Wikipedia:Today's featured list/June 26, 2017

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Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Kirchhoff

The Davy Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of London "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry". Named after Humphry Davy, the medal is awarded with a monetary gift, initially of £1000 (currently £2000). The medal was first awarded in 1877 to Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (pictured) "for their researches & discoveries in spectrum analysis", and has since been awarded 140 times. The medal is awarded annually, and unlike other Royal Society medals, such as the Hughes Medal, it has been awarded annually without ever missing a year. The medal has been awarded to multiple individuals in the same year on seven occasions. The most recent year in which two individuals won the Davy Medal was 1968, when John Cornforth and George Joseph Popjak were honoured "in recognition of their distinguished joint work on the elucidation of the biosynthetic pathway to polyisoprenoids and steroids". (Full list...)

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