Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict List of natural phenomena, natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental p ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the names Smith-Knight Prize and Rayleigh-Knight Prize.

History

The Smith Prize fund was founded by bequest of Robert Smith upon his death in 1768, having by his will left £3,500 of

South Sea Company The South Sea Company (officially: The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America and for the encouragement of the Fishery) was a British joint-stock company founded in Ja ...

stock to the University. Every year two or more junior

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

students who had made the greatest progress in mathematics and natural philosophy were to be awarded a prize from the fund. The prize was awarded every year from 1769 to 1998 except 1917. From 1769 to 1885, the prize was awarded for the best performance in a series of examinations. In 1854 George Stokes included an examination question on a particular theorem that William Thomson had written to him about, which is now known as

Stokes' theorem Stokes' theorem, also known as the Kelvin–Stokes theorem after Lord Kelvin and George Stokes, the fundamental theorem for curls, or simply the curl theorem, is a theorem in vector calculus on \R^3. Given a vector field, the theorem relates th ...

. T. W. Körner notes

Only a small number of students took the Smith's prize examination in the nineteenth century. When
Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university ...
took the examination in 1879, the examiners were Stokes,
Maxwell Maxwell may refer to: People * Maxwell (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** James Clerk Maxwell, mathematician and physicist * Justice Maxwell (disambiguation) * Maxwell baronets, in the Baronetage of N ...
, Cayley, and Todhunter and the examinees went on each occasion to an examiner's dwelling, did a morning paper, had lunch there and continued their work on the paper in the afternoon.

In 1885, the examination was renamed ''Part III'', (now known as the Master of Advanced Study in Mathematics for students who studied outside of Cambridge before taking it) and the prize was awarded for the best submitted essay rather than examination performance. According to Barrow-Green

By fostering an interest in the study of applied mathematics, the competition contributed towards the success in mathematical physics that was to become the hallmark of Cambridge mathematics during the second half of the nineteenth century.

In the twentieth century, the competition stimulated postgraduate research in mathematics in Cambridge and the competition has played a significant role by providing a springboard for graduates considering an academic career. The majority of prize-winners have gone on to become professional mathematicians or physicists. The Rayleigh Prize was an additional prize, which was awarded for the first time in 1911. The Smith's and Rayleigh prizes were only available to Cambridge graduate students who had been undergraduates at Cambridge. The J.T. Knight Prize was established in 1974 for Cambridge graduates who had been undergraduates at other universities. The prize commemorates J.T. Knight (1942–1970), who had been an undergraduate student at Glasgow and a graduate student at Cambridge. He was killed in a motor car accident in Ireland in April 1970.

Value of the prizes

Originally, in 1769, the prizes were worth £25 each and remained at that level for 100 years. In 1867, they fell to £23 and in 1915 were still reported to be worth that amount. By 1930, the value had risen to about £30, and by 1940, the value had risen by a further one pound to £31. By 1998, a Smith's Prize was worth around £250. In 2007, the value of the three prize funds was roughly £175,000.

Reorganization of prizes

In 1998 the Smith Prize, Rayleigh Prize and J. T. Knight Prize were replaced by the Smith-Knight Prize and Rayleigh-Knight Prize, the standard for the former being higher than that required for the latter.

Smith's Prize recipients

For the period up to 1940 a complete list is given in including titles of prize essays from 1889 to 1940. The following includes a selection from this list.

Awarded for examination performance

Awarded for essay

Rayleigh Prize recipients

A more complete list of Rayleigh prize recipients is given in Appendix 1 ("List of Prize Winners and their Essays 1885–1940") of * 1913

Ralph H. Fowler Sir Ralph Howard Fowler (17 January 1889 – 28 July 1944) was an English physicist, physical chemist, and astronomer. Education Ralph H. Fowler was born at Roydon, Essex, Roydon, Essex, on 17 January 1889 to Howard Fowler, from Burnham-on-Sea, ...

* 1923 Edward Collingwood * 1927 William McCrea * 1930

Harold Davenport Harold Davenport FRS (30 October 1907 – 9 June 1969) was an English mathematician, known for his extensive work in number theory. Early life and education Born on 30 October 1907 in Huncoat, Lancashire, Davenport was educated at Accringto ...

