Past laureates include:
1831 William Smith
1835 Gideon Mantell
1836 Louis Agassiz
1838 Richard Owen
1839 Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg
1844 William Conybeare
1848 William Buckland
1851 Adam Sedgwick
1853 Edouard de Verneuil
1855 Joachim Barrande; Henry De la Beche
1856 William Logan
1859 Charles Darwin
1864 Roderick Murchison
1866 Charles Lyell
1874 James Dwight Dana
1876 Thomas Henry Huxley
1896 Eduard Suess
1899 Charles Lapworth
1901 Charles Barrois
1987 Claude Jean Allègre
1992 Martin Harold Phillips Bott
1993 Samuel Epstein
1994 William Jason Morgan
1995 George Patrick Leonard Walker
1996 Nicholas John Shackleton
1997 Douglas James Shearman
1998 Karl Karekin Turekian
1999 John Frederick Dewey
2000 William Sefton Fyfe
2001 Harry Blackmore Whittington
2002 Rudolf Trumpy
2003 Ikuo Kushiro
The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831. It was originally made of palladium, a metal discovered by Wollaston.