The Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture is a lecture and associated medal that was created in 1900 by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to honour the anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley. [1] The lecture and medal are awarded annually to any scientist who distinguishes themselves in any field of anthropological research. [1] Thomas Huxley was fortunate to have another memorial lecture named his honour, The Huxley Lecture that was instituted by the members of Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in 1896. [2]
Huxley had been a member of both the Ethnological Society of London (ESL) and the Anthropological Society of London since 1863, and he was President of the ESL during its last two years, [3] and Vice President of the Institute when John Lubbock, Lord Avebury was President. A Huxley Lecture Committee was convened in May 1896, which decided that scientist should be invited to deliver a lecture to honour Huxley. [4]
Year | Laureate | Nationality | Title | Date | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1900 | Lord Avebury | United Kingdom | "Huxley, the man and his work" | 13 November 1900 | [5] |
1901 | Francis Galton | United Kingdom | "The possible improvement of the human breed under existing conditions of law and sentiment" | 29 October 1901 | [6] |
1902 | Daniel John Cunningham | United Kingdom | "Right-handedness and left-brainedness" | 28 October 1902 | [7] |
1903 | Karl Pearson | United Kingdom | "On the inheritance in man of mental and moral characters, and its relation to the inheritance of physical characters" | 16 October 1903 | [8] |
1904 | Joseph Deniker | France | "The six races that make up the current population of Europe" | 7 October 1904 | [9] |
1905 | John Beddoe | United Kingdom | "Colour and race" | 31 October 1905 | [10] |
1906 | Flinders Petrie | United Kingdom | "Migrations" | 1 November 1906" | [11] |
1907 | Edward Burnett Tylor | United Kingdom | Awarded the Huxley medal on 5 November 1907 | 5 November 1907 | [12] |
1908 | William Z. Ripley | United States | "The European population of the United States" | 13 November 1908 | [13] |
1909 | Gustaf Retzius | Sweden | "The so-called North European race of mankind: a review of and views on the development of some anthropological questions" | 5 November 1909 | [14] |
1910 | William Boyd Dawkins | United Kingdom | "The arrival of man in Britain in the Pleistocene age" | 22 November 1910 | [15] |
1911 | Felix von Luschan | Austrian Empire | "The early inhabitants of Western Asia" | 23 November 1911 | [16] |
1912 | William Gowland | United Kingdom | "The metals in antiquity" | 19 November 1912 | [17] |
1913 | William Johnson Sollas | United Kingdom | Paviland Cave: an Aurignacian station in Wales | 14 November 1913 | [18] |
1914 | James George Frazer | United Kingdom | For the presentation of the Huxley medal | [12] | |
1915 | Émile Cartailhac | France | For the presentation of the Huxley medal | [12] | |
1916 | James George Frazer | United Kingdom | "Ancient stories of a great flood" | 14 November 1916 | [19] |
1917 | No medal was given nor lecture held. Likely due to World War I | [12] | |||
1918 | No mention of the lecture being held. | [12] | |||
1919 | No mention of the lecture being held. | [12] | |||
1920 | Alfred Cort Haddon | United Kingdom | "Migrations of cultures in British New Guinea" | 23 November 1920 | [20] |
1921 | Henry Balfour | United Kingdom | "The archer's bow in the Homeric poems: an attempted diagnosis" | 1 September 1921 | [21] |
1922 | Marcellin Boule | France | "L’oeuvre anthropologique du Prince Albert 1er de Monaco et les récents progrès de la Paléontologie humaine en France" | Never delivered | [22] |
1923 | Edwin Sidney Hartland | United Kingdom | Hartland was awarded the Huxley Medal in 1922 but was not able to prepare and deliver the Huxley Memorial Lecture owing to his health | [12] | |
