This is a prize that is awarded annually for the best Masters student thesis within the Department of Chemistry adjudged by the department to have produced outstanding work. Professor Sir Alan Fersht FRS FMedSci is an internationally esteemed chemist, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge, and the former Master of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Sir Alan Fersht was Wolfson Research Professor of the Royal Society and Professor of Biological Chemistry in Imperial’s Department of Chemistry from 1978-88.

Sir Alan Fersht research pioneered the understanding of the folding, stability and activity of proteins applying a broad multi-disciplinary approach combining methods and ideas of physical-organic chemistry and molecular biology.