The Rosén von Rosenstein Medal, awarded by the Swedish Paediatric Society and the Swedish Society of Medicine every five years since 1964, is recognised as the most prestigious prize within paediatrics.
Andrew Pollard is Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at Oxford Children’s Hospital and Vice Master of St Cross College. His research includes the design, development and clinical evaluation of vaccines including those for meningococcal disease and enteric fever and leads studies using a human challenge model of (para)typhoid. He runs surveillance for invasive bacterial diseases and studies the impact of pneumococcal vaccines in children in Nepal; he also leads a project on burden and transmission of typhoid in Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi, and co-leads typhoid vaccine impact studies at these sites. He has supervised 37 PhD students and his publications includes over 500 manuscripts and books on various topics in paediatrics and infectious diseases. He chairs the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and the European Medicines Agency scientific advisory group on vaccines and is a member of WHO’s SAGE. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016 and is an NIHR Senior Investigator. His recent recognitions include the Bill Marshall award of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Disease (ESPID) in 2013 for his contribution to the specialty, and the ESPID Distinguished Award for Education & Communication in 2015.
Professor Pollard received the medal in a ceremony on 27 September and delivered a lecture in the Children's Hospital at Uppsala.
About the award
The prize commemorates Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (1706-1773), a Swedish physician and the founder of modern paediatrics. Following studies at the universities of Lund and Uppsala, Rosén von Rosenstein travelled to several European countries and obtained a medical degree in Haarderwijk in 1730. He subsequently returned to take up a lectureship in Uppsala, where he was Carl Linnaeus’ contemporary. In 1743 he was appointed royal physician. In 1764, Rosén von Rosenstein published “The diseases of children, and their remedies”, considered to be the first modern textbook on the subject.