New Zealand's top science medal goes to the man who taught the world to fight plant invaders

Every island nation lives with the same quiet threat: a pest, weed or disease arriving in a suitcase or a shipping container and unravelling the nature that makes the place itself. Professor Philip Hulme of Lincoln University has spent a career learning exactly how those invaders establish and spread — and how to stop them. On 15 October in Dunedin he received the 2026 Rutherford Medal, New Zealand's pre-eminent science honour, from the Royal Society Te Apārangi. His work reaches far beyond New Zealand: he was a coordinating lead author of the United Nations report on invasive species approved by 143 countries, and he champions 'One Biosecurity' — treating environmental, plant, animal and human health as one connected defence. It is unglamorous work that protects farms, forests and whole ecosystems before anyone notices it was needed.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: individual leader