The Grande Médaille of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

, established in 1997, is awarded annually to a researcher who has contributed decisively to the development of science. It is the most prestigious of the Academy's awards, and is awarded in a different field each year. Its creation results from the combination of the original French Academy of Sciences

Lalande Prize The Lalande Prize (French: ''Prix Lalande'' also known as Lalande Medal) was an award for scientific advances in astronomy, given from 1802 until 1970 by the French Academy of Sciences. The prize was endowed by astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1801 ...

of 1802 with the

Benjamin Valz Jean Elias Benjamin Valz (May 27, 1787 – April 22, 1867) was a French astronomer. He was born in Nîmes and trained as an engineer. He was the son of politician Jean Valz and the grandson of the doctor, meteorologist and naturalist Pierre ...

Foundation Prize in 1970 and then with another 122 foundation prizes in 1997.

Winners

* 2021 -

Katalin Karikó Katalin Karikó ( hu, Karikó Katalin, ; born 17 January 1955) is a Hungarian-American biochemist who specializes in RNA-mediated mechanisms. Her research has been the development of in vitro- transcribed mRNA for protein therapies. She co-fo ...

, biochemistry * 2018 -

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in ...

, astrophysics * 2016 -

Alexander Varshavsky Alexander Jacob Varshavsky (russian: link=no, Александр Яковлевич Варшавский; born 8 November 1946) is a Russian-American biochemist, noted for his discovery of the N-end rule of ubiquitination. A native of Moscow, he is ...

, biochemistry * 2015 - ''no award'' * 2014 -

Joel Lebowitz Joel Louis Lebowitz (born May 10, 1930) is a mathematical physicist widely acknowledged for his outstanding contributions to statistical physics, statistical mechanics and many other fields of Mathematics and Physics. Lebowitz has published mor ...

, physics and mathematics * 2013 -

Joan A. Steitz Joan Elaine Argetsinger Steitz (born January 26, 1941) is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her discoveries involving RNA, inc ...

, biochemistry * 2012 -

Adi Shamir Adi Shamir ( he, עדי שמיר; born July 6, 1952) is an Israeli cryptographer. He is a co-inventor of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm (along with Ron Rivest and Len Adleman), a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identificat ...

, cryptography * 2011 - Avelino Corma Canos, chemistry Grand Medal 2011
* 2010 -

Michael Atiyah Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the ...

, mathematics * 2009 - Robert Weinberg, cancer research * 2008 -

Susan Solomon Susan Solomon (born January 19, 1956 in Chicago) is an American atmospheric chemist, working for most of her career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2011, Solomon joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech ...

, atmospheric chemistry * 2007 -

Tomas Hökfelt Tomas Hökfelt (born 29 June 1940) is a Swedish physician and former professor in histology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1979 until 2006, when he got his emeritate. He was linked to the Department of Neuroscience and is specialized in cell bio ...

, who studied

neurotransmitters A neurotransmitter is a signaling molecule secreted by a neuron to affect another cell across a synapse. The cell receiving the signal, any main body part or target cell, may be another neuron, but could also be a gland or muscle cell. Neur ...

, and discovered their role in depression * 2006 -

Peter Goldreich Peter Goldreich (born July 14, 1939) is an American astrophysicist whose research focuses on celestial mechanics, planetary rings, helioseismology and neutron stars. He is the Lee DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics at Cal ...

, theoretical astrophysicist and planetary scientist * 2005 -

Ronald M. Evans Ronald Mark Evans (born April 17, 1949 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Biologist, Professor and Head of the Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, and the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology at the Salk Institute fo ...

, studied

hormone receptor A hormone receptor is a receptor molecule that binds to a specific chemical messenger . Hormone receptors are a wide family of proteins made up of receptors for thyroid and steroid hormones, retinoids and Vitamin D, and a variety of other receptors ...

s and the control of

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

* 2004 -

David Gross David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. Gr ...

, one of the founders of

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

and the

standard model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying a ...

* 2003 -

David D. Sabatini David Domingo Sabatini is an Argentine-American cell biologist and the Frederick L. Ehrman Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology in the Department of Cell Biology at New York University School of Medicine, which he chaired from 1972 to 2011. Sabatin ...

, early inventor of

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

techniques for

cellular biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

, discoverer of signalling peptides * 2002 -

Richard Garwin Richard Lawrence Garwin (born April 19, 1928) is an American physicist, best known as the author of the first hydrogen bomb design. In 1978, Garwin was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributing to the application ...

, discovered

parity violation In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of ''one'' spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it can also refer to the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates (a point refle ...

pion In particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: ) is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more gene ...

decay * 2001 -

Albert Eschenmoser Albert Jakob Eschenmoser (born 5 August 1925) is a Swiss organic chemist, best known for his work on the synthesis of complex heterocyclic natural compounds, most notably vitamin B12. In addition to his significant contributions to the field of ...

, organic chemistry * 2000 -

Robert Langlands Robert Phelan Langlands, (; born October 6, 1936) is a Canadian mathematician. He is best known as the founder of the Langlands program, a vast web of conjectures and results connecting representation theory and automorphic forms to the study o ...

, mathematics * 1999 - Rene Thomas, molecular biology * 1998 -

Leo Kadanoff Leo Philip Kadanoff (January 14, 1937 – October 26, 2015) was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics (emeritus from 2004) at the University of Chicago and a former President of the American Physical Society (APS). He contributed t ...

, physics * 1997 -

Jozef Schell Jozef Stefaan "Jeff", Baron Schell (20 July 1935 – 17 April 2003) was a Belgian molecular biologist. Schell studied zoology and microbiology at the University of Ghent, Belgium. From 1967 to 1995 he worked as a professor at the university. Fro ...

, molecular biology of plants

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grande Medaille Awards established in 1997 Awards of the French Academy of Sciences 1997 establishments in France

Winners

See also

References