The country's highest awards for science were awarded by the Rt. Hon. Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, the Hon. Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Sport, and Dr. Digvir S. Jayas, interim president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) at Rideau Hall on May 6, 2019.
Twenty-eight of Canada's top scientists and seven industry partners were honoured.
The top prize - the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering (worth $1 million) - went to a geologist, Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar. She is an earth sciences professor at the University of Toronto.
Her insight about the nature of water and life on our planet have opened the door to further discovery about the origins and evolution of earth. Her discoveries and expertise are helping shape space exploration and the search for life on other planets.
Sherwood Lollar's insights about the nature of water and life on earth led her and her team to finding the oldest water on Earth, estimated to be 2 billion years old. That discovery in 2016 won her the NSERC's John C. Polanyi Award.
(This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal)