept of quantum cryptography. *2010 −

Peter E. Hartmann Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

and Robyn Owens for their "research on human lactation, including methods for the non-invasive measurement of the rate of milk secretion". *2020 – Stephen O'Rahilly *2022 – Cathie Martin

References

{{reflist Awards established in the 1970s Optoelectronics Nutrition