RDS President, Dr Austin Mescal, presents the 2005 RDS Irish Times Boyle Medal to Professor Garret Adare Fitzgerald. Photograph by Conor Healy.
Every other year the Royal Dublin Society and The Irish Times join forces to award the Boyle Medal for Scientific Excellence. In 2005 the Award was open to Irish-born research scientists working abroad. After a panel of Irish scientists had prepared a preliminary shortlist of five candidates, the International Judging Panel met in October and selected as the overall winner Professor Garret Adare FitzGerald, a Dublin-born clinical pharmacologist and UCD graduate. Prof. FitzGerald is currently chairman of the department of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the university's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics. Prof. FitzGerald's research led to the identification of the beneficial effect of low doses of asprin in preventing heart attack and this treatment is prescribed to millions of people around the world. He and his team also showed that the long-term use of certain painkillers such as the controversial drug Vioxx could block the benefits of taking low-dose asprin and leave patients at increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The Boyle Medal was presented to Prof. FitzGerald by the RDS President, Dr Austin Mescal, at a ceremony in the Concert Hall on 21 November and Prof. FitzGerald delivered a superb lecture 'Hope, Humility and Hubris: From Asprin to Vioxx and Beyond'.
Contact: Dr Claire Mulhall,
RDS, Dublin 4,
Tel: 01-240 7217;
E-mail:
[email protected]
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