The medal is named after Mary Kingsley, a self-educated writer and traveller. Kingsley set sail from Liverpool for West Africa on a boat of the Elder Dempster Line of shipping magnate Sir Alfred Jones whose annual £350 donation was instrumental in founding LSTM.
Her resulting book ‘Travels in West Africa’, published in 1897, became an instant bestseller.
Through her experiences she acquired a detailed knowledge of African society and politics and was regarded as an expert in government circles.
She was a personal friend of LSTM founders Sir Alfred Lewis Jones and John Holt, with the latter acknowledging her role in ‘getting us to think on the right lines and to work for the good of the African peoples.’ Kingsley demanded a wider understanding of African social and legal systems and how they should be reflected in colonial commerce. It lead to the formation of the Fair Commerce Party, The Congo Reform Association and the African Society. It would be the ethos of equity, particularly in relation to improving health, that would continue to drive the work of LSTM.
Mary Kingsley died in South Africa from suspected typhoid whilst tending to Boer Prisoners of War, aged just 38.
It is assumed that her legacy inspired the figure representing ‘Research’ as part of the Alfred Jones Memorial on Liverpool’s waterfront.
In honour of her achievements and passion, the Mary Kingsley Medal was instituted by John Holt in 1903 and was issued for the first time in 1905 to Sir Patrick Manson, by many seen as the founding father of the field of tropical medicine.
Recipients of the Mary Kingsley Medal
| 1905 | |
| HRH The Princess Christian (Honorary) | One of the founding members of the Red Cross & President of the Royal British Nurses Association. |
| David Bruce | Scottish Pathologist/Microbiologist who identified the cause of sleeping sickness |
| Robert Koch | German Physician, discovered the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis which causes Tuberculosis. |
| Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran |
French Physician, eminent work on protozoan diseases. |
| Sir Patrick Manson | Scottish Physician, considered the founder of tropical medicine field and made important discoveries in parasitology. |
| 1907 | |
| Basile Danilewsky | Russian Physiologist |
| Carlos Juan Finlay | Cuban Physician and Scientist, recognised as a pioneer in yellow fever research |
| Camillo Golgi | Italian Physician, structures of the nervous system |
| William Crawford Gorgas | US Physician, worked on abating the transmission of yellow fever and malaria by controlling mosquitoes and Chief Sanitary Officer on the Panama Canal Project. |
| Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine | Russian Bacteriologist working in India, he was the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. |
| Theobold Smith | American Epidemiologist |
| 1908 | |
| Joseph Chamberlain (Honorary) | UK Secretary of State for the Colonies |
| Joseph, Baron Lister (Honorary) | English Surgeon who promoted use of sterile operating equipment |
| 1910 | |
| Prince Auguste Louis Alberic D’Aranberg (Honorary) | French politician who focused on African colonial issues |
| William Adamson (Honorary) | Scottish Politician |
|
Raphael Anatole Emile Blanchard |
|
| Anton Breinl | Medical Scientist whose pioneering work led to discoveries of drugs to cure sleeping sickness and he was the First Director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine. |
| William Carter (Honorary) | |
| Angelo Celli | Italian Physician, working on Malaria and known for his achievements as a Hygienist |
| Charles Wilberforce Daniels | Pioneer in the early work on Tropical Medicine |
| Alfred Henry Keogh | Surgeon Major of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) who encouraged research into Typhoid |
| Walter Gawen King | |
| William MacGregor | Scottish Physician who worked throughout the tropics and assisted in the inauguration of the University of Queensland, 1909. |
| Bernard Albrecht Eduard Nocht | German naval physician who founded the Bernard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany |
| George Henry Falkiner Nuttall | American/British Bacteriologist |
|
Mrs John Pinnock (Honorary) |
|
| Leonard Rogers | Pioneering the treatment of cholera |
|
John Lancelot Todd |
|
| Walter Wyman | President of the American Public Health Association |
| 1913 | |
| Frederic Vincent Theobald | Mosquito specialist |
| 1917 | |
| Griffith Evans | |
| 1919 | |
| John William Scott Macfie | British entomologist, parasitologist and protozoologist |
| The Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (Honorary) | |
| 1920 | |
| Ernest Edward Austen | British Entomologist |
|
Arthur William Garrard Bagshawe |
|
|
Andrew Balfour |
|
|
Alphonse Louis Guillaume Broden |
|
| Albert John Chalmers (Posthumous) | |
