The Founder's Medal was established to recognize lifetime contributions to the field of Regional Science and to the Association. It is still the only honour conveyed by the Association as a whole. Previous recipients include Walter Isard, Martin J. Beckmann, William Alonso, Jean H. P. Paelinck, David E. Boyce, Peter Nijkamp, Antoine Bailly and Arthur Getis.

Individuals are invited to submit nominations/self-nominations for the RSAI Founder’s Medal. The nominations should be sent to the RSAI Selection Committee (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), which consists of Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Antoine Baily, Arthur Getis, Jean-Claude Thill and Emmanouil Tranos. The Committee will select three (3) nominees recommended as potential recipients of the Founder’s Medal based on the below criteria. Then, past recipients of the Founder’s Medal will be invited to recommend the recipient from the list of three nominees compiled by the Committee. The announcement of the recipient will take place during the next World RSAI Congress in Istanbul (25-28^th April, 2016).

A written nomination/self-nomination of a candidate for consideration for the RSAI Founder’s Medal should articulate the merit of the nominee for receiving the Founder’s Medal. It must include a detailed statement of the nature of the lifetime contribution a candidate has made to RSAI. The nomination/self-nomination must explain how and why that contribution of the nominee meets the criteria of the RSAI Founder’s Medal outlined below:

• The recipient should be a senior scholar who has contributed in an important way to the field of Regional Science in a scholarly sense;
• The recipient should have been active in the RSAI for a sustained period, but not necessarily active at the time of the award; also, the award is not given posthumously;
• The recipient should be a person with whom many members can identify; his/her contributions could be a major work in one area or many works in several areas;
• The contribution need not be limited to one type of contribution; it might be theory, method or policy, for example;
• It is recognized that the native country and language of scholars affect the extent to which they are known by the membership, and an effort should be made to take this into account.

More information about the Founder’s Medal can be found on the RSAI web page.