1924 | René Verneau | France | "La race de Néanderthal et la race de Grimaldi: leur rôle dans l’Humanité" | 25 November 1924 | [12] |
1925 | Arthur John Evans | United Kingdom | "The early Nilotic, Libyan and Egyptian relations with Minoan Crete" | 24 November 1925 | [12] |
1926 | William Ridgeway | United Kingdom | The death of William Ridgeway meant the Huxley Memorial Lecture was not delivered | [12] | |
1927 | Aleš Hrdlička | United States | "The Neanderthal phase of man" | Unknown | [23] |
1928 | Arthur Keith | United Kingdom | "The evolution of the human races" | 27 November 1928 | [24] |
1929 | Erland Nordenskiöld | Sweden | "The American Indian as an inventor" | 26 November 1929 | [25] |
1930 | Archibald H. Sayce | United Kingdom | "The antiquity of civilized man" | 18 November 1930 | [26] |
1931 | Georg Thilenius | Germany | "On some biological view-points in ethnology" | 29 September 1931 | [27] |
1932 | Charles Gabriel Seligman | United Kingdom | "Anthropological perspective and psychological theory" | 29 November 1932 | [28] |
1933 | John Linton Myres | United Kingdom | "The Cretan labyrinth: a retrospect of Aegean research" | 28 November 1933 | [29] |
1934 | Marc Aurel Stein | United Kingdom | "The Indo-Iranian borderlands: their prehistory in the light of geography and of recent explorations" | 31 July 1934 | [30] |
1935 | Grafton Elliot Smith | Australia | "The place of Thomas Henry Huxley in anthropology" | 26 November 1935 | [31] |
1936 | Edward Westermarck | Finland | "Methods in social anthropology" | 27 October 1936 | [32] |
1937 | Herbert John Fleure | United Kingdom | "Racial evolution and archaeology" | 9 November 1937 | [33] |
1938 | Marcel Mauss | France | "Une catégorie de l’esprit humain: la notion de personne, celle de ‘moi’: un plan de travail" | 29 November 1938 | [34] |
1939 | Robert Ranulph Marett | United Kingdom | "Charity and the struggle for existence" | 28 November 1939 | [35] |
1940 | Harold John Edward Peake | United Kingdom | "The study of prehistoric times" | 26 November 1940 | [36] |
1941 | Henri Breuil | France | "The discovery of the antiquity of man: some of the evidence" | 16 April 1946 | [37] |
1942 | Charles Leonard Woolley | United Kingdom | "North Syria as a cultural link in the ancient world" | 24 November 1942 | [38] |
1943 | Frederic Charles Bartlett | United Kingdom | "Anthropology in reconstruction" | 23 November 1943 | [39] |
1944 | V. Gordon Childe | Australia | "Archaeological ages as technological stages" | [40] | |
1945 | Alfred Kroeber | United States | "The ancient Oikoumenê as an historic culture aggregate" | [41] | |
1946 | Gertrude Caton Thompson | United Kingdom | "The Aterian industry: its place and significance in the Palaeolithic world" | 6 May 1946 | [42] |
1947 | Wynfrid Duckworth | United Kingdom | "Some complexities of human structure" | 25 November 1947 | [43] |
1948 | Robert Lowie | United States | "Some aspects of political organization among the American aborigines" | [44] | |
1949 | James Hornell | United Kingdom | Died before delivery of lecture | ||
1950 | Julian Huxley | United Kingdom | "New bottles for new wine: ideology and scientific knowledge" | 28 November 1950 | [45] |
1951 | Alfred Radcliffe-Brown | United Kingdom | "The comparative method in social anthropology" | [46] | |
1952 | Peter Buck | New Zealand | Died before delivery of lecture | ||
1952 | Kaj Birket-Smith | Denmark | "The history of ethnology in Denmark" | [47] | |
1953 | Morris Ginsberg | United Kingdom | "On the diversity of morals" | 26 November 1953 | [48] |
1954 | Ralph Linton | United States | Died before delivery of lecture | ||
1954 | Henri Victor Vallois | France | "Neanderthals and Praesapiens" | 25 November 1954 | |
1955 | Frederic Wood Jones | United Kingdom | Died before delivery of lecture | ||
1955 | Robert Redfield | United States | "Societies and cultures as natural systems" | 22 March 1955 | [49] |
1956 | J. B. S. Haldane | United Kingdom | "The argument from animals to men: an examination of its validity for anthropology" | 29 November 1956 | [50] |