| Giovanni Battista Grassi | Italian Zoologist, known for work demonstrating mosquitoes carry malaria plasmodium in their digestive tract. |
| Robert Thomson Leiper |
Scottish Parasitologist |
| Felix Etienne Pierre Mesnil | French Zoologist |
| Charles Wardell Stiles | American Parasitologist, remembered for his work in parasitic diseases |
| Temistocle Zammit | Rector of the University of Malta |
| 1929 | |
| George Carmichael Low | Co-founder of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene |
| Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall | British Entomologist with extensive knowledge of insect taxonomy |
|
Robert Newstead |
|
|
Ambrose Thomas Stanton |
Discovered that beriberi, a debilitating and fatal disease was caused by a dietary deficiency |
|
John William Watson Stephens |
|
| Charles Morley Wenyon | |
| 1934 | |
| Henry Beeuwkes | |
|
George Seaton Buchanan |
|
|
Annie Rose Caton (Honorary) |
|
| Samuel Rickard Christophers | British Protozoologist |
| Mrs John Middlemass Hunt (Honorary) | |
| Malcolm Watson | |
| 1938 | |
| Marshall Albert Barber | |
| Emile Brumpt | French Parasitologist, credited with the discovery of the avian malarial parasite |
|
Lady Danson (Honorary) |
|
|
Walter Scott Patton |
Dutton Memorial Chair of Entomology |
| Werner Schulemann | |
| 1949 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 50th Jubilee Year | |
| Donald Breadalbane Blacklock | 1st Professor of Tropical Hygiene at LSTM (1934) |
| George Brocklehurst (Honorary) | |
| Neil Hamilton Farley | Australian Physician, instrumental in saving thousands of Allied Forces lives from Malaria during the two World Wars. |
| Robert Longstaff Holt (Honorary, Posthumous) | |
|
William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme (Honorary, Posthumous) |
|
|
Nicolaas Hendrik Swellengrebel |
|
|
Alexander Francis Mahaffy |
|
| Philip Henry Manson-Hur | |
| Edward Mellanby | Discovered Vitamin D and its role in preventing rickets. |
|
Jerome Rodhain |
|
| Paul Farr Russell | American specialist in malaria |
| Henry Edward Shortt | British expert on Tropical Diseases |
| John Alexander Sinton V.C. | British doctor and malaria specialist |
|
William Hay Taliaferro |
|
| Warrington Yorke (Posthumous) | Expert Parasitologist and first Walter Myers Chair of Parasitology |
| 1958 | |
| Rupert Montgomery Gordon | Holder of the Dutton and Walter Myers Chair of Entomology and Parasitology – gave 39 years service to the LSTM |
| 1964 | |
| L’Institute de Medecine Tropicale Prince Leopold, Antwerp, Belgium | |
| 1966 | |
| Marcoline Gomes Candau | Director General of WHO, opened new wing of LSTM, 10 Feb 1966 |
| 1969 | |
| John Raymond Danson | |
| 1972 | |
| Philip John Denton Toosey | Merchant Banker and Army Officer, most famous as the senior officer in charge of building the Bridge on the River Kwai |
| 1973 | |
| Percy Cyril Claude Garnham | Protozoologist |
|
Pieter-Gustaaf Janssens |
|
| Brian Gilmore Maegraith | Pioneer in Tropical Medicine and longest serving Dean of LSTM (29 years). |
| Hans Vogel | German scientist renowned for his work on Helminthology |
| 1976 | |
| George James Cole, Baron Cole of Blackfriars | |
| 1983 | |
| Peter Orchard Williams | British Doctor |
| 1987 | |
| Adetokunbo O. Lucas | Nigerian Doctor and former professor of International Health at the Harvard School of public health |
| Kenneth S. Warren | American Scientist and expert on Tropical Diseases, in particular schistosomiasis. |
| 1994 | |
| Herbert Michael Gilles | Warrington Yorke Professor of Tropical Medicine, 1972-86, awarded CMG 2005 |
|
Ian A. McGregor |
|
| Ebrahim Samba | Africa’s Regional Director of the WHO, renowned for his exceptional leadership in the management of the Onchocerciasis Control Program in Africa |
| 1998 | |
|
HRH The Princess Royal – Royal Patron of LSTM |
|
|
Mario Coluzzi |
|
| Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme (Honorary) | |
| 1999 | |
|
Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey |
|
| Cherubala Pathayapurayil Ramachandran | Malaysian medical scientist, Chairman of Technical Advisory Group, Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis, WHO |
| Olikoye Ransome-Kuti | Former Nigeria Health Minister and WHO consultant |
| Sir David John Weatherall | British Doctor and researcher in molecular genetics, clinic medicine, haematology and pathology. |
| 2005 | |
| David Alan Warrell | Professor of Tropical Medicine & Infectious Disease, University of Oxford. |
| 2011 | |
| His Excellency Dr. Abdullah Al Rabeeah | Minister of Health, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. |
| 2015 | |
| Kevin Marsh | Professor in Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford |
| 2018 | |
| David Molyneux | Emeritus Professor and Senior Professorial Fellow. LSTM lead in neglected tropical diseases |