Benjamin Franklin Medal
Through its Awards Program, The Franklin Institute seeks to provide public recognition and encouragement of excellence in science and technology. The list of Franklin Institute laureates reads like a "Who's Who" in the history of 19th, 20th, and 21st century science, including Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Rudolf Diesel, Pierre and Marie Curie, Orville Wright, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edmund Bacon, Marshall Warren Nirenberg, Jacques Cousteau, Mildred Cohn, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Paul Baran, Gordon Moore, Jane Goodall, Herb Kelleher, Elizabeth Blackburn, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Subra Suresh, and Michael Dell. To date, 121 Franklin Institute laureates also have been honored with Nobel Prizes.
For nearly 175 years, the Institute’s awards program presented 25 different awards, most endowed by generous benefactors. In 1998 the program was reorganized under the umbrella of the Benjamin Franklin Medals. Fields recognized today include chemistry, civil and mechanical engineering, computer and cognitive science, Earth and environmental science, electrical engineering, life science, and physics.
Dedre Gentner (2025)
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Dedre Gentner is the Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and at the School of Education and Social Policy. She helped found the Cognitive Science Program and directed it for over two decades. Gentner is widely recognized for her work on mental models and on the development of cognition and language. Her structure-mapping theory has led to insights into the role of relations in conceptual processing and to a computational model of analogy and similarity.
John Rogers (2019)
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
John Rogers’ research includes fundamental and applied aspects of nano and molecular scale fabrication as well as materials and patterning techniques for unusual electronic and photonic devices, with an emphasis on bio-integrated and bio-inspired systems. The Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery, he has published more than 750 papers, and is an inventor on more than 100 patents and patent applications, more than 70 of which are licensed or in active use by large companies and startups that he has co-founded.
Manijeh Razeghi (2018)
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
Manijeh Razeghi is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She also is director of the Center for Quantum Devices where she leads research that involves developing an understanding of the physics of new semiconductor crystals for novel applications and realizing advanced semiconductor devices such as lasers, photodetectors, transistors, waveguides and switches. She holds 50 patents.
