The Rutherford Medal (called the Gold Medal until 2000) is the Royal Society of New Zealand's premier award and has been awarded annually since 1991 to recognise outstanding work in science, mathematics, social science and technology.
It is named after pioneering New Zealand scientist Ernest Rutherford, whose orbital theory of the atom earned him the 1908 Nobel Prize for chemistry.
A University of Otago biochemist, Emeritus Prof George Petersen, and 13 fellow Rutherford medallists will attend the Rutherford Symposium at the university on Wednesday.
Other participants include mathematician Prof Vaughan Jones, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Wellington physicist Prof Paul Callaghan.
During the day-long symposium, the medallists will give a series of 20-minute talks, from 8.30am, at Otago University's St David lecture theatre complex.
Dr Allan Blackman, the symposium co-organiser, with Dr Kim Currie, said the symposium was open to the public, with admission by pre-booked ticket.
Two hundred free symposium tickets can be requested by email at: latkinson@chemistry.otago.ac.nz.
The symposium is being held on the second last day of a large chemistry conference, attended by more than 300 people and devoted to "Chemistry and the Biosphere".
The only Rutherford medallists not present will be the late Prof Alan MacDiarmid, another Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and Auckland University medical researcher Prof Peter Gluckman, (in the United Kingdom).
The five-day gathering, involving the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, the New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the New Zealand Society of Plant Biologists, is the biggest chemistry conference held in Dunedin for more than 10 years.
