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Year
2000
Subject
Chemistry
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena | Pasadena, CA
Citation
For his wide ranging seminal contributions to greatly advance and expand the field of olefin metathesis, a unique carbon-carbon bond breaking/making process, that has enormously added to the chemist's capabilities at making a broad range of drugs and other useful complex molecules, improved rubbers, and plastics for laboratory and commercial applications.
Year
2024
Subject
Chemistry
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology │ Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citation
For innovative methods to create novel materials one molecular layer at a time, and for applying these materials to areas ranging from drug delivery to energy storage.
Year
2015
Subject
Electrical Engineering
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Syracuse University │ Syracuse, New York
Citation
For pioneering an electromagnetic modeling method for accurate simulation, design, and optimization of radio wave antennas and devices, enabling advances in communications, radar imaging, and target recognition.
Year
2012
Subject
Mechanical Engineering
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Tel Aviv University |
Tel Aviv, Israel
Citation
For groundbreaking contributions to the accurate analysis of composite materials, which have enabled practical engineering designs of lightweight composite structures, commonly used today in aerospace, marine, automotive, and civil infrastructure.
Year
2024
Subject
Earth and Environmental Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Guelph │ Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Citation
For his bold vision to catalog every living organism using a small piece of DNA—a DNA barcode—which allows scientists to rapidly discover new species and assess biodiversity, and which provides everyone with a means to explore biodiversity for themselves.
Year
2003
Subject
Chemistry
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Citation
For pioneering the development of ultrafast and multi-dimensional spectroscopies, and their applications to gain fundamental molecular-level understanding of the dynamics in complex systems (condensed phases and biomolecules), including energy transfer in solids, reaction mechanisms in liquid solutions, the binding of small molecules on hemoglobin, and the observation of structural changes in proteins.
Year
2017
Subject
Electrical Engineering
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign │ Urbana, Illinois
Citation
For the development of the first visible (red) laser and LED used in displays and lighting, and the use of various alloys in colored light sources, which led to reduced energy consumption worldwide and contributed to the realization of optical data communications as the backbone of the Internet.
Year
2019
Subject
Physics
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Princeton University and Institute for Advanced Study│ Princeton, New Jersey
Citation
For applying concepts of theoretical physics to provide new insights on important biological questions in a variety of areas, including neuroscience and genetics, with significant impact on machine learning, an area of computer science.
Year
2025
Subject
Mechanical Engineering
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Harvard University │ Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citation
For outstanding contributions in the development of theories of the stability and failure of materials and structures, which have had profound impact on critical technologies for aerospace, energy systems, and nanoscale materials.
Year
2002
Subject
Physics
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Meijo University | Nagoya, Japan
Citation
For the discovery and elucidation of the atomic structure and helical character of multi-wall and single-wall carbon nanotubes, which have had an enormous impact on the rapidly growing condensed matter and materials science field of nanoscale science and electronics.
Year
2013
Subject
Life Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citation
For discovering heritable controls of gene expression that are independent of the DNA sequence information. These mechanisms affect normal development and diseases, such as cancer, and suggest promising new therapies.
Year
2008
Subject
Physics
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Colorado at Boulder | Boulder, Colorado
Citation
For her pioneering investigations of the quantum properties of an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms, atoms that cannot occupy the same quantum state, and in particular for the creation of the first quantized gas of fermionic atoms.
Year
2019
Subject
Computer and Cognitive Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Yale University │ New Haven, Connecticut
Citation
For developing innovative models of human memory with applications in psychology, brain science, human development, and our understanding of the malleability of memory in real-world settings.
Year
2005
Subject
Computer and Cognitive Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Citation
For his fundamental contributions to our understanding of how language is represented in the mind, and for developing techniques that enable computers to process efficiently the wide range of human languages. These advances have led to new methods for computer translation.
Year
2018
Subject
Computer and Cognitive Science
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Corporation for National Research Initiatives│ Reston, Virginia
Citation
With Vinton Gray Cerf, for enabling the Internet by developing TCP/IP, the set of methods that allows effective communication between millions of computer networks.
Year
2011
Subject
Mechanical Engineering
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
DEKA Research and Development Corporation |
Manchester, New Hampshire
Citation
For his resourcefulness and imagination in creating mechanical devices that broadly benefit society and enable people with disabilities to improve their quality of life and health.
Year
2015
Subject
Physics
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
University of Pennsylvania │ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Citation
With Eugene Mele and Shoucheng Zhang, for their groundbreaking theoretical contributions leading to the discovery of a new class of materials called topological insulators, and for their prediction of specific compounds exhibiting the novel properties expected of these new materials.
Notes:
- "Franklin" Medals are not the same as "Benjamin Franklin" Medals. The Benjamin Franklin Medal was initiated in 1998 to represent the combined legacies of several historic medals, including the Franklin Medal.
- The Scott Medal is awarded by the City of Philadelphia. Prior to 1920, the Institute's Committee on Science and the Arts selected the medalists and the Scott Medals were presented on Awards Day at The Franklin Institute.
- For more information about The Franklin Institute Awards program, contact the Awards Program Director at awards@fi.edu.