In 1976 the Linnean Society awarded him their Gold Medal[lower-alpha 27] for his contributions to Linnean scholarship[116] and taxonomic botany.[60][154] In 1985 he was the Wilkins Lecturer of the Royal Society, entitled Wilkins, John Ray, and Carl Linnaeus.[155] In 1986 he received the Founder's Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History and in 1993 he received the Engler Gold Medal from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy.[1][lower-alpha 28] The Royal Horticultural Society awarded him both their Veitch Memorial Medal (1964) and Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH, 1965).