The Grande Médaille of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

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

Winners

* 2023 - Michael N. Hall, molecular biologist * 2022 - Terence Tao, mathematics * 2021 -

Katalin Karikó Katalin "Kati" Karikó (, ; born 17 January 1955) is a Hungarian-American biochemist who specializes in ribonucleic acid (RNA)-mediated mechanisms, particularly in vitro-Transcription (biology), transcribed messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein repla ...

, biochemistry * 2018 -

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is a Northern Irish physicist who, as a doctoral student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. This discovery later earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974, but she was not ...

, astrophysics * 2016 - Alexander Varshavsky, biochemistry * 2015 - ''no award'' * 2014 -

Joel Lebowitz Joel Louis Lebowitz (born May 10, 1930) is a mathematical physicist known for his contributions to statistical physics, statistical mechanics, and many other fields of mathematics and physics. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Statis ...

, physics and mathematics * 2013 - Joan A. Steitz, biochemistry * 2012 -

Adi Shamir Adi Shamir (; born July 6, 1952) is an Israeli cryptographer and inventor. 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 identification sc ...

, 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, atmospheric chemistry * 2007 - Tomas Hökfelt, 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, or target cell, may be another neuron, but could also be a gland or muscle cell. Neurotransmitters are rele ...

, and discovered their role in depression * 2006 - Peter Goldreich, theoretical astrophysicist and planetary scientist * 2005 - Ronald M. Evans, studied

hormone receptor A hormone receptor is a receptor molecule that binds to a specific hormone. 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 for various ...

s and the control of

gene expression Gene expression is the process (including its Regulation of gene expression, regulation) by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, proteins or non-coding RNA, ...

* 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. ...

, one of the founders of

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the study 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 of ...

and the

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

* 2003 - David D. Sabatini, early inventor of

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

techniques for

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

, discoverer of signalling peptides * 2002 -

Richard Garwin Richard Lawrence Garwin (April 19, 1928 – May 13, 2025) was an American physicist and government advisor, best known as the author of the first hydrogen bomb design. In 1978, Garwin was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering ...

, 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 ref ...

pion In particle physics, a pion (, ) or pi meson, denoted with the Greek alphabet, Greek letter pi (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 ...

decay * 2001 - Albert Eschenmoser, 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, 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