The Croonian Medal and Lecture is a prestigious award, a medal, and lecture given at the invitation of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians.

His wife provided the bequest in 1701 specifying that it was "for the support of a lecture and illustrative experiment for the advancement of natural knowledge on locomotion, or (conditionally) of such other subjects as, in the opinion of the President for the time being, should be most useful in promoting the objects for which the Royal Society was instituted".

One lecture was to be delivered by a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the other, on the nature and laws of muscular motion, to be delivered before the Royal Society.

[6] He was appointed lecturer on anatomy at Surgeons' hall in 1670 and pursued research in several important subjects of his day, including respiration, muscular motion, and generation.

One individual, Sir Stephen O’Rahilly FRS, FRCP has received the award twice: initially from the Royal College of Physicians in 2011, and then from the Royal Society in 2022 (below).