Announcing the Linnean Society's Medal and Award Recipients 2025

Our 2025 awardees represent many fields, from a game changing botanical illustrator to an impassioned promoter and researcher of UK hedgerows and the wildlife therein. This year’s recipients have studied, conserved or communicated the value of nature in an incredible variety of ways, including a 40-year study on badgers that has informed UK policy on bovine tuberculosis, and one individual’s effect on the boost in the study of Indian ornithology. We are proud honour them with these medals and awards.

Professor David Macdonald CBE

‘The questions that preoccupied Linnaeus, nowadays at the intersection of evolutionary theory and naturalistic insight, lit a fire in the minds of scientists whose flames the Linnean Society has fanned for 237 years. I am deeply humbled to be honoured by the most prestigious accolade of this most venerable of natural history societies, and to feel part of this inspiring, and still vibrant, tradition.’

A leader in Conservation Science, Professor David Macdonald CBE is a British Zoologist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The University of Oxford’s first Professor of Wildlife Conservation, he is also the Founding Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit there.

David’s early work on foxes led him to establish the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis as a fundamental understanding of animal societies as emergent properties of their ecological circumstances. David also led a 40-year interdisciplinary field study of European badgers in Wytham Wood. From this, he developed the Perturbation Hypothesis, informing issues from trophy hunting to Human Wildlife Conflict, and UK policy on bovine tuberculosis. Nowadays his global research on felids, from lions to clouded leopards, focuses on landscape-scale decision-support at the interface of conservation and development.

Professor Trudy Mackay FRS

‘I was surprised and delighted to learn that I am the recipient of the 2025 Darwin–Wallace Medal. It is a great honour to join the ranks of the celebrated evolutionary biologists who are recent and past recipients of this prestigious award.’

Widely recognised as one of the world’s leading quantitative geneticists, Professor Trudy Mackay FRS has made essential and groundbreaking contributions to the analysis of quantitative traits.

Working primarily with the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, she has transformed our understanding of the genetic basis of quantitative traits from complex statistics to complex genetics. Trudy generated the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP), a population of inbred wild-derived fly lines with sequenced genomes which she made available as a community resource. The DGRP represents the most extensive eukaryotic genetic reference population available to date, is used by laboratories worldwide, and has significantly impacted evolutionary genetics research both domestically and internationally.

Dr Joanne Littlefair

‘I’m really delighted to receive this early career award from one of the oldest and most prominent natural history societies. I’m honoured to lead a team working to understand the wonderful diversity of species on earth and to create methods to monitor and protect them. Thank you!’

Dr Joanne Littlefair has developed an exceptional research programme that addresses critical questions in biodiversity discovery and monitoring by using large-scale genomics and bioinformatics tools for ecosystem assessment.

Her team led the first studies to adapt molecular biodiversity monitoring by isolating DNA from the air. This research is truly interdisciplinary and has significant implications for conservation, forensic science and bio-aerosols, demonstrating the feasibility of low contact sampling for a wide range of understudied taxa and ecosystems. The huge potential and scope of her work has been recognised by her exceptional early-career grant success, with Joanne being awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, as well as an ERC Starting Grant.

Dr Jamie B. Thompson

‘I was astounded and humbled receive the Irene Manton Prize. Studying evolution is a lifelong dream and has proven to be great fun. It is a joy to reveal how unassuming plants adapt to changing environments. I feel so grateful to be recognised for work that excites me every day. This wouldn’t have been possible without the support and encouragement of so many people, including my supervisor Dr Nick Priest, mentors Professor Julie Hawkins and Dr Santiago Ramírez-Barahona (among others), my family, friends and fiancé Georgia. Thank you all!’

