The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, p ...
and awarded by the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Resear ...
since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Germany so that they can carry out top-level research there and strengthen Germany as a research location. The prize includes a permanent full professorship at the hosting university, plus 5 million euros for experimentally working scientists or 3.5 million euros for theoretically working scientists (in addition, the university is expected to provide matching funds). This makes it the most highly endowed research prize in