As part of our goal to champion nutrition science and scientists, each year the British Nutrition Foundation makes a number of awards:
- The BNF Prize - awarded annually to a person for their outstanding achievement in an area of nutrition over a number of years
- Early Career Scientist Award - to recognise early career nutrition scientists who show great potential to be future leaders in the field
- Pump Priming Award - providing a grant of £5000 to a lecturer or postdoctoral researcher to undertake the pilot work needed to generate data that can be used as the basis of a more substantial grant application
- Community Award - recognises an individual or a group that has undertaken a community initiative to support healthier eating in a vulnerable group(s) in the UK.
- School Education Awards - rewards excellent work in food and nutrition by students throughout the UK.
These awards are made possible thanks to the Drummond Memorial Fund, which was established to advance the knowledge of nutrition and promotion of education and research.
The Drummond Memorial Fund
The Drummond Memorial Fund was established in 1954 in memory of Sir Jack Drummond, who made a significant contribution to developments in the application of nutrition science for public health.
In 2012, the British Nutrition Foundation was honoured to be selected to take over the management of the Drummond Memorial Fund, in recognition of the team’s commitment to nutrition education and the interpretation and communication of complex scientific information on nutrition, diet and lifestyle.
The Fund had previously been administered by a board of distinguished Trustees from University College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh.
Who was Sir Jack Drummond?
Sir Jack graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London with first class honours in Chemistry and his first position was as a research assistant at King’s College, in the same university. Later he worked with Dr Casimir Funk at the Research Institute of the Cancer Hospital and developed a keen interest in nutrition and vitamins in particular. By 1918, Sir Jack was recognised as an expert in nutrition and received the degree of Doctor of Science and was appointed to succeed Dr Funk as Physiological Chemist to the Cancer Hospital.
Sir Jack moved from the Cancer Hospital to the University of London where he worked for many years, through the economic crisis of 1931, when he devoted his time to developing practical ideas to address the nutritional issues associated with poverty, through to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. It was then that he was given leave from the University to become Chief Adviser of Food Contamination to the Ministry of Food.
Throughout the war, Sir Jack worked as Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Food. He was responsible for the Wartime Food Survey, initiated to monitor household’s’ diet and nutritional intake and to inform recommendations for a nutrition strategy for the war-torn nation.
In 1943, Sir Jack became Chairman of the King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London and advised on hospital food services until 1949. He was the first President of the Hospital Caterers’ Association. Sir Jack was knighted in 1944 and in the same year he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1946 he received the US Freedom with Silver Palms medal and was elected an Honorary Member of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was also made a Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of Orange Nassau for his services to Holland, and the University of Paris conferred on him the Degree of Doctor Honoris Causa.
The 2023 BNF Prize winner: Professor Sir Michael Marmot CH
Professor at the UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and Director, UCL Institute of Health Equity
Professor Marmot was nominated for "his work to reduce health inequalities and for recognising that to tackle obesity, we will need to tackle the social determinants of obesity."
