Congratulations to the latest crop of Royal Society medal winners: John Pople has received the Copley Medal for development of computational methods in quantum chemistry; David King has been awarded the Rumford Medal for outstanding contributions to our fundamental understanding of the structure and dynamics of reaction processes on solid surfaces; Neil Bartlett has received the Davy Medal for his research exploring the highest oxidation limits of the less oxidisable elements, primarily using elemental fluorine; husband and wife Peter and Rosemary Grant have been awarded the Darwin Medal for their work on the ecology, breeding and evolution of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands; Michael Waterfield has received the Buchanan Medal in recognition of his skills in protein biochemistry, which have transformed understanding of signal transduction and the subversion of cellular signalling pathways in cancer; Alexander Dalgarno has been awarded the Hughes Medal for his contribution to the theory of atomic and molecular process, in particular its application to astrophysics and Nicholas Handy has received the Leverhulme Medal for his contributions to the development of the modern methodology of quantum chemistry.