Anna Koltunow has made outstanding contributions to understanding plant reproduction by uncovering mechanisms regulating fruit and seed formation via sexual and asexual (apomictic) pathways. She discovered mechanisms controlling seedless fruit formation and has generated seedless fruit in crops. Her pioneering work in apomixis, developing and using an apomict species where remarkably, female gametes form without meiosis, and seeds develop in the absence of paternal fertilization as a genetic and molecular model has identified similarities and differences in the mechanisms controlling apomixis and sexual seed formation. Koltunow's discoveries are being used in developing crops with transformational productivity improvements in developing countries.

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Known for work in the field of inorganic chemistry, with special reference to co-ordination compounds, the chemistry of the solid state, and the chemistry of the heavy elements. His studies of metal carbonyls, co-ordination compounds of olefin hydrocarbons, and isotope exchange reactions of metal ammines played some part in the growth of current theories of the structure of metallic complexes. His interest in non-stoichiometric compounds and in the chemical significance of the modern theory of solids has contributed to our knowledge of the mechanism of reaction involving solids, and of semiconductors. As deputy head of the Chemistry Division of the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment, he was responsible for shaping the programme of pure and applied inorganic chemical research of that project, and for initiating work in high temperature chemistry, the chemistry of the natural radio­-elements and other topics.

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Mathai Varghese is a major contributor to the field of geometric analysis. He is justly famous for several seminal articles, including what is known in the literature as the Mathai-Quillen formalism in topological field theories; L2-invariants for covering spaces; the hyperbolic space and noncommutative geometry model of the fractional quantum Hall effect; projective Atiyah-Singer index theory; twisted K-theory and T-duality in String theory which is popularly known as the ‘Theory of Everything’. In lay-person’s terms, he has proved a number of important results that involve the geometry and topology of manifolds, familiar examples in low dimensions are curves and surfaces.

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Passioura has made a number of substantial and highly innovative contributions to understanding of the water relations of plants. Developing techniques for collecting the xylem sap of intact transpiring plants, he has shown for the first time that roots sense water and osmotic relationships in the soil and relay such information through their xylem to sites of control of water loss in leaves. Passioura has evaluated the significance of such a signalling system to the overall responses of plants to the water status of soil and plant and the functioning of their cellular processes of growth under various forms of stress.

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Professor Banwell is distinguished for his diverse and innovative studies in the area of chemical synthesis, as applied to the assembly of numerous structurally challenging and biologically active natural products. Using biosynthetic principles, he achieved the first fully regio- and enantio-controlled total syntheses of the troponoid alkaloids colchicine and imerubrine, and the first synthesis of the marine alkaloid lamellarin K, a lead component in the development of novel anti-cancer agents. The candidate’s creative use of cyclopropane chemistry and his inventions of new methodologies and strategies have been taken up by many groups worldwide. They include the first truly mild procedures for effecting the classical Bischler-Napieralski reaction.

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Mark Blows has made key contributions to the development of a general framework for understanding the evolution of complex traits. He has overturned conventional wisdom concerning the nature of the two fundamental components of evolutionary change; genetic variation and selection. He has changed entrenched views on the availability of genetic variation, showing how the multivariate distribution of genetic variation generates genetic constraints among multiple traits. The strength of selection on multiple traits was shown by Blows to have been consistently underestimated, and he has gone on to show how selection changes levels of genetic variation, and how genetic constraints bias evolutionary trajectories.

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Professor von Caemmerer is distinguished for her work on the modelling, including careful experimental verification, of photosynthesis, the carbon acquisition of plants, the biochemistry of carbon dioxide fixation and regulation of CO2 diffusion in leaves. Her work spans most of terrestrial plant photosynthetic metabolism, in three main areas of research: modelling of C3 photosynthesis and stomatal control of intercellular CO2 concentration; physiological and biochemical evaluation of genetically modified C3 plants; physiology and biochemistry of C4 metabolism in leaves and C3 x 001F – C4 intermediate metabolism.

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Brian Schmidt is an internationally renowned researcher in cosmology and also in the physics of supernovae and gamma ray bursts. In particular, Schmidt’s formation and leadership of High-z Supernova Search Team led to the discovery that the expansion of our universe is accelerating. This discovery completely changed our understanding of the universe. It showed that 70% of the mass of our Universe is in a previously unknown form which is now usually referred to as ‘Dark Energy’.

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David Karoly is internationally recognised as a world leader in climate dynamics and climate change science. In his early research, he carried out pioneering studies that provided the theoretical basis for understanding observed linkages between climate anomalies at large distances across the globe. He identified, for the first time, the links between El Niño–Southern Oscillation events and variations of the Southern Hemisphere circulation. His research has led the development of methods for the detection and attribution of climate change, most recently for extreme climate events. David is also an international leader in the public communication of climate science.

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