Black was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1976 and the same year he was awarded the Lasker award. His certificate of election to the Royal Society reads: Has made outstanding contributions, based on fundamental considerations of receptor theory, to the development of new drugs of clinical importance. Introduced the first effective beta blockers and analysed their cardiovascular effects. These drugs have opened up new perspectives for the treatment of angina pectoris, cardiac irregularities and hypertension. More recently, in a concerted drive carried out with great vision, he has developed a new type of histamine antagonist capable of inhibiting gastric acid secretion induced by histamine or pentagastrin. Apart from its practical implications this work has considerable fundamental importance since it provided evidence for the existence of a new type of histamine receptor. This work has also provided experimental support for the hypothesis that endogenous histamine may be involved in the secretion of acid in the stomach. In 1979, he was awarded the Artois-Baillet Latour Health Prize. Black was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh in 1980. In 1982 Black was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine, and the year after the Scheele Award. He was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings for their work on drug development. In 1994 he received the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine and in 2004 the Royal Medal from the Royal Society. In 2008, he was Awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Medical Futures Innovation Awards, accompanied by his wife Professor Rona Mackie Black, in front of a distinguished audience of one thousand guests.