GlaxoSmithKline Prize facts for kids
The GlaxoSmithKline Prize and Lecture is a special award given by the Royal Society of London. It honors scientists who have made amazing discoveries in human or animal health. These discoveries must have been published within ten years of the award.
This award is sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, a big healthcare company. Winners receive a medal and £2500. The first award was given in 1980 to César Milstein. He was recognized for his work on "monoclonal antibodies," which are important tools in medicine. Since then, the prize has been awarded many times to brilliant scientists.
Amazing Discoveries and Their Winners
This prize celebrates scientists who have made a real difference in understanding and treating diseases. Here's a list of some of the incredible people who have won this award and what they discovered:
| Year | Name | What They Discovered |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | César Milstein | For his groundbreaking work on making "monoclonal antibodies." These are special tools used in many areas of biology and medicine. |
| 1982 | Hans Kosterlitz | For discovering "enkephalins," which are natural pain-relieving chemicals in the body. |
| 1984 | Edward Raymond Andrew, James M. S. Hutchison, John Mallard and Peter Mansfield | For helping to develop "NMR imaging" (now called MRI). This is a powerful way to see inside the body without surgery. |
| 1986 | Donald Metcalf and Leo Sachs | For discovering factors that control how blood cells grow and change. This helped understand blood-forming tissues. |
| 1988 | Louis M. Kunkel | For finding the cause of Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy. He identified a missing protein called dystrophin. |
| 1990 | Philippa Marrack and John Kappler | For their important discoveries about T-cells, which are a key part of our immune system. |
| 1992 | Paul Nurse | For his important work on how cells divide and grow. This helps us understand the cell cycle. |
| 1994 | David Barker | For showing that some major diseases in later life, like heart disease, might start from nutrition during pregnancy and infancy. |
| 1996 | Charles Weissmann | For his work on prion diseases, which led to big steps in understanding brain diseases like spongiform encephalopathies. |
| 1998 | Gillian Bates and Stephen Davies | For discovering the cause of Huntington's Disease. This is a serious inherited brain disease. |
| 2000 | David MacLennan | For his work on proteins that control calcium. This helped understand muscle diseases and led to better diagnosis in animals. |
| 2003 | Michael Neuberger | For figuring out how our immune system makes many different antibodies. This has also helped understand DNA and cancer. |
| 2005 | Nicholas White | For his amazing work on treating and preventing serious diseases in developing countries. |
| 2007 | Mark Pepys | For identifying new targets for medicines and developing drugs for diseases like amyloidosis and Alzheimer's disease. |
| 2010 | Stephen Craig West | For his pioneering work on how our genes repair themselves. This is important for understanding how tumors form. |
| 2012 | Adrian Peter Bird | For his outstanding work on "epigenetics." This is about how genes are turned on or off, and its role in development and disease. |
| 2014 | Nicholas Lydon | For developing the drug imatinib. This medicine has changed how a type of blood cancer (chronic myelogenous leukaemia) is treated. |
| 2016 | Andrew Hattersley | For his work on studying the genes and body functions of patients with specific types of diabetes that are inherited. |
See Also
- List of medicine awards
