The International Prize for Biology is an annual award for significant contributions to biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

. The award was created in 1985 to recognize Emperor Hirohito of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's long time interest in and support of the biological sciences. The selection and award of the prize is managed by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The recipient scientist is awarded 10 million Yen

Japanese yen

The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...

 and an international symposium on the scientist's area of research is held.

Recipients and their field of study:

• 1985 - E.J.H. Corner
  E. J. H. Corner
  Edred John Henry Corner FRS was a botanist who occupied the posts of assistant director at the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Professor of Tropical Botany at the University of Cambridge...
  
   - Taxonomy or Systematic Biology
• 1986 - Peter H. Raven
  Peter H. Raven
  Peter Hamilton Raven is a botanist and environmentalist, notable as the longtime director, now President Emeritus, of the Missouri Botanical Garden.-Early life:...
  
   - Systematic Biology and Taxonomy
• 1987 - Sir John B. Gurdon - Developmental Biology
• 1988 - Motoo Kimura
  Motoo Kimura
  was a Japanese biologist best known for introducing the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968. He became one of the most influential theoretical population geneticists. He is remembered in genetics for his innovative use of diffusion equations to calculate the probability of fixation of...
  
   - Population Biology
• 1989 - Sir Eric James Denton
  Eric James Denton
  Sir Eric James Denton CBE, FRS, was a British marine biologist who won the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1987. He was the Director of the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth between 1974 and 1987.-References:...
  
   - Marine Biology
• 1990 - Masakazu Konishi
  Masakazu Konishi
  is a Japanese neurobiologist, known for his research on prey capture auditory systems of barn owls and singing in songbirds.-Life:After growing up in wartime Kyoto, Konishi moved to study at Sapporo Agricultural College, Hokkaido University. Konishi studied for his doctoral thesis on properties of...
  
   - Behavioral Biology
• 1991 - Marshall D. Hatch - Functional botany
• 1992 - Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
  Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
  Knut Schmidt-Nielsen was a prominent figure in the field of comparative physiology and Professor of Physiology Emeritus at Duke University.-Background:...
  
   - Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry
• 1993 - Edward O. Wilson - Ecology
• 1994 - Ernst Mayr
  Ernst Mayr
  Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
  
   - Systematic Biology and Taxonomy
• 1995 - Ian Read Gibbons - Cell Biology
• 1996 - Ryuzo Yanagimachi
  Ryuzo Yanagimachi
  has made major contributions in understanding the process and mechanism of mammalian fertilization. He is a pioneer of assisted fertilization technologies such as in vitro fertilization and direct sperm injection into egg which are widely used today in human infertility clinics throughout the world...
  
   - Biology of Reproduction
• 1997 - Elliot Martin Meyerowitz
  Elliot Meyerowitz
  Elliot Meyerowitz is an American biologist.He is George W. Beadle Professor of Biology, Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, he served as Chair of the Biology Division from 2000 to 2010....
  
   - botany
• 1998 - Otto Thomas Solbrig - The Biology of Biodiversity
• 1999 - Setsuro Ebashi
  Setsuro Ebashi
  was a Japanese biophysicist. He was Professor Emeritus of National Institute for Physiological Sciences. He was awarded the 1972 Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, the 1999 International Prize for Biology, the Order of the Sacred Treasure, and an Order of Culture....
  
   - Animal Physiology
• 2000 - Seymour Benzer
  Seymour Benzer
  Seymour Benzer was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist. His career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he eventually rose to prominence in the fields of molecular and behavioral genetics. He led a productive genetics research lab both at...
  
   - Developmental Biology
• 2001 - Harry B. Whittington
  Harry B. Whittington
  Harry Blackmore Whittington FRS was a British paleontologist based at the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, and was affiliated to Sidney Sussex College. He attended Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham, followed by a degree and Ph.D in geology from the University of Birmingham...
  
   - Paleontology
• 2002 - Masatoshi Nei
  Masatoshi Nei
  is Evan Pugh Professor of Biology at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the since 1990. He was born in 1931 in Miyazaki Prefecture, on Kyūshū Island, Japan...
  
   - evolutionary biology
• 2003 - Shinya Inoué
  Shinya Inoué
  is a biophysicist, member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research field is the visualization of dynamic processes within living cells using the light microscope. Currently he is a researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory....
  
   - Cell Biology
• 2004 - Thomas Cavalier-Smith
  Thomas Cavalier-Smith
  Professor Thomas Cavalier-Smith , FRS, FRSC, NERC Professorial Fellow, is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, at the University of Oxford...
  
   - Systematic Biology and Taxonomy
• 2005 - Nam-Hai Chua - Structural Biology in Fine Structure, Morphology and Morphogenesis
• 2006 - Serge Daan
  Serge Daan
  Serge Daan is a Dutch scientist, known for his significant contributions to the field of Chronobiology.-Early life and education:Serge Daan was born in a wind mill, grew up in the Dutch countryside, and went to high school in Deventer...
  
   - Chronobiology
• 2007 - David Swenson Hogness - Genetics
• 2008 - David Tilman - Ecology
• 2009 - Winslow Briggs - Botany
• 2010 - Nancy A. Moran
  Nancy A. Moran
  Nancy A. Moran is an American evolutionary biologist, Yale professor, and co-founder of the The Yale Microbial Diversity Institute....
  
   - Biology of Symbiosis
• 2011 - Eric H. Davidson
  Eric H. Davidson
  Eric H. Davidson is a developmental biologist at the California Institute of Technology. Davidson is best known for his pioneering work on the role of gene regulation in evolution, on embryonic specification and for spearheading the effort to sequence the genome of the purple sea urchin,...
  
  - Developmental Biology

External links

• International Prize for Biology