"The Gold Medal for Geophysics is awarded to the internationally renowned geophysicist Professor John Woodhouse of the University of Oxford. Over many years, Professor Woodhouse has developed our theoretical understanding of the Earth’s interior and crucially then used this to make new discoveries about our planet. Early in his career, he found an error in the way oscillations of the Earth’s interior were being calculated, based on a misunderstanding of the boundaries in the internal structure of the planet. The computational algorithm he developed as a result is now a standard tool in seismology.

"Together with Adam Dziewonski, Professor Woodhouse also produced some of the first believable maps of the terrestrial interior. These proved crucial to our later understanding of the thermal and mineral structure of the Earth.