Past Gold Medal Recipients
Established: 1941
Designed by: Lucille Sinclair Douglass, sculptor
Represents: Winged Victory standing upon the arc of the world.
The Society’s highest honor is awarded to a member whose original, innovative, or pioneering contributions are of major significance in understanding the world’s cultures and environment.
| Laurie Marker | 2008 | For her work as a conservation biologist, and for the founding of the non-profit Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, where she also established the International Research and Education Centre in the country's main cheetah habitat. |
| Tanya Marie Atwater | 2005 | For her pioneering work in plate tectonics, which has increased the world's knowledge of earth movements from mountaintops to ocean floors. |
| Anna Curtenius Roosevelt | 1999 | For discovery of evidence of a hitherto unknown prehistoric culture in the Amazon Basin. |
| Pam Flowers | 1996 | For pioneering achievements as a solo dog-sled trekker in the Arctic, and as the first person to trek the 2,500 miles across Arctic North America, the longest solo dog sled trek by a woman. |
| Natalie Goodall | 1996 | For her work in botany and biology studies of flora and fauna native to Tierra del Fuego, South America. |
| Anne LaBastille | 1993 | For her work as a wildlands and wildlife consultant, and work with rare and endangered wildlife, wild areas, acid rain, and women in the wilderness, particularly in Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. |
| Kathryn Sullivan | 1993 | For her pioneering nine-day mission into space as a member of the Challenger shuttle crew, becoming the first American woman to "walk" in space. |
| Sylvia Alice Earle | 1990 | For achievements as an oceanic biologist, as an experienced, versatile, and intrepid diver, leader and/or pilot of record setting deep water dives in miniature submarines or submersibles. |
| Jane Goodall | 1990 | For her pioneering field studies of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. |
| Freya Stark | 1987 | For her Middle Eastern explorations into remote cultures and areas, including Euphrates River raft trip, and her books recording them. |
| Arlene Blum | 1984 | For mountaineering triumphs, leading the first woman's climbs of Mt. McKinley, Garwhal Himalaya Brigupanth, and Annapurna, and reaching 24,000 feet on Mt. Everest. |
| Eugenie Clark | 1975 | For contributions in Marine biology, expanding knowledge of the reproduction and behavior of sharks. |
| Mary Douglas Leakey | 1975 | For contributions to our knowledge of the evolution ofHomo sapiensand his age on earth, in Tanzania's Olduwai Gorge. |
| Marion Stirling Pugh | 1975 | For contributions in archeology to the world's knowledge of the Olmec, and discovery of stone "colossal heads", in Central America. |
| Irene Wright | 1950 | For geographic research and contribution to Tudor maritime history, especially 16thcentury English voyages to the Caribbean. |
| Blair Niles | 1944 | For geographic travels and research presented in published novels and non-fiction books, featuring Southeast Asia, Central & South America, and the Caribbean. |
| Margaret Mead | 1942 | For anthropological research among primitive tribes in Samoa, New Guinea, other South Seas isles |
| Amelia Earhart | 1933 | For her first woman's solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 2, 1932 |