Awards For Research

By Dr. C. A. Fleming, President, Royal Society of New Zealand

The Society's national responsibilities include administration of funds supporting awards for achievement in research and research grants. The Hamilton Memorial Prize, "for the encouragement of beginners in pure scientific research," is awarded on the basis of a candidate's earliest publications, and in 1962 the joint winners were P. N. Webb and B. C. McKelvey, for papers on Antarctic geological research undertaken when they were post-graduate students at Victoria.

Modest grants in aid of research in zoology, botany and geology are supported by the Society's Hutton Memorial Fund and Mappin Trust. In general, grants are not made their function is not educational, but grants have been made to support work for master's theses, on the principle that in the past to graduate students to support expeditions, travel, purchase of equipment, etc.