Royal Geographical Society - Awards and Grants

Awards and Grants

The society also presents many awards to geographers that have contributed to the advancement of geography.

The most prestigious of these awards are the Gold Medals (Founder's Medal 1830 and the Patron's Medal 1838). The award is given for "the encouragement and promotion of geographical science and discovery", and are approved by Queen Elizabeth II. The awards originated as an annual gift of fifty guineas from King William IV, first made in 1831, "to constitute a premium for the encouragement and promotion of geographical science and discovery". The Society decided in 1839 to change this monetary award into two gold medals: Founder’s Medal and the Patron’s. The award has been given to notable geographers including David Livingstone (1855), Nain Singh Rawat (1876), Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1878), Alfred Russel Wallace (1892), and Frederick Courtney Selous (1893) to more recent winners including Professor William Morris Davis (1919), Sir Halford John Mackinder (1945), Professor L. Dudley Stamp (1949), Professor Richard Chorley (1987) and Professor David Harvey (1995). In 2004 Harish Kapadia was awarded the Patron's Medal for contributions to geographical discovery and mountaineering in the Himalayas, making him the second Indian to receive the award in its history. In 2005 the Founder's Medal was awarded to Professor Sir Nicholas Shackleton for his research in the field of Quaternary Palaeoclimatology and the Patron's Medal was awarded to Professor Jean Malaurie for a lifelong study of the Arctic and its people. In 1902 they awarded khan Bahadur Sher Jang a Sword of Honour (the Black Memorial) in recognition of his valuable services to geography

In total the society awards 17 medals and awards including Honorary Membership and Fellowships. Some of the other awards given by the Society include:

• The Victoria Medal (1902) for "conspicuous merit in research in Geography"
• The Murchison Award (1882) for the "publication judged to contribute most to geographical science in preceding recent years"
• The Back Award (1882) for "applied or scientific geographical studies which make an outstanding contribution to the development of national or international public policy"
• The Busk Medal for "conservation research or for fieldwork abroad in Geography or in a geographical aspect of an allied science"
• The Cuthbert Peak Award (1883) for "those advancing geographical knowledge of human impact on the environment through the application of contemporary methods, including those of earth observation and mapping"
• The Edward Heath Award (1984) for "for geographical research in either Europe or the developing world"

The society also offers 16 grants for various purposes ranging from established researcher grants to expedition and fieldwork teams to photography and media grants. The Ralph Brown and the Gilchrist Fieldwork grants are the largest grants awarded by the society each worth £15,000.