right|thumb|Benjamin Thompson, o conde de Rumford Em 1796, Benjamin Thompson, o conde de Rumford, fez duas doações de USD 5.000 cada, uma para a Royal Society de Londres e outra para a Academia de Artes e Ciências dos Estados Unidos, para tornar possível que eles sempre premiassem pessoas a cada dois anos, por pesquisas relevantes sobre calor e/ou luz.
A Academia de Artes e Ciências dos Estados Unidos concede o Prêmio Rumford, enquanto a Royal Society concede a Medalha Rumford.
Medalhistas Século XVIII 1800 : Benjamin Thompson
Século XIX
1804: John Leslie 1808: William Murdoch 1810: Étienne-Louis Malus 1814: William Charles Wells 1816: Humphry Davy 1818: David Brewster 1824: Augustin-Jean Fresnel 1832: John Frederic Daniell 1834: Macedonio Melloni 1838: James David Forbes 1840: Jean-Baptiste Biot 1842: William Henry Fox Talbot 1846: Michael Faraday 1848: Henri Victor Regnault 1850: François Jean Dominique Arago 1852: George Gabriel Stokes 1854: Neil Arnott 1856: Louis Pasteur 1858: Jules Célestin Jamin 1860: James Clerk Maxwell 1862: Gustav Kirchhoff 1864: John Tyndall 1866: Hippolyte Fizeau 1868: Balfour Stewart 1870: Alfred Des Cloizeaux 1872: Anders Jonas Ångström 1874: Norman Lockyer 1876: Pierre Janssen 1878: Alfred Cornu 1880: William Huggins 1882: William de Wiveleslie Abney 1884: Tobias Robertus Thalen 1886: Samuel Pierpont Langley 1888: Pietro Tacchini 1890: Heinrich Hertz 1892: Nils Christoffer Dunér 1894: James Dewar 1896: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen e Philipp Lenard 1898: Oliver Lodge 1900: Antoine Henri Becquerel
Século XX
1902: Charles Algernon Parsons 1904: Ernest Rutherford 1906: Hugh Longbourne Callendar 1908: Hendrik Lorentz 1910: Heinrich Rubens 1912: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes 1914: John William Strutt 1916: William Henry Bragg 1918: Charles Fabry e Alfred Perot 1920: John William Strutt 1922: Pieter Zeeman 1924: Charles Vernon Boys 1926: Arthur Schuster 1928: Friedrich Paschen 1930: Peter Debye 1932: Fritz Haber 1934: Wander Johannes de Haas 1936: Ernest George Coker 1938: Robert Williams Wood 1940: Karl Siegbahn 1942: Gordon Dobson 1944: Harry Ricardo 1946: Alfred Egerton 1948: Francis Simon 1950: Frank Whittle 1952: Frits Zernike 1954: Cecil Reginald Burch 1956: Frank Philip Bowden 1958: Thomas Ralph Merton 1960: Alfred Gordon Gaydon 1962: Dudley Maurice Newitt 1964: Hendrik Christoffel van de Hulst 1966: William Penney 1968: Dennis Gabor 1970: Christopher Hinton 1972: Basil John Mason 1974: Alan Cottrell 1976: Ilya Prigogine 1978: George Porter 1980: William Frank Vinen 1982: Charles Gorrie Wynne 1984: Harold Hopkins 1986: Denis Rooke 1988: Felix Weinberg 1990: Walter Eric Spear 1992: Harold Neville Vazeille Temperley 1994: Andrew Keller 1996: Grenville Turner 1998: Richard Friend 2000: Wilson Sibbett
Século XXI
2002: David King 2004: Richard Dixon 2006: Jean-Pierre Hansen 2008: Edward Hinds 2010: Gilbert Lonzarich 2012: Roy Taylor 2014: Jeremy Baumberg 2016: Ortwin Hess 2018: Ian Walmsley 2019: Miles Padgett 2020: Patrick Gill 2021: Carlos Frenk
Categoria:Prêmios da Royal Society Rumford