Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award the society can give. In 17 different years, nobody received it. Some of those gaps came from councils that found no suitable nominee. Two others followed major discoveries, and both caused trouble inside the society. Why would a society fail to honour the people who found a new planet? What happened when it tried to honour Albert Einstein? And what does the medal reward in the years when it does go to someone?

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• 2. What The Medal Rewards

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  The medal bears an image of a 40-foot telescope. Sir William Herschel, the first President of the RAS, constructed that instrument.

  The RAS Council has "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded". In practice, past awards have honoured "outstanding personal researches in the fields of astronomy and geophysics". Others have recognised wider contributions to those fields that "may be made through leadership in research programmes, through education and through scientific administration".

  Two fields sit under the medal's banner. Astronomy, as the award defines it, takes in astrophysics and cosmology. Geophysics takes in planetary science and tectonics. Most often the medal has marked extraordinary lifetime achievement. Occasionally it has gone to a specific piece of research.

  The council's freedom over the grounds did not stretch to the number of medals it could hand out. That limit shaped the society's most awkward years.

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• 3. Counting The Medals

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  The RAS was founded in 1820, and its first Gold Medals were awarded in 1824. That year the society also gave silver medals, and it did so again in 1827. The practice ended quickly, and the RAS created other awards instead.

  In the early years, a single year could bring several gold medals. By 1833, one medal a year had become the norm, and it stayed the usual practice for over a century. Only 1867 and 1886 broke the pattern, with two medals each.

  The council also had the option of giving nothing at all. In the early years it sometimes judged that no nomination merited the medal. The last blank year was 1942, when the disruption of the Second World War got in the way.

  In 1964 the system changed. To keep a balance between research areas, the society began awarding two medals a year, one in astronomy and one in geophysics. That arrangement still stands today. Martin Ryle and Maurice Ewing received the first pair.

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• 4. The Neptune Dispute

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  In November 1846, the deadline for gold medal nominations brought in three names linked to the discovery of Neptune. Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams had each predicted the planet's existence independently, and each had calculated where it might be found. Johann Gottfried Galle made the actual observation, working from Le Verrier's prediction. All three men were nominated by the deadline.

  Only Le Verrier had formally published his results at that point, so the council chose him as the strongest nominee. Adams publicly acknowledged that Le Verrier had priority. The confirmatory vote in January 1847 went differently. By then, Adams' publication had also been communicated to the council. Many members felt the medal should go jointly to Adams and Le Verrier, but the bye-law behind the one-medal limit prohibited that. The council failed to reach the required 3:1 super-majority to confirm Le Verrier alone, so no medal was awarded in 1847.

  A special general meeting of the fellows was then called to consider suspending the bye-law, and it declined. At the next nomination deadline, both Le Verrier and Adams were nominated again, and honouring both still meant breaking the rules. The way out came in 1848, when the society handed out 12 testimonial awards instead of gold medals. Everyone who had been nominated received one. That group included Adams, Le Verrier, several members of the council and two previous winners of the gold medal. Galle was left out, and he never received an award from the RAS.

  Seventy years later, Ralph Allan Sampson judged the compromise harshly. He called it "prematurely awarding some and unnecessarily rewarding others". He added that it was "offending against good taste" and "depleting future years of many of their best candidates".

  Gold medals resumed in 1849, still limited to one a year. Adams and Le Verrier waited until 1866 and 1868 respectively, and officially received them for work unrelated to Neptune. Adams was then President of the RAS, and he presented Le Verrier with his medal. Le Verrier's name would return to the list in 1876, for a second medal.

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• 5. The Einstein Affair

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  On the 29th of May 1919, Arthur Eddington led an expedition to observe a solar eclipse. The photographs from that event confirmed Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Eddington presented his results at a special joint meeting of the RAS and the Royal Society in November 1919. The RAS gave its December 1919 meeting over to discussion of general relativity. Einstein at once became the leading candidate for the 1920 Gold Medal.

  Two votes decided every gold medal at the time. In December the council chose the strongest nominations by simple majority. In January a second vote confirmed the award, and that needed three-quarters support. Normally the second vote was a formality.

  H. H. Turner nominated Einstein, and James Jeans seconded him. At the December meeting the council voted that Einstein was the strongest candidate. Some members objected on political grounds. Einstein then held joint German and Swiss citizenship, and Britain was still technically at war with Germany. The Treaty of Versailles did not enter into force until the 10th of January 1920. At the January meeting the council did not confirm the award. Turner and Jeans had both been present in December but were absent in January. Their absence may have swayed the outcome.

  After the December vote, Eddington had already passed a message to Einstein saying the medal would be his. He now had to write an apologetic letter explaining that it had been withdrawn. No gold medal was awarded in 1920.

  Einstein was nominated again for the 1921 medal, but the council judged the issue still too controversial. It gave the medal to Henry Norris Russell instead. Einstein does not appear to have been too offended. He attended the RAS meeting in June 1921 and delivered a lecture on general relativity. He received his own gold medal in 1926, once the political situation had stabilised and the council's membership had changed. Eddington's medal had arrived in 1924, two years ahead of Einstein's, partly for his work confirming general relativity.

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• 6. Names On The Roll

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  Charles Babbage and Johann Franz Encke headed the very first list, in 1824. Encke returned in 1830. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was honoured in 1829 and again in 1841, and Peter Andreas Hansen in 1842 and 1860. The surname Struve appears four times, for Wilhelm in 1826, Otto Wilhelm von Struve in 1850, Hermann in 1903 and Otto in 1944.

  Caroline Herschel's medal in 1828 made her the first woman to receive the award. No other woman followed until Vera Rubin in 1996, which left a gap of more than a century and a half.

  Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge shared the 2005 Gold Medal in astronomy. It was the first joint award since 1886.

  Edwin Hubble appears in 1940, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1953 and Stephen Hawking in 1985. The most recent entries in the list, for 2026, are Shrinivas Kulkarni and Andrew Jackson.

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