Nightingale Prize

A close collaborator of Ronald Woolmer in the formation of the Biological Engineering Society, was Alfred Nightingale, a physicist at St Thomas' Hospital. After qualifying at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1943, Nightingale was seconded to the Admiralty as a member of a research team working on electronic underwater sound detectors. In 1947 he joined the Physics Department at Guy's, later moving to St Thomas'.

Alfred Nightingale died suddenly on 27th February 1963, at the age of only 40. Thus in the space of a few weeks, the Society had lost its President (Ronald Woolmer) and its first Honorary Secretary in Alfred Nightingale.

At the time, Nightingale was Editor of the Journal of the International Federation of Medical & Biological Engineering (IFMBE) now published as: Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing. In his memory the Society initiated a prize, awarded every year, for the best paper in the Federation's Journal.

The Biological Engineering Society and the Institute of Physics Sciences in Medicine merged to become the Institute of Physics & Engineering in Medicine.

The prize is made in association with IFMBE.

Regulations

  1. The prize shall normally be made annually for the best scientific paper published in each volume of the Journal and awarded jointly to the authors. The authors shall nominate one member to attend the Annual Scientific meeting to receive the award.
  2. Those papers eligible for consideration for a prize will be determined by the Publisher based on scores received from the referees.
  3. Those manuscripts eligible for a prize will be sent to all members of the Editorial Board who will rank order in terms of quality of scientific content and interest.
  4. The Editor will be responsible for receiving the rank ordered lists and making recommendation of the prize winner to the Chairperson of Publications Committee.
  5. The Chairperson of PublicationsCommittee will inform the Awards Committee of the decision. This shall be done in time for Council to ratify the decision, and the winner shall be invited to attend the Annual Scientific Meeting in September. The assessment process will begin once the make up of the final issue of the volume is known.
  6. The prize winner is responsible for their own travel costs to attend the Annual Scientific meeting in September 2005 for the 2004 Award.
  7. The prize winner will have free attendance at the scientific programme for one day, free attendance at the Annual dinner and free accommodation for one night.

Reviewed by Awards Committee & Council January 2004.