The Hodgkin-Huxley-Katz International Prize Lecture
This annual lecture is awarded to physiologists working outside the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland. This lecture celebrates the international impact of the work of Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley and Bernard Katz.
Nominations for the 2026 Hodgkin-Huxley-Katz International Prize Lecture have now closed.
Who can be nominated?
- All physiologists working outside of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland are eligible
- You can nominate another person but not yourself
What is the award?
- £750 award
- Lecture is delivered at a Society conference or online
- Publication in The Journal of Physiology, subject to Editorial Board agreement
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:
- What their citation count or h-index is
- A description of how the body of work of the nominee has changed our understanding of physiology (150 words)
- A description of how the nominee’s work celebrates the impact of the work of Hodgkin, Huxley and Katz (150 words)
- Details of any career breaks and/or challenges that may have been overcome (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 outside of the UK and Ireland
- There are no career stage restrictions associated with this prize
- 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
2013: Erin M Schuman (at IUPS)
2015: Karen Sipido
2017: Jack Feldman (at IUPS)
2019: Stephen Traynelis
2021: Robert Tarran
2023: Indira M. Raman
Who were Hodgkin, Huxley and Katz?
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (1914 –1998) and Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley (1917 –2012) were English physiologists who worked together at Cambridge studying nerve impulses. Though their work was interrupted at the outbreak of war in 1939, they continued their work on neuronal and electrophysiology after the war. Their analysis and mathematical description of the basis of the nerve impulse and its propagation earned them the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963.
Sir Bernard Katz (1911 –2003) was a German born physiologist who fled to England in 1935 to escape Nazi persecution. He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1970, (with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler) for his discovery that neurotransmitter release at synapses is never less than a fixed minimum.
In 1999 The Physiological Society established the Hodgkin-Huxley-Katz Prize Lecture.
