The Sylvester Medal is a bronze medal awarded by the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

(London) for the encouragement of mathematical research, and accompanied by a £1,000 prize. It was named in honour of James Joseph Sylvester, the

Savilian Professor of Geometry The position of Savilian Professor of Geometry was established at the University of Oxford in 1619. It was founded (at the same time as the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy) by Sir Henry Savile, a mathematician and classical scholar who was ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in the 1880s, and first awarded in 1901, having been suggested by a group of Sylvester's friends (primarily

Raphael Meldola Raphael Meldola FRS (19 July 1849 – 16 November 1915) was a British chemist and entomologist. He was Professor of Organic Chemistry in the University of London, 1912–15. Life Born in Islington, London, he was descended from Raphael Me ...

) after his death in 1897. Initially awarded every three years with a prize of around £900, the Royal Society have announced that starting in 2009 it will be awarded every two years instead, and is to be aimed at 'early to mid career stage scientist' rather than an established mathematician. The award winner is chosen by the Society's A-side awards committee, which handles physical rather than biological science awards. , 45 medals have been awarded, of which all but 10 have been awarded to citizens of the United Kingdom, two to citizens of France and United States, and one medal each has been won by citizens of New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Sweden and South Africa. three women have won the medal,

Mary Cartwright Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright, (17 December 1900 – 3 April 1998) was a British mathematician. She was one of the pioneers of what would later become known as chaos theory. Along with J. E. Littlewood, Cartwright saw many solutions to a problem ...

in 1964,

Dusa McDuff Dusa McDuff Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS Royal Society of Edinburgh, CorrFRSE (born 18 October 1945) is an English mathematician who works on symplectic geometry. She was the first recipient of the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics, w ...

in 2018, and

Frances Kirwan Dame Frances Clare Kirwan, (born 21 August 1959) is a British mathematician, currently Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford. Her fields of specialisation are algebraic and symplectic geometry. Education Kirwan was educ ...

in 2021.

List of recipients

References

External links

Royal Society: Sylvester Medal
{{Authority control Awards of the Royal Society Mathematics awards Triennial events Awards established in 1901 1901 in science

List of recipients

See also

References

External links