Professor David Parry, Massey University, awarded Rutherford Medal for science

Tuesday 11 November 2008

The 2008 Rutherford Medal for Science and Technology, New Zealand’s top science award, was presented to Distinguished Professor David Parry of Massey University at the Science Honours Dinner in Wellington last night.  Three hundred and eighty scientists from around New Zealand gathered at Te Papa for the announcement of this and other science and technology awards.  Ernest Rutherford’s great granddaughter, Professor Mary Fowler, a geophysicist at the University of London, presented the medal to Professor Parry.  Professor Fowler is beginning a lecture tour* of New Zealand as the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Distinguished Speaker, celebrating 100 years since Ernest Rutherford received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. 

As a structural biophysicist, Professor Parry works at the boundary between physics and biology. His research has focussed on the fibrous proteins that constitute the bulk of the proteins in the human body and which enable it to move. Amongst the problems that have been tackled successfully are the structure of hair and skin in health and disease, the manner in which muscles are turned on and off, the mechanics of skin and tendons, the transparency of the cornea in the eye, how proteins can be designed from simple building blocks to give desired structures and functions, and how hair/wool can provide thermo-regulation and protection against predators. This has led to major advances in our understanding of these systems. Aspects of Professor Parry’s work have been applied in the wool and meat industries, in surgical procedures as well as in physiology and medicine. 

Fibrous proteins are large and very complex molecules. Determining their structure, organization and modes of function has proved extremely challenging since X-ray crystallographic techniques that have been widely applied to other proteins are generally inapplicable for fibrous ones. Such research, however, is vital if an understanding is to be achieved of human biology in its widest sense.
 
Professor Parry has also served New Zealand and international scientific organisations with distinction. He is a former President of the International Union for of Pure and Applied Biophysics, and was recently the Vice-President for Scientific Planning and Review of the Paris-based International Council for Science, where he led the development of the Strategic Plan for World Science for the current six-year period. .
 
Mr Neville Jordan, President of the Royal Society of New Zealand which awards the medal on behalf of government, said, “David Parry is not just a successful scientist, whose work has had many useful, practical results; he plays a distinguished role in the international science community and has given a lot of his time for the wider benefit of New Zealand science.”

Dr Ross Ihaka of The University of Auckland received the top award for achievement in technology, the Pickering Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
He has developed a software package for statisticians called R, which has had huge uptake by universities, industry and government.  R can be downloaded free, is easy to use, and can be readily customised for different applications.  It is invaluable for major “data crunching” tasks such as processing genomic information. 

The inaugural Dame Joan Metge (pron. Metch) Award for Social Science was shared by paediatrician scientist Professor Diana Lennon, The University of Auckland, and public health researcher Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman, University of Otago School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Wellington.  Professor Lennon is an expert on infectious childhood diseases in children and Dr Howden-Chapman is well known for her research into the beneficial effects of warmer, drier homes on health.  The award was presented by Dame Joan herself.  For this work, Professor Howden-Chapman also received the Liley Medal, awarded by the Health Research Council, jointly with Professor Ted Baker from The University of Auckland. 

A summary list of awards followed by the full citations are at the end of this release. 

*Details of Professor Mary Fowler’s lecture tour, including biographical notes and a description of her talk, are at www.royalsociety.org.nz

For further information, contact Glenda Lewis, Glenda.lewis@royalsociety.org.nz DDI 04 470 5758 or 027 210 0997, or Kathryn Carmody, 027 287 7963.

• See the summary list of awards
• See the full list with descriptions of the award and citations
  
  
• Photographs from the 2008 Science Honours Dinner