Bonnie Bassler, the Andrew K. Golden University Professor at Princeton University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has received the 2026 Copley Medal from the Royal Society. On November 28, 1660, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge was established by Christopher Wren. The Copley Medal, the world’s oldest scientific prize for research, is the society’s most prestigious prize. Previous winners of the Copley Medal include Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Charles Darwin.
Dr. Bassler is known for her foundational research in quorum sensing — the chemical signaling by which bacteria communicate with each other and band together to act collectively. This research is paving the way to the development of novel therapies for combating bacteria by disrupting quorum-sensing-mediated communication. Dr. Bassler’s work has received several other prestigious awards, including the U.S. Medal of Science.
A Princeton faculty member since 1994, Dr. Bassler was named a University Professor — the Ivy League institution’s highest honor — in 2025. Before that appointment, she was the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology for 18 years. Throughout her long tenure, she has served as chair of the department of molecular biology, director of the molecular biology graduate program, and director of Princeton’s Council on Science and Technology. Dr. Bassler has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2005.
Dr. Bassler is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where she majored in biochemistry. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and completed postdoctoral work in genetics at the Agouron Institute in California.