McKenzie awarded Copley Medal

Professor Dan McKenzie FRS, from the Department of Earth Sciences, will receive the world’s oldest award for scientific achievement, the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal, for his seminal contributions to the understanding of geological and geophysical phenomena, including tectonic plates.

The Copley medal was first awarded by the Royal Society in 1731, 170 years before the first Nobel Prize. It is awarded for outstanding achievements in scientific research and has been awarded to such eminent scientists as Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

The full list of Cambridge recipients of awards, medals and prize lectures for 2011 is below:

Professor Steven Ley – Royal Medal

Sir Gregory Winter – Royal Medal

Professor Stephen Jackson  – Buchanan Medal

Professor Clare Grey - Kavli Medal and Lecture

Professor Herbert Huppert - Bakerian Lecture

The scientists receive the awards in recognition of their achievements in a wide variety of fields of research - the uniting factor is the excellence of their work and the profound implications their findings have had for others working in their relevant fields and wider society.