Ten scientists were awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, worth 2.5 million euros each, for their research achievements. The award ceremony for Germany’s most important research funding award took place on Wednesday afternoon at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy in Berlin.
The German Research Foundation had already announced the prize winners, who were selected from 150 proposals, in December. Of the award winners, two come from the humanities and social sciences, three from the life sciences, four from the natural sciences and one from engineering. They can use the prize money for their research over the next seven years.
Climate research projects have received multiple awards
Geoecologist Ulrike Herzschuh from the University of Potsdam was honored for her research on the influence of climate fluctuations in recent earth history on the biodiversity of polar regions. According to the DFG, microbiologist Tobias Erb from the University of Marburg is researching carbon dioxide fixation in plants. Cryptographer Eike Kiltz from the University of Bochum received the prize for his work on encryption technology for digital information. The historian Jörn Leonhard from the University of Freiburg was honored for his work in the field of cultural and political history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The other prize winners are the physicist Dmitri Efetov from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the neuropharmacologist Rohini Kuner from the University of Heidelberg, the neuroscientist Moritz Helmstaedter from the Frankfurt Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, the philologist Jonas Grethlein from the University of Heidelberg, the Chemist Peter Schreiner from the University of Gießen and the mathematician Eva Viehmann from the University of Münster.
The award, which has been presented annually by the DFG since 1986, is considered the most important research funding award in Germany.
