The Dorothy Hodgkin Prize

The Dorothy Hodgkin Prize of the BCA was instituted in 1990 on the occasion of Dorothy’s 80th birthday, in recognition of her great contributions to science in general and to crystallography in particular. The Prize is supported by donations to the Dorothy Hodgkin Prize Fund which is a Restricted Fund of the BCA.

Nominations for this prize are welcomed from any part of the crystallographic community and the award will be made at a BCA Spring Meeting at which the awardee is expected to deliver a suitable Lecture. Awardees generally work in an area of crystallography in which Dorothy had an interest, and may have worked either with Dorothy or with one of her students.

Previous winners:

  • 1991 Prof. Durward Cruickshank (UMIST)
  • 1994 Dr. Gérard Bricogne
  • 1997 Prof. Michael Woolfson (University of York)
  • 2000 Dr. Uli Arndt (MRC)
  • 2004 Prof. George Sheldrick (Goettingen University)
  • 2007 Prof. Judith Howard (Durham University) “Looking Back, Leaping Forward.”
  • 2010 Dame Louise Johnson (University of Oxford) “Forty years of structural biology: where have we come from and where might we be going?”
  • 2015 Sir Tom Blundell (University of Cambridge) “Dorothy Hodgkin, Structural Biology and Drug Discovery”
  • 2018 Prof. Eleanor Dodson (University of York) “The Joy of Seeing – in Honour of Dorothy Hodgkin”
  • 2022 Prof. Elspeth Garman (University of Oxford) “Macromolecular Crystallography in 112 AD (After Dorothy)”

The Bragg Lecture

The BCA is proud to have hosted many recent Bragg Lectures. Lecturers are chosen by the Bragg Lecture Fund Committee approximately every three years and the lecture is one of the highlights of the British Crystallographic Association Spring Meeting programme. The current Bragg Committee (mid-2013) is: Professor Paul Raithby, Department of Chemistry, University of Bath; Professor Frank James Professor of the History of Science and Head of Collections, The Royal Institution; Professor Elspeth Garman, Professor of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford. The Bragg Committee are happy to receive suggestions for future Bragg Lecturers via the BCA.

Previous Awards

  • 1962 Prof. Paul. P. Ewald – Leeds and The Royal Institution, London
  • 1965 Dame Kathleen Lonsdale – Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth, Australia
  • 1968 Prof. Dorothy Hodgkin – Manchester
  • 1970 Prof. Bertram. E. Warren – The Royal Institution, London
  • 1973 Prof. Ralph W. G. Wyckoff – Cambridge
  • 1981 Prof. Henry. Lipson – Leeds and The Royal Institution, London “W. L. Bragg – Scientific Revolutionary”
  • 1982 Prof. M. M. Woolfson – Manchester, Cambridge “Structural Crystallography in the 80s”
  • 1985 Sir David Phillips – Leeds and The Royal Institution, London “The Silver Jubilee of Successful Protein Crystallography”
  • 1987 Prof. Brian W. Matthews – Perth and Adelaide, Australia
  • 1993 Sir Gordon Cox – Manchester, and The Royal Institution, London “Bliss was it in that Dawn to be Alive”
  • 1993 Prof. Max Perutz – Manchester, and The Royal Institution, London “How Lawrence Bragg proved me Wrong”
  • 1994 Prof. A. M. Glazer – Newcastle-upon-Tyne “Crystals Make Light Work”
  • 1996 Prof. Kenneth. C. Holmes – Cambridge “Structural Biology of Macromolecules and the Development of X-Ray Diffraction”
  • 1997 Prof. Durward. W. J. Cruickshank – Leeds and The Royal Institution, London “Gordon Cox and the Increasing Power of X-Ray Structure Analysis”
  • 1999 Prof. Jack. D. Dunitz – Glasgow and Cambridge “Polymorphism: the Same but Different”
  • 2004 Prof. John Finney – “Beyond Bragg’s Law: crystallography without a lattice”
  • 2007 Sir Roger Penrose – “Quasi-Crystals and Non-local Assembly: A Quantum-Theory foundations issue?”
  • 2010 Sir John Meurig Thomas – “The promise and essence of 4D microscopy”
  • In 2013 the Bragg Committee awarded three Bragg Lectures as part of the Bragg Centenary celebrations:
    • 2013 John Jenkin, La Trobe University, Australia – “William and Lawrence Bragg: time for resurrection!”
    • 2013 Dr. Airlie McCoy, University of Cambridge, UK – “Phasing crystals with single atoms: a century of progress”
    • 2013 Prof. Bill David, ISIS Facility RAL and University of Oxford, UK – “100 years of X-ray crystallography – the continuing Bragg legacy”
  • 2014 Prof. Judith Howard, Durham University – “Exploring a Century of Reciprocal Space: Same Old Theory – Endless New Results”
  • 2017 Prof. Mike Glazer, University of Oxford - “The Wondrous World of Perovskites”
  • 2021 Prof. Richard Henderson, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology - “The continuing Cryo-EM Revolution in Structural Biology”
  • 2024 Prof. Arwen Pearson, University of Hamburg - “The future of macromolecular crystallography in the age of machine learning”

The Lonsdale Lecture

In 1985 the Bragg Lecture Fund Committee considered whether they should organize a memorial lecture for Kathleen Lonsdale. They decided it would be inappropriate for them to do it; instead they recommended that the British Crystallographic Association approach the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) about a possible annual Lonsdale Lecture, at which young people would hear about crystallography. These were held for a few years, but attracted a very small audience. The BCA Council therefore decided to move the Lonsdale lecture to take place during the BCA Annual Meeting.

