The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences will present the 2014 Buys Ballot Medal to Professor Sir Brian Hoskins on 23 June 2014.

A mathematician by training, Professor Hoskins is receiving the medal for his pioneering work on weather systems and large-scale atmospheric motion.

He became the first Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London in January 2008, and now shares his time between Imperial and Reading University, where he is Professor of Meteorology.

Professor Hoskins has introduced numerous concepts and methods in operational meteorology that are now used worldwide to calculate weather forecasts. Thanks to his efforts, the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading has achieved a leading international position.

He is a member of the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe and has received a number of awards including the top prizes of the UK and US Meteorological Societies and honorary DScs from the Universities of Bristol and East Anglia. He was knighted in 2007 for his services to the environment.

About the Buys Ballot Medal

The Buys Ballot Medal is the oldest meteorological distinction in the world. It was established in 1888 in honour of Dutch meteorologist C.H.D. Buys Ballot, a member of the Academy who founded the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI).

The Academy awarded the medal for the first time in 1893. Since then, it has been presented every ten years to a researcher who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of meteorology. Sir Brian Hoskins is the thirteenth recipient, and the second from the UK.

The Buys Ballot Medal will be presented to Professor Hoskins on Monday 23 June at the Academy’s Trippenhuis Building, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam. To mark this occasion, the Academy and the KNMI have organised a symposium on the same day devoted to Sir Brian Hoskins’ work.