Bionic ear inventor Graeme Clark has been awarded the $50,000 Florey Medal, further silencing critics who called him a "clown" when he was developing the technology.The 76-year-old University of Wollongong collaborator accepted Australia's most prestigious medical research prize as he enters a new phase of work on hi-fi cochlear implants, which could one day help people hear sound such as music.Recipients of the Florey Medal are an elite few whose work is deemed to have followed in the tradition of penicillin pioneer Sir Howard Florey.Like the Nobel Prize-winner, Professor Clark made his discovery by chance, then fought to see it through a tide of disbelief and criticism."When I started, 99 per cent of scientists around the world said it wouldn't work," said Prof Clark, whose invention has helped more than 250,000 people to hear."I was up against considerable opposition. I think some of my associates ... had gone to the Vice-Chancellor [at the University of Melbourne] to suggest I might be relieved of my professorial position, and people from overseas used to refer to me as 'that clown Clark'."Prof Clark helped establish the UOW ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and was its chief investigator until recently.He announced yesterday he would return to Melbourne University, taking with him extensive tests and scans from the brain of his first patient, Rod Saunders.Mr Saunders died in 2007 and left his brain to medical research.Prof Clark will maintain an informal role with the Wollongong facility, where researchers are working to develop electrodes that can be moved even after they have been surgically implanted in the cochlea.The work will likely play a role in Prof Clark's hi-fi ambitions.An important element of the new work will be increasing the number of electrodes in the cochlear implant from about 20 to at least 100, an enhancement that could help improve the quality of sound including music or conversation in a noisy environment.Prof Clark accepted his award in Canberra at the Australian Medical Research Institute's annual dinner. Dr Andrew Cuthbertson, a chief scientist with Florey Medal sponsors CSL Limited, said Prof Clark was a fitting winner.