Copley Medal

The Copley Medal is awarded by the Royal Society for the most important scientific discoveries.
It was first awarded in 1731. It was awarded for "the most important scientific discovery or for the greatest contribution made by experiment". The Copley Medal is the world's oldest scientific prize and it was awarded 170 years before the first Nobel Prize.
Notable winners include James Cook, Benjamin Franklin, William Herschel, John Hunter, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Dmitri Mendeleev, Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Francis Crick. Recent winners have been: