The Sir Hans Sloane Memorial Prizes are awarded in Northern Ireland to those students who achieve the highest marks in the three main sciences at A-Level.

People being vaccinated against Smallpox

Born in Killyleagh, Co. Down, Sir Hans Sloane developed smallpox immunisation in 1718. This was the first step towards eradicating the disease worldwide.

On Sir Hans' death in 1753 he left over 50,000 books and 250,000 natural history specimens to science. These became the core of the British Museum. While he was in Jamaica, he saw babies being fed on a mixture of cocoa beans and their mother's breast milk. Using this idea Sir Hans created a health drink by mixing chocolate with cows milk. This drink was produced by Cadbury's until 1885 and was known (surprise, surprise!) as "Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate".

Listed among his friends were Sir Isaac Newton and Samuel Pepys and, you may or may not know, that Sloane Square, Hans Place and Hans Road in London are all named after him.

Useful web link

To find out more about Sir Hans Sloane visit the resource archive section of the Ulster Society.

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