Dr Jamie B. Thompson’s thesis, ‘Tempo and drivers of angiosperm diversification’, is a worthy winner of this year’s Irene Manton Prize. Jamie’s research into the explosive diversification of angiosperms (flowering plants) is revolutionising our understanding of plant biodiversity. He has demonstrated a previously unknown link between Cenozoic global cooling and diversification rates in orchids, proving that Charles Darwin’s idea of gradual evolution was 700 times less likely to drive diversification than historic global cooling. Jamie’s work has also combined machine learning and phylogenetic inference to identify biotic and abiotic forces driving diversification in cacti, while other research has overturned the assumption that plant species were wiped out by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and tested the role of aridity in driving diversification of succulents.

Dr Jamie C. Weir

'It is a tremendous honour to receive the John C. Marsden Medal and have my work recognised by the Linnean Society. I first joined the Society at 18, fascinated by its long history stretching back to Darwin, Wallace, and the origins of biology as a science. It is a privilege to represent the University of Edinburgh and become a small part of that prestigious lineage.'

This year’s John C. Marsden Medal is awarded to Dr Jamie C. Weir for the thesis ‘Buffering and trophic mismatch in spring-feeding forest caterpillars’. Jamie’s work considers a fundamental question facing ecology: how resilient are organisms to a warming climate? Focusing on woodland food-webs in spring, Jamie combined a re-appraisal of neglected, historical literature with an extremely ambitious set of experiments, captive-rearing thousands of caterpillars. Surprisingly, he found evidence suggesting that an array of ‘buffering’ mechanisms—such as bet-hedging strategies, or feeding on a wide range of plant species—might actually ameliorate some of the disruptive impacts of increasing temperatures.

Megan Gimber

‘This award is a surprise, delight, and an honour; reflecting the dedication of many. It means a huge amount to me for geekery, passion and perseverance to be rewarded in this way. People and communities are the key to conservation, and our project successes reflect the power of inspiration, education and hope.’

Self-professed ‘hedgerow geek’ Megan Gimber has spent almost a decade advocating for the protection, management, and growth of the UK’s depleted hedgerows.

Megan manages two hedgerow surveys for the People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES): The Great British Hedgerow Survey and Healthy Hedgerows, the latter of which she developed into an app for farmers to aid rapid hedge assessment with direct and tailored management advice. Running training courses and walks, her outreach also extends to the media where she has appeared on radio, podcasts, at festivals and in print, with many feeding back that her inspirational work has left them consumed with ‘hedge fever’!

Aasheesh Pittie

‘I am deeply humbled on being selected for the H. H. Bloomer Award for 2025 and overjoyed at this recognition of the contribution of amateur ornithologists to South Asian ornithology. I accept this honour with gratitude. I thank the Linnean Society for nominating me.’

To the larger natural history community in India (and beyond), Mr Aasheesh Pittie is probably best known for his work as a bibliographer of South Asian birds and as founder-editor of the ornithology journal Indian Birds. Over a lifetime of amateur birding, he has been instrumental to the growth of birdwatching and ornithological studies in the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh, India, as a key driver of the Birdwatchers’ Society of Andhra Pradesh (now Deccan Birders) from the early 1980s until today. His contributions to Indian ornithology cannot be understated, publishing five books, and over 280 notes, reviews, journal articles and popular pieces in the mass media.

Dr Hyewoo Shin

‘Thanks to plants, I have had the privilege of meeting wonderful people, experiencing beautiful things and gaining a deeper understanding of the world. Moreover, I believe this award is a gift from the plants and the people who love them. I will do my utmost to repay their kindness in the future.’

Dr Hyewoo Shin is a plant taxonomist who has collected, classified and described plant species from her native Korea and all over the world. She was inspired to teach herself botanical illustration by referencing specimens and papers, as scientific illustration was not well known in Korea at the time. Finding inspiration at the Royal Horticultural Society's Botanical Art Show, Hyewoo would later win four gold medals for her work, and three trophies in a row (two Best Botanical Art Exhibits and a Judge’s Special)—the first in RHS history to do so. Hyewoo has contributed significantly to promoting scientific illustration in Korea, teaching students and creating a community.