1957 | Sigvald Linné | Sweden | "Technical secrets of American Indians" | 28 November 1957 | [51] |
1958 | Wilfrid Le Gros Clark | United Kingdom | "Bones of contention" | 28 November 1957 | [52] |
1959 | Raymond Firth | New Zealand | "Problem and assumption in an anthropological study of religion" | [53] | |
1960 | Samuel Kirkland Lothrop | United States | "Early migration to central and south America" | 25 November 1960 | [54] |
1961 | Arthur Mourant | United Kingdom | "Evolution, genetics and anthropology" | 24 November 1961 | [55] |
1962 | Dorothy Garrod | United Kingdom | "The middle Palaeolithic of the near east and the problem of Mount Carmel man" | 2 November 1962 | [56] |
1963 | E. E. Evans-Pritchard | United Kingdom | "The Zande state" | 27 June 1963 | [57] |
1964 | Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald | West Germany | "Early man facts and fantasy" | 2 April 1964 | [58] |
1965 | Claude Lévi-Strauss | France | "The future of kinship studies" | [59] | |
1966 | J. Eric S. Thompson | United Kingdom | "The Maya central area at the Spanish Conquest and later: a problem in demography" | [60] | |
1967 | Sherwood Washburn | United States | "Behaviour and the origin of man" | [61] | |
1968 | Georges Henri Rivière | France | "My experience at the Musée d’Ethnologie" | [62] | |
1969 | Isaac Schapera | United Kingdom | "The crime of sorcery" | [63] | |
1970 | Daryll Forde | United Kingdom | "Ecology and social structure" | [64] | |
1971 | George Murdock | United States | "Anthropology’s mythology" | [65] | |
1972 | Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza | Italy | "Origin and differentiation of human races" | [66] | |
1973 | Klaus Wachsmann | United Kingdom | "Spencer to Hood: a changing view of non-European music" | [67] | |
1974 | J. Desmond Clark | United Kingdom | "Africa in prehistory: peripheral or paramount?" | 7 November 1974 | [68] |
1975 | Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff | Austria | "Cosmology as ecological analysis: a view from the rain forest" | 27 November 1975 | [69] |
1976 | M. N. Srinivas | India | "The changing position of Indian women" | 25 November 1976 | [70] |
1977 | Meyer Fortes | South Africa | "Sacrifice, or was your fieldwork really necessary?" | unknown | |
1978 | Joseph Weiner | United Kingdom | "Beyond physical anthropology" | 8 November 1978 | [71] |
1979 | Gordon Willey | United States | "Towards a holistic view of ancient Maya civilizations" | 7 November 1979 | [72] |
1980 | Edmund Leach | United Kingdom | "Why did Moses have a sister?" | 21 November 1980 | [73] |
1981 | Fei Hsiao-Tung | China | "Some observations on the transformation of rural China" | 18 November 1981 | [74] |
1982 | Paul Thornell Baker | United States | "Adaptive limits of human populations" | 17 November 1982 | [75] |
1983 | Clifford Geertz | United States | "Culture and change: the indonesian case" | 1 February 1983 | [76] |
1984 | Junichiro Itani | Japan | "The evolution of primate social structure" | 21 November 1984 | [77] |
1985 | Louis Dumont | France | "Are cultures living beings? German identity in interaction" | 14 November 1985 | [78] |
1986 | Lewis Binford | United States | "Data, relativism and archaeological science: looking at, thinking about and inferring the past" | 17 September 1986 | [79] |
1987 | G. Ainsworth Harrison | United Kingdom | "Social heterogeneity and biological variation" | 18 November 1987 | [80] |
1988 | Daniel Carleton Gajdusek | United States | "New plagues - old scourges: epidemics of brain disease in population isolates in the twentieth century" | 2 November 1988 | [81] |
1989 | Fredrik Barth | Norway | "Transmission, and the shaping of culture in Asia and Melanesia" | 22 November 1989 | [82] |
1990 | Robert Hinde | United Kingdom | "A biologist looks at anthropology" | 21 November 1990 | [83] |
1991 | Colin Renfrew | United Kingdom | "Archaeology, genetics and linguistic diversity: a new synthesis?" | 27 November 1991 | [84] |
