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John Cairns
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said: ‘The recipients of this year’s medals and awards have all made outstanding contributions to science and its applications for the benefit of humanity. They have done so by furthering our understanding of the processes that govern the world around us, changing the practices of academia to build a more robust and inclusive research environment, and engaging new audiences. Celebrating these diverse contributions is core to the Society’s mission and I offer my congratulations to all the 2025 recipients.’
Among the awarded scientists, one is from the Medical Science Division:
Professor Sir Rory Collins (Oxford Population Health): awarded the Buchanan Medal for leading practice altering cardiovascular clinical trials and leading the UK Biobank
Professor Collins is an epidemiologist who studies how to prevent and treat chronic disease in large population-based studies. Notable achievements from his career include coordinating the ISIS “mega-trials” which demonstrated that low-cost, widely accessible, clot-dissolving and clot-preventing treatments could halve the risk of death during a heart attack. He was also involved in conducting the 20,000 patient Heart Protection Study which showed that lowering LDL-cholesterol with statin therapy safely reduces the risk of death and disability from cardiovascular disease among a much wider range of people than thought likely to benefit. As a consequence, statin therapy is now used extensively worldwide.
Professor Collins became the Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank in 2005. Involving 500,000 participants from across the UK, it is the largest deeply-characterised prospective study of disease globally, readily accessible for any type of health research that is in the public interest. Over 20,000 researchers worldwide currently use it to better understand how to prevent and treat many different diseases, generating over 5000 scientific papers in 2024 alone.
Congratulations to all the awardees!
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.