# Rutherford Memorial Lecture (Royal Society)

The Rutherford Memorial Lecture is an international lecture of the Royal Society created under the Rutherford Memorial Scheme in 1952. It is held at universities in various countries in the Commonwealth, with a stipulation that at least one of every three lectures must be held in New Zealand.

## List of lecturers

| Year | Name | Country | Lecture | Notes |
| 1952 | John Cockcroft | New Zealand | | |
| 1953 | James Chadwick | Canada | | |
| 1954 | Ernest Marsden | South Africa | Rutherford, his Life and Work 1871-1937 | |
| 1955 | Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant | India and Pakistan | Science and mankind | - |
| 1956 | Charles Galton Darwin | New Zealand | The Discovery of atomic number | |
| 1957 | Edward Neville da Costa Andrade | Australia | The Birth of the nuclear atom | |
| 1958 | Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett | Canada | | |
| 1960 | William Lawrence Bragg | New Zealand | The Development of X-ray analysis | |
| 1962 | Nevill Francis Mott | Nigeria, Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Uganda | Atomic physics and the strength of metals | |
| 1963 | Thomas Edward Allibone | India and Pakistan | | - |
| 1964 | George Paget Thomson | New Zealand | Rutherford in nineteenth-century Cambridge | |
| 1965 | Philip Ivor Dee | Canada | | |
| 1966 | John Ashworth Ratcliffe | Australia | Radio and the Cavendish Laboratory | |
| 1967 | Harrie Stewart Massey | New Zealand | | - |
| 1968 | John Michael Ziman | India and Pakistan | Some problems of the growth and spread of science in developing countries. | |
| 1969 | Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza | Canada | | - |
| 1970 | Stanley Keith Runcorn | Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda | | - |
| 1971 | Peter Howard Fowler | New Zealand | Evolution of the elements | |
| 1975 | Philip Burton Moon | Australia | Yarns and Spinners:Recollections of Rutherford and Applications of Swift Rotation | |
| 1977 | Norman Feather | Canada | Some episodes of the α-particle story | |
| 1979 | Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop | New Zealand | The New Physics | |
| 1980 | David Shoenberg | India and Sri Lanka | Magnetic Oscillations in metals | |
| 1981 | Stephen Erwin Moorbath | Zimbabwe | | - |
| 1982 | James Dwyer McGee | New Zealand | Rutherford, Radio and Opto-Electronics | |
| 1983 | William Ernest Burcham | Canada | Rutherford and beta decay | |
| 1984 | Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell | Australia | | - |
| 1985 | Roger Elliott | New Zealand | | - |
| 1986 | Rudolf Ernst Peierls | India | | - |
| 1987 | Maurice Goldhaber | Canada | | - |
| 1988 | Dan Peter McKenzie | New Zealand | | - |
| 1989 | Samuel Devons | Australia | | - |
| 1990 | Basil John Mason | Canada | | - |
| 1991 | Denys Haigh Wilkinson | New Zealand | | - |
| 1992 | Lewis Edward John Roberts | India | | - |
| 1993 | David John Weatherall | South-east Asia | | - |
| 1995 | William Hamilton | New Zealand | | - |
| 1996 | John Bertrand Gurdon | Australia | | - |
| 1997 | John Meurig Thomas | New Zealand | | - |
| 1999 | Robert Brian Heap | South Africa | | - |
| 2000 | Michael Joseph Kelly | New Zealand | | - |
| 2003 | Timothy J. Pedley | New Zealand | | - |
| 2005 | Alec Jeffreys | Singapore | | - |
| 2006 | Paul Nurse | New Zealand | | - |
| 2007 | Patrick Bateson | Australia | | - |
| 2008 | Lorna Casselton | South Africa | | - |
| 2010 | Lord Rees of Ludlow | New Zealand | Maths, maps and the human heart | |
| 2013 | Sir John Sulston | New Zealand | People and the planet – how can we all live and flourish on a finite Earth? | |
| 2017 | Georgina Mace | New Zealand | How should we value nature in a human-dominated world? | - |
| 2018 | Eric Wolff | Canada | Polar change – a perspective from the ice core palaeoclimate record’ | - |
| 2019 | Ottoline Leyser | New Zealand | Thinking like a vegetable: how plants decide what to do | - |