The Otto Hutter Teaching Prize and Lecture
This annual prize and lecture recognises excellence and originality in physiology teaching at undergraduate level. It celebrates the ground-breaking innovations and initiatives that mark a step change in education.
Nominations for the 2026 Otto Hutter Teaching Prize and Lecture have now closed.
Who can be nominated?
- All physiology educators are eligible (delivering to undergraduates and/or postgraduates)
- You can nominate another person but not yourself
What is the award?
- £500 for the winner and £500 for the awardee’s institution
- Lecture is delivered at a Society conference or online
How can I nominate?
Nominations open from 1 October to 30 November
What are the selection criteria?
The Prize Lecture Award Panel base their evaluations on the overall quality of relevant contributions and achievements by nominees, in relation to the selection criteria listed below.
The selection committee will consider the following aspects of nominations for this prize and nominators should include the following information:
- A description of what the nominee has done to promote excellence in undergraduate physiology teaching (150 words)
- A description of what the nominee has done to promote innovation and originality in undergraduate physiology teaching (150 words)
- Details of any career breaks and/or challenges that may have been overcome (150 words)
Nominees should also include the following information:
- A description of what you have done to promote excellence in undergraduate physiology teaching (150 words)
- Evidence to support this (e.g. student feedback etc) (150 words)
- A description of what you have done to promote innovation and originality in undergraduate physiology teaching (150 words)
- Evidence to support this (e.g. student feedback etc) (150 words)
Guidelines for nominators
- Nominations open 1 October
- Nominations close 30 November
- Anyone can nominate for this prize
- Nominees may NOT nominate themselves
- The prize is open to nominees based in the UK and Internationally
- There are no career stage restrictions associated with this prize. Open to all higher education lecturers teaching undergraduates and/or postgraduates.
- We will not consider nominations of deceased individuals
- Nominees can only be considered for one of our prizes in any given year. In a case where a nominee is nominated for more than one prize independently, it is at the discretion of the Prize Lecture Award Panel which prize they will be considered for.
- Trustees of The Physiological Society are not eligible to be nominated
- When nominating previous prize winners, please remember that a person cannot be awarded twice for substantially the same body of work
- Nominees should only be nominated once for this prize in any given prize cycle. In cases where we receive more than one nomination for the same nominee, only one nomination will go forward to the panel.
Previous winners
2014: David Lewis
2015: Judy Harris
2016: Prem Kumar
2017: Louise Robson
2018: Julia Choate
2019: James Clark
2021: Dee U Silverthorn
2023: David Greensmith
Who was Otto Hutter?
Otto Hutter, Emeritus Regius Professor of Physiology at University of Glasgow, is thought to have established the first, fully-integrated electrophysiological lab for undergraduate teaching. An acclaimed innovator in teaching, he is famous for encouraging tutorial students to participate by throwing them the blackboard chalk.
Born in 1924 in Vienna, Hutter was one of the hundreds of Jewish children evacuated to the UK in 1938 under the Kindertransport programme to escape the Nazi occupation. He did wartime work on the purification of penicillin and graduated with a BSc and PhD from University College London (UCL). He then continued at UCL as a researcher and then Lecturer in the Department of Physiology under GL Brown. Otto Hutter is renowned for his research in the fields of neuromuscular and synaptic transmission and cardiac and skeletal muscle physiology. His work (with Otto Trautwein) describing the cardiac pacemaker potential and its acceleration by adrenaline (in the tortoise sinus) and slowing by acetylcholine, and his own discovery of the increase in potassium permeability that underpins the latter, remain textbook findings. He is also acknowledged as an international authority on the movement of ion across membranes.
In 2009 The Society launched the Otto Hutter Teaching Prize to recognise outstanding teachers of undergraduate physiology and to raise the profile of physiology teaching.