* 1937 David Stanley Evans * 1951 Gabriel Andrew Dirac * 1980 David Benson * 1982 Susan Stepney * 1994 Group 4: J.D. King, A.P. Martin. Group 5: K.M. Croudace, J.R. Elliot. * 1998 P. Bolchover, O. T. Johnson, R. W. Verrill, R. Bhattacharyya, U. A. Salam, S. A. Wright and T. J. Hunt

J. T. Knight Prize recipients

* 1974 Cameron Leigh Stewart Allan J. Clarke * 1975 Frank Kelly and Ian Sobey * 1976

Trevor McDougall Trevor John McDougall is an Australian physical oceanographer specialising in ocean mixing and the thermodynamics of seawater. He is Emeritus Scientia Professor of Ocean Physics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of ...

* 1977 Gerard Murphy * 1981 Bruce Allen and Philip K. Pollett * 1983 Ya-xiang Yuan * 1985 Reinhard Diestel * 1987 Qin Sheng (mathematician) * 1988 Somak Raychaudhury * 1990 Darryn W. Waugh * 1991 Renzo L. Ricca * 1992 Grant Lythe, Christophe Pichon, Henrik O. Rasmussen * 1993 Anastasios Christou Petkou * 1994 Group 1: M. Gaberdiel, Y. Liu. Group 3: H.A. Chamblin. Group 4: P.P. Avelino, S.G. Lack, A.L. Sydenham. Group 5: S. Keras, U. Meyer, G.M. Pritchard, H. Ramanathan, K. Strobl. Group 6: A.O. Bender, V. Toledano Laredo. * 1996 Conor Houghton, Thomas Manke * 1997 Arno Schindlmayr * 1998 A. Bejancu, G. M. Keith, J. Sawon, D. R. Brecher, T. S. H. Leinster, S. Slijepcevic, K. K. Damodaran, A. R. Mohebalhojeh, C. T. Snydal, F. De Rooij, O. Pikhurko, David K. H. Tan, P. R. Hiemer, T. Prestidge, F. Wagner, Viet Ha Hoàng, A. W. Rempel and Jium-Huei Proty Wu

Smith–Knight Prize recipients

* 1999 D. W. Essex, H. S. Reall, A. Saikia, A. C. Faul, Duncan C. Richer, M. J. Vartiainen, T. A. Fisher, J. Rosenzweig, J. Wierzba and J. B. Gutowski * 2001 B. J. Green, T A. Mennim, A. Mijatovic, F. A. Dolan, Paul D. Metcalfe and S. R. Tod * 2002 Konstantin Ardakov, Edward Crane and Simon Wadsley * 2004 Neil Roxburgh * 2005 David Conlon * 2008 Miguel Paulos * 2009 Olga Goulko * 2010 Miguel Custódio * 2011 Ioan Manolescu * 2014 Bhargav P. Narayanan * 2016 Julius B. Kirkegaard * 2018 Theodor Bjorkmo, Muntazir Abidi, Amelia Drew, Leong Khim Wong * 2020 Jef Laga, Kasia Warburton, Daniel Zhang, Shayan Iranipour *2021 David Gwilym Baker, Hannah Banks, Jason Joykutty, Andreas Schachner, Mohammed Rifath Khan Shafi

Rayleigh–Knight Prize recipients

* 1999 C. D. Bloor, R. Oeckl, J. Y. Whiston, Y-C. Chen, P. L. Rendon, C. Wunderer, J. H. P. Dawes, D. M. Rodgers, H-M. Gutmann and A. N. Ross * 2001 A. F. R. Bain, S. Khan, S. Schafer-Nameki, N. R. Farr, J. Niesen, J. H. Siggers, M. Fayers, D. Oriti, M. J. Tildesley, J. R. Gair, M. R. E. H. Pickles, A. J. Tolley, S. R. Hodges, R. Portugues, C. Voll, M. Kampp, P. J. P. Roche and B. M. J. B. Walker * 2004 Oliver Rinne * 2005 Guillaume Pierre Bascoul and Giuseppe Di Graziano * 2007 Anders HansenAnders Hansen
/ref> and Vladimir Lazić

References

{{Mathematics in the United Kingdom Mathematics education in the United Kingdom Mathematical awards and prizes of the University of Cambridge 1768 establishments in England Physics education in the United Kingdom