1992 | Mary Douglas | United Kingdom | Balaam's Place in the Book of Numbers | 18 November 1992 | [85] |
1993 | George W. Stocking Jr. | United States | Reading the palimpsest of enquiry: Notes and Queries and the history of social anthropology | 16 February 1993 | [86] |
1994 | Sidney W. Mintz | United States | Enduring substances and trying theories: the Caribbean region as Oikumenê | 7 December 1994 | [87] |
1995 | Jack Goody | United Kingdom | A kernel of doubt: agnosticism in cultural and cross-cultural perspective | 6 December 1995 | [88] |
1996 | Phillip Tobias | South Africa | The ape-like Australopithecus after 70 years: was it hominid? | 27 November 1996 | [89] |
1997 | Stanley Tambiah | United States | Transnational movements, multiculturalism and ethnonationalism | 18 November 1997 | [90] |
1998 | Marshall Sahlins | United States | Two or three things that I know about culture | 18 November 1998 | [91] |
1999 | Sally Falk Moore | United States | Certainties undone: fifty turbulent years of legal anthropology, 1949-1999 | 27 October 1999 | [92] |
2000 | Pierre Bourdieu | France | Participant objectivation: breaching the boundary between anthropology and sociology – how? | 6 December 2000 | [93] |
2001 | John Francis Marchment Middleton | United Kingdom | Merchants: An Essay in Historical Ethnography | 14 November 2001 | [94] |
2002 | Jane Goodall | United Kingdom | The scientific study of primates and its impact on contemporary world-views | 4 December 2002 | [95] |
2003 | Gananath Obeyesekere | United States | Cannibal talk: dialogical misunderstandings in the south seas | 15 July 2003 | [96] |
2004 | Marilyn Strathern | United Kingdom | A Community of Critics? Thoughts on New Knowledge | 8 December 2004 | [97] |
2005 | Peter Ucko | United Kingdom | Forms such as never were in nature: forging authenticity | 7 December 2005 | [98] |
2006 | Leslie Aiello | United States | Diet, energy and human evolution | 7 December 2006 | [99] |
2007 | Adam Kuper | South Africa | Changing the subject – about cousin marriage, among other thing | 14 December 2007 | [100] |
2008 | Maurice Godelier | France | Community, society, culture: three keys to understanding today’s conflicted identities | 7 November 2008 | [101] |
2009 | Ian Hodder | United Kingdom | Human-thing entanglement: towards an integrated archaeological perspective | [102] | |
2010 | Johannes Fabian | Netherlands | Cultural anthropology and the question of knowledge | 4 February 2010 | [103] |
2011 | Bruce Kapferer | Australia | How Anthropologists Think: Refiguring the Exotic | 16 December 2011 | [104] |
2012 | Alan Macfarlane | United Kingdom | Anthropology, Empire and Modernity | 14 December 2012 | [105] |
2013 | Howard Morphy | United Kingdom | Extended Lives in Global Spaces: The Anthropology of Yolngu Pre Burial Ceremonies | [106] | |
2014 | Tim Ingold | United Kingdom | On Human Correspondence | 7 November 2014 | [107] |
2015 | Robin Dunbar | United Kingdom | Dunbar's number(s): constraints on the social world | [108] | |
2016 | Margaret Lock | Canada | Mutable Environments and the Permeable Human Body | 11 November 2016 | [109] |
2017 | Margaret Conkey | United States | Field Walking, Walking the Field: Anthropological Archaeology as Viewed from Deep Time | [110] | |
2018 | Anna Tsing | United States | Feral Atlas:The More-than-Human Anthropocene | 29 November 2018 | [111] [112] |
2019 | Chris Hann | United Kingdom | Economy and Ethics in the Cosmic Process | 18 December 2019 | [113] |
2020 | Stephen Levinson | United Kingdom | The ‘interaction engine’: the evolution of the infrastructure for language | 14 December 2020 | [114] |
2021 | Stephen Shennan | United Kingdom | Population and the dynamics of culture change | 14 December 2021 | [115] |
2022 | Marcia Langton | No lecture | [81] | ||
2023 | Chris Stringer | United Kingdom | Mostly Out of Africa: how, when and where | 8 November 2023 | [116] |
2024 | Alex de Waal | United Kingdom |