The Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal is awarded at most every two years by the Australian Academy of Science

Australian Academy of Science

The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The Academy is modelled after the Royal Society and operates under a Royal Charter; as such it is...

 to a mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 or physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 for his or her outstanding research accomplishments. It is named after Thomas Ranken Lyle

Thomas Ranken Lyle

Sir Thomas Ranken Lyle FRS was an Irish-born and educated mathematical physicist and educator. He emigrated to Australia to take up a professorship at the University of Melbourne, where he was a pioneer in the use of X-rays as a medical tool...

, an Irish mathematical physicist

Mathematical physics

Mathematical physics refers to development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines this area as: "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and...

 who became a professor at the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

. The award takes the form of a bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 medal bearing the design of the head of Thomas Lyle, as sculpted by Rayner Hoff

Rayner Hoff

Rayner Hoff was a sculptor who worked in Australia.Born on the Isle of Man, Hoff was the son of a stone and wood carver of Dutch descent. He began helping his father on architectural commissions at a very young age and briefly attended the Nottingham School of Art where he studied drawing, design,...

.

The medal was founded by the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) in 1932, and first awarded in 1935. When the Australian Academy of Science was established in 1954, it took over the roles of the ANRC, including administration of the medal.

Recipients

Year	Recipients	Contribution
1935
1941
1941
1947
1947		atmospheric tide Atmospheric tide Atmospheric tides are global-scale periodic oscillations of the atmosphere. In many ways they are analogous to ocean tides. Atmospheric tides can be excited by:*The regular day/night cycle in the insolation of the atmosphere... s
1949
1951
1953
1957
1959
1961
1963
1963
1966		nuclear reaction Nuclear reaction In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, a nuclear reaction is semantically considered to be the process in which two nuclei, or else a nucleus of an atom and a subatomic particle from outside the atom, collide to produce products different from the initial particles...  theory, plasma physics Plasma (physics) In physics and chemistry, plasma is a state of matter similar to gas in which a certain portion of the particles are ionized. Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms , thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions... , and atmospheric tide Atmospheric tide Atmospheric tides are global-scale periodic oscillations of the atmosphere. In many ways they are analogous to ocean tides. Atmospheric tides can be excited by:*The regular day/night cycle in the insolation of the atmosphere... s
1968		"a wide range of mathematical disciplines" including fractional iteration of functions Iterated function In mathematics, an iterated function is a function which is composed with itself, possibly ad infinitum, in a process called iteration. In this process, starting from some initial value, the result of applying a given function is fed again in the function as input, and this process is repeated... , numerical integration Numerical integration In numerical analysis, numerical integration constitutes a broad family of algorithms for calculating the numerical value of a definite integral, and by extension, the term is also sometimes used to describe the numerical solution of differential equations. This article focuses on calculation of... , graph theory Graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of... , and relativistic Theory of relativity The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....  kinematics Kinematics Kinematics is the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies and systems without consideration of the forces that cause the motion....
1970
1972
1975		radio astronomy Radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The initial detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was made in the 1930s, when Karl Jansky observed radiation coming from the Milky Way. Subsequent observations have identified a number of...  of the sun Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
1977		number theory Number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...
1979		statistics Statistics Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....  of stationary process Stationary process In the mathematical sciences, a stationary process is a stochastic process whose joint probability distribution does not change when shifted in time or space... es
1981
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1989
1991
1993
1993
1995		martingale limit theory Martingale central limit theorem In probability theory, the central limit theorem says that, under certain conditions, the sum of many independent identically-distributed random variables, when scaled appropriately, converges in distribution to a standard normal distribution...
1997		quark Quark A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly... s and nucleon Nucleon In physics, a nucleon is a collective name for two particles: the neutron and the proton. These are the two constituents of the atomic nucleus. Until the 1960s, the nucleons were thought to be elementary particles...  structure
1999
2001
2003		nuclear structure Nuclear structure Understanding the structure of the atomic nucleus is one of the central challenges in nuclear physics. This article is written from a nuclear physics perspective; as such, it is suggested that a casual reader first read the main nuclear physics article....
2005
2007		nonlinear optics Nonlinear optics Nonlinear optics is the branch of optics that describes the behavior of light in nonlinear media, that is, media in which the dielectric polarization P responds nonlinearly to the electric field E of the light...
2009		unified field theory Unified field theory In physics, a unified field theory, occasionally referred to as a uniform field theory, is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field. There is no accepted unified field theory, and thus... , parity violations Parity (physics) In physics, a parity transformation is the flip in the sign of one spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it is also commonly described by the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates:... , fundamental constants Physical constant A physical constant is a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. It can be contrasted with a mathematical constant, which is a fixed numerical value but does not directly involve any physical measurement.There are many physical constants in...
2011