The September 1986 issue of Crystallography News page 5 reported that the BCA Council had decided to inaugurate a series of annual lectures to commemmorate the work of the late Dame Kathleen Lonsdale. The December 1987 issue on page 7 records that the 1st Lonsdale lecture was given by our BCA President David Blow.

Recently, the Lonsdale Lecture is awarded by the BCA on the recommendation of the Young Crystallographers Group. The range of topics encompass all areas of crystallography and diffraction and the lectures tend to have an element of teaching.

  • 1987 Prof. David Blow (Imperial) “Enzyme Engineering” (at Belfast BAAS meeting August)
  • 1988 Prof. Michael Hart (Bristol) “Synchrotron Radiation throws Light on a Microscopic World” (at Oxford BAAS meeting September)
  • 1990 Alan MacKay (Birkbeck) “What is a Crystal?” (at Swansea BAAS meeting August)
  • 1991 Louise Johnson (Oxford) “Designer Drugs” (at Plymouth BAAS meeting August)
  • 1992 Peter Murray-Rust (Cambridge) “Molecules and Disease” (at Southampton BAAS meeting)
  • 1993 Judith Milledge (UCL) (at Keele BAAS meeting)
  • 1997 Andrew Lang (Bristol) “X-rays and Diamonds”
  • 1999 T. Richard Welberry (ANU) “Diffuse X-ray Scattering” (at Glasgow IUCr meeting)
  • 2004 Dr. Elspeth Garman (Oxford) “Cool crystals: kill or cure?”
  • 2006 Prof. Mike Glazer (Oxford)
  • 2007 Prof. Bill David (ISIS/RAL) “Combinatorial Studies of Hydrogen Storage Materials – Playing the Odds.”
  • 2009 Dr. David Watkin (Oxford) “Crystallography – Technology, Science or a Black Art?”
  • 2011 Prof. John Helliwell (University of Manchester) “The evolution of synchrotron radiation and the growth of its importance in crystallography”
  • 2014 Prof. Henry Chapman (Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, DESY, Hamburg) “Macromolecular Crystallography with X-ray Laser Pulse”
  • 2015 Prof. Simon Parsons (University of Edinburgh) “High Pressure and the Molecular Crystalline State”
  • 2016 Prof. Arwen Pearson (University of Hamburg) “Visualising molecules in motion: crystallography as a tool to probe structure and dynamics”
  • 2017 Prof. Kay Diederichs (Universität Konstanz) “Towards a better understanding of (non-)isomorphism in macromolecular crystallography”
  • 2018 Prof. Bill Clegg (Newcastle University) “Distortions, deviations and alternative facts: reliability in crystallography”
  • 2019 Prof. George Sheldrick (Gottingen) “SHELXT = dual space structure determination using the phases to determine the space group”
  • 2021 Dr. Lucy Clark (Liverpool) “Quantum Magnetism and Crystallographic Complexity in Mineral Materials”
  • 2022 Prof. Andrew Goodwin (Oxford) “Disorder by design: from form to function”

The BCA Prize Lecture

The BCA Prize Lecture is awarded triennially. The awardee will be someone who has made a notable contribution to scientific research in which crystallography has played a central role. Nominations are welcomed from any part of the crystallographic community and should be sent by email to the BCA President ([email protected]) together with a short (< 500 words) case supporting the nomination. The lecture will be awarded in 2019 and then in 2022 with a nomination deadline in early 2021.

  • 2002 Prof. Bill David (ISIS/RAL)
  • 2005 Dr. Andrew Leslie (MRC LMB Cambridge)
  • 2008 Dr. Tony Crowther (MRC LMB Cambridge) “From Molecular Replacement to the Structure of Viruses: a Tale of Two Careers”
  • 2012 Dr. Robin Taylor (Taylor Cheminformatics Software) “Predicting Low-Energy Conformations of Small Organic Molecules: Is Crystal-Structure Data Redundant?”
  • 2016 Prof. Christer Aakeröy (Kansas State University) “From molecular sociology to functional materials”
  • 2019 Prof. Clare Grey (Cambridge) “Developing and optimising the function of Li-ion and ‘beyond Li’ batteries and supercapacitors by advanced characterization methods”
  • 2023 Prof. Aurora Cruz Cabeza (Durham) “Beyond the bulk: when shall we care about surfaces in molecular crystals?”