The Keilin Memorial Lecture was instituted in January 1964 to commemorate the late David Keilin.

The lecturer and subject of the lecture are selected, by the Awards Committee, from a field related to the interests of Keilin in bioenergetics, electron transfer and mitochondrial biology. The lecture is normally delivered every other year but the Society has the power to modify this programme. The venue of the lecture may be outside the UK.

The Keilin Lecturer receives a medal and an honorarium of £2000 and the lecture is published in Biochemical Society Transactions.

History: following an appeal by a group of the late David Keilin's associates, the Biochemical Society was asked to act as trustee of the Memorial Fund.

The 2012 winner of the Keilin Memorial Lecture was Professor Sir John Walker (Medical Research Council Mitochondrial Biology Unit, UK) and the lecture was presented at the Annual Symposium - Frontiers in biological catalysis in January 2012.