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Recipients

View recipients of the Hamilton Award.

In 2017 the Hamilton Memorial Prize became the Hamilton Award, the Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Research Excellence Award for Science.

Latest recipient

The 2023 Hamilton Award was presented to Mark Calcott for pioneering evolutionary approaches to the engineering of microbes to enable efficient and sustainable production of new drug candidates.

Previous recipients

2022

Christopher Cornwall for work on the impacts of climate change on coral reef growth globally.

2021

Kyle Clem for his research on the warming of the remote interior of Antarctica, including the South Pole – once thought to be immune to global warming.

2020

Nick Albert for his outstanding contributions to understanding the compounds responsible for different colours in plants.

2019

Lisa Anne Te Morenga for her contribution to international evidence-based nutrition policy stemming from her research examining the impact of dietary sugars on body weight.

2018

Maren Wellenreuther for her advocacy in applying genomic-based methods to the seafood sector and highly innovative approaches to aquaculture breeding.

2017

Ian Hamling for advancing understanding of New Zealand’s diverse tectonic and volcanic processes using satellite-based techniques. He led work to rapidly define the Kaikoura M7.8 earthquake, the findings of which have implications for seismic hazard models used worldwide.

2016

Miro Erkintalo for his outstanding contributions to nonlinear optics and laser physics, particularly for the unification of time- and frequency-domain models of optical frequency comb generation.
2015 Wooi Chee (Valerie) Soo for her work 'Enzymes are the molecular workhorses of life'.
2014 Joanne Davidson for investigating brain damage that might occur at the time of birth and has shown that by blocking a particular type of channel it is possible to significantly improve the outcome following oxygen deprivation before birth.
2013 Max Petrov for his outstanding research record through initiating and delivering studies which have changed the way that acute pancreatitis, a common digestive disease, is managed around the world.
2012 Simon Greenhill for his outstanding research record in the study of comparative linguistics. His work combines cutting-edge computational evolutionary methods with large-scale databases of language information.
2011 Mark Bolland for his outstanding research record in the study of the risks and benefits for bone and cardiovascular health of vitamin D and calcium supplements.
2010 David Baddeley for his highly detailed optical techniques used in biology to image objects as small as single molecules. He is recognised as a pioneer in this field.
2009 Noam Greenberg for his research relating to mathematical logic and computation theory and the development of algorithms in computation theory.
2008 Maurice Curtis for his highly innovative methods and approaches to examine neuogenesis in he human brain.
2007 Alexei Drummond for his significant contribution to computational modelling, with implications for population genetics, phylogeography and phylogenetics.
2006 Mark Vickers for his research on the foetal origins of later emergent adult diseases, with particular interest in the adult onset of obesity and hypertension.
2005 Barbara Holland
2004 Thomasin Ann Smith
2003 Charles Semple
2002 Adrian Walcroft
2001 Ralph Anthony Bungard
2000 Gregory Thomas Jones
1999 Claire Vallance
Deborah Young
1998 Timothy Raymond Naish
1997 David Noel Harper
Mark Rupert Sutherland
1996 Hamish Andrew McGowan
1995 Christopher E. Williams
1994 Michael A. Steel
1993 Neville W. Pankhurst
1992 Margaret A. Brimble
1991 Bernhard H. Breier
1990 Rodney Graham Downey
1989 Kathryn Lee Garden
1988 Christine Margaret Morris
1987 William Richard Fright
1986 Not Awarded
1985 William Richard Fright
1984 Jarg R. Pettinga
1983 Dianne Christine McCarthy
Robert McKibbin
1982 Dennis George Anthony Nelson
1981 Richard John Haynes
1980 Richard H. Furneaux
1979 Robert Martin Lewitt
1978 John Douglas Bernard
1977 Michael John McDonnell
1976 Peter N. Johnson
1975 Kevin C. O’Meara
1974 Franklin H. Wood
1969 Charmian Jocelyn O’Connor
1968 Winston Frank Ponder
1966 Anthony Ewart
Robert Francis Ross McNabb
1963 Colin James Burrows
1962 Peter Noel Webb
Barry Cooper McKelvey
1959 Graeme Roy Stevens
1955 Richard Kenneth Dell
1951 Marshall Laird
1947 Elizabeth Joan Batham
1943 Charles Alexander Fleming
1937 Colin Osborne Hutton
1934

Lester C. King

1926

Harold J. Finlay

John Marwick

1923

J. G. Myers