Rank Prizes


The Rank Prizes comprise the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics and the Rank Prize for Nutrition, to recoginse, reward and encourage researchers working in the respective fields of optoelectronics and nutrition.
The prizes are paid out of a fund known as The Rank Prize Funds, which were endowed by the industrialist, philanthropist and founder of the Rank Organisation, J. Arthur Rank and his wife Nell, via the Rank Foundation on 16 February 1972, not long before Arthur's death. The two Funds, the Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry Fund and the Optoelectronics Fund, support sciences reflecting Rank's business interests through his "connection with the flour-milling and cinema and electronics industries", and also because Rank believed that they would be of great benefit to humanity. There are two Rank Prizes, and the Funds also recognise, support and foster excellence among young people in the two fields of nutrition and optoelectronics. The Funds aim to advance and promote education and learning, for public benefit.

Rank Prize for Optoelectronics

The Rank Prize for Optoelectronics supports, encourages, and rewards researchers working at the cutting edge of optoelectronics research, initially awarded annually, now a biennial prize worth £30,000. Optoelectronics relates to the interface between optics and electronics, and related phenomena.
The Committee on Optoelectronics consists of the following people:
Past winners include:
The nutrition prize is for research in human and animal nutrition, and crop husbandry.
The Rank Prize for Nutrition was awarded at various intervals since 1976, but now also awarded biennially, and worth £40,000.
In 2014 Australian biophysicist Graham Farquhar and the CSIRO agronomist Richard Richards were awarded the Rank Prize in Nutrition, for "pioneering the understanding of isotope discrimination in plants and its application to breed wheat varieties that use water more efficiently", which related to a discovery the pair made in the 1980s.
Other winners include: