The Jean Shanks Lecture was the first named lecture at the Academy. Awardees are chosen on the basis of their outstanding contributions to a broad range of medical science.
Dr Jean Shanks was for many years the director of one of the UK’s most successful independent pathology laboratories. She established the Jean Shanks Foundation, which has been a generous benefactor to medical science. Dr Shanks died in 1999 and her trustees endowed an annual lecture at the Academy of Medical Sciences in her memory.
The lecture is traditionally given at the Academy's Annual Fellows' Meeting in November or December each year.
Previous Jean Shanks Lecture speakers
2023: Professor Dame Angela McLean FRS HonFREng
2022: Professor Peter Jones FMedSci
2021: Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert FMedSci
2020: Professor Irene Higginson OBE FMedSci
2019: Professor Sarah Tabrizi FMedSci and Professor Gillian Bates FRS FMedSci
2018: Professor Janet Rossant FRS
2017: Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier
2016: Professor Uta Frith FBA FRS FMedSci
2015: Professor Jeffery Errington FRS FMedSci
2014: Professor Fiona Powrie FRS FMedSci
2013: Professor Sir Mike Stratton FRS FMedSci
2012: Professor Adrian Bird CBE FRS FRSE FMedSci
2011: Professor Linda Partridge DBE FRS FRSE FMedSci
2010: Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys FRS FMedSci
2008: Professor David Baulcombe FRS
2007: Professor Tony Pawson
2006: Dr Tadataka Yamada FMedSci
2005: Professor Kim Nasmyth FRS
2004: Sir Philip Cohen FRS FMedSci
2003: J. Michael Bishop MD
2002: Dr George Poste FRS FMedSci
2001: Sir Peter Lachmann FRS FMedSci
Watch: The genomes of cancer cells, by Professor Sir Mike Stratton FRS FMedSci (Shanks 2013)