Franklin Medal

The Franklin Medal was a science award presented from 1915 until 1997 by the Franklin Institute located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. It was founded in 1914 by innovator Samuel Insull, and it was the most prestigious of the various awards presented by the Franklin Institute.^[1] Together with the other eight historical awards, it was merged into the Benjamin Franklin Medal, initiated in 1998.^[2]

The Franklin Medal, "founded in 1914 by Samuel Insull … awarded by the Franklin Institute for signal and eminent service in science"

Presentation of the first Franklin Medal in Philadelphia on May 19, 1915. Front row: Samuel Insull, Walton Clark, recipient Thomas Edison and his wife Mina Miller, Chevalier Van Rappard, accepting the award for Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. Back row: Robert Bowie Owens, John J. Carty, Frank J. Sprague, William Stanley, R. Tait McKenzie.

For other uses, see Benjamin Franklin Medal.

Laureates

Recipients are listed in a database on The Franklin Institute website.^[2]

Year	Country	Recipient	Discipline	Notes
1915	United States	Thomas Edison	Engineering	[3]
1915	Netherlands	Heike Kamerlingh Onnes	Physics
1916	United States	John J. Carty	Engineering
1916	United States	Theodore William Richards	Chemistry
1917	Netherlands	Hendrik Lorentz	Physics
1917	United States	David W. Taylor	Engineering
1918	Italy	Guglielmo Marconi	Engineering
1918	United States	Thomas Corwin Mendenhall	Physics
1919	Great Britain	James Dewar	Physics
1919	United States	George Owen Squier	Engineering
1920	Sweden	Svante Arrhenius	Chemistry
1920	Great Britain	Charles Algernon Parsons	Engineering
1921	France	Charles Fabry	Physics
1921	United States	Frank J. Sprague	Engineering
1921	Poland	Ralph Modjeski	Engineering
1922	Great Britain	J. J. Thomson	Physics
1923	France	Gustave-Auguste Ferrié	Engineering/Computer and Cognitive Science	[4]
1923	United States	Albert A. Michelson	Physics
1924	Great Britain	Ernest Rutherford	Chemistry
1924	United States	Edward Weston	Engineering
1925	United States	Elihu Thomson	Engineering
1925	Netherlands	Pieter Zeeman	Physics
1926	Denmark	Niels Bohr	Physics
1926	United States	Samuel Rea	Engineering
1927	United States	George Ellery Hale	Physics
1927	Germany	Max Planck	Physics
1928	United States	Charles F. Brush	Engineering
1928	Germany	Walther Nernst	Chemistry
1929	United States	Emile Berliner	Engineering
1929	Great Britain	Charles Thomson Rees Wilson	Physics
1930	Great Britain	William Henry Bragg	Physics
1930	United States	John Frank Stevens	Engineering
1931	Great Britain	James Hopwood Jeans	Physics
1931	United States	Willis R. Whitney	Engineering
1932	Germany	Philipp Lenard	Physics
1932	United States	Ambrose Swasey	Engineering
1933	France	Paul Sabatier	Chemistry
1933	United States	Orville Wright	Engineering
1934	United States	Irving Langmuir	Chemistry
1934	United States	Henry Norris Russell	Physics
1935	Switzerland[a]	Albert Einstein	Physics
1935	Great Britain	John Ambrose Fleming	Engineering
1936	United States	Frank B. Jewett	Engineering
1936	United States	Charles F. Kettering	Engineering
1937	United States	Peter Debye	Chemistry
1937	United States	Robert Andrews Millikan	Physics
1938	United States	William F. Durand	Engineering
1938	United States	Charles A. Kraus	Chemistry
1939	United States	Edwin Hubble	Physics
1939	Belgium	Albert Sauveur	Engineering
1940	Belgium	Leo Baekeland	Engineering
1940	United States	Arthur Compton	Physics
1941	United States	Edwin H. Armstrong	Engineering
1941	India	C. V. Raman	Physics	[6]
1942	United States	Jerome Clarke Hunsaker	Engineering
1942	United States	Paul Dyer Merica	Engineering	[7]
1943	United States	G. W. Pierce	Engineering
1943	United States	Harold Urey	Physics
1944	United States	William D. Coolidge	Engineering
1944	Soviet Union	Peter Kapitza	Physics
1945	United States	Harlow Shapley	Physics
1946	United States	Henry Clapp Sherman	Life Science	[8]
1946	Great Britain	Henry Tizard	Engineering	[9]
1946	United States	Enrico Fermi	Physics	[10]
1947	Great Britain	Robert Robinson	Chemistry	[11]
1948	United States	Wendell Meredith Stanley	Life Science	[12]
1948	United States	Theodore von Kármán	Engineering	[13]
1949	Sweden	Theodor Svedberg	Life Science	[14]
1950	United States	Eugene Wigner	Physics	[15]
1951	Great Britain	James Chadwick	Physics	[16]
1952	Austria	Wolfgang Pauli	Physics	[17]
1953	United States	William Francis Gibbs	Engineering	[18]
1954	Great Britain	Kenneth Mees	Engineering	[19]
1955	Sweden	Arne Tiselius	Life Science	[20]
1956	Great Britain	Frank Whittle	Engineering	[21]
1957	Great Britain	Hugh Stott Taylor	Chemistry	[22]
1958	United States	Donald Wills Douglas	Engineering	[23]
1959	United States	Hans Bethe	Physics	[24]
1960	United States	Roger Adams	Engineering	[25]
1961	United States	Detlev Bronk	Life Science	[26]
1962	Great Britain	G. I. Taylor	Life Science	[27]
1963	United States	Glenn T. Seaborg	Physics	[28]
1964	United States	Gregory Breit	Physics	[29]
1965	United States	Frederick Seitz	Engineering	[30]
1966	United States	Britton Chance	Life Science	[31]
1967	United States	Murray Gell-Mann	Physics	[32]
1968	United States	Marshall Warren Nirenberg	Life Science	[33]
1969	United States	John Archibald Wheeler	Physics	[34]
1970	Germany	Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky	Physics	[35]
1971	Sweden	Hannes Alfvén	Physics	[36]
1972	United States	George Kistiakowsky	Chemistry	[37]
1973	United States	Theodosius Dobzhansky	Life Science	[38]
1974	Soviet Union	Nikolay Bogolyubov	Physics	[39]
1975	United States	John Bardeen	Physics	[40]
1976	United States	Mahlon Hoagland	Life Science	[41]
1977	United States	Cyril M. Harris	Engineering	[42]
1978	United States	Elias James Corey	Chemistry	[43]
1979	Great Britain	G. Evelyn Hutchinson	Life Science	[44]
1980	United States	Avram Goldstein	Life Science	[45]
1980	United States	Lyman Spitzer	Physics	[46]
1981	Great Britain	Stephen Hawking	Physics	[47]
1982	Argentina	César Milstein	Life Science	[48]
1982	United States	Kenneth G. Wilson	Physics	[49]
1984	United States	Verner E. Suomi	Engineering	[50]
1985	United States	George C. Pimentel	Physics	[51]
1986	United States	Benoît Mandelbrot	Physics	[52]
1987	United States	Stanley Cohen	Life Science	[53]
1988	United States	Donald Knuth	Computer and Cognitive Science	[54]
1990	Great Britain	Hugh Huxley	Life Science	[55]
1990	United States	David Turnbull	Physics	[56]
1992	United States	Frederick Reines	Physics	[57]
1995	Netherlands	Gerard 't Hooft	Physics	[58]
1996	United States	Richard Smalley	Chemistry	[59]
1997	Italy	Mario Capecchi	Life Science	[60]
				[61]

Notes

1. Einstein acquired Swiss citizenship in 1901 and held it for the rest of his life. A German until shortly before emigrating to the United States and becoming affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1933, he surrendered his passport and formally renounced his German citizenship on March 28 of that year, in response to Adolf Hitler's rise to power.^[5] In 1935, he decided to remain in the U.S. permanently and became an American citizen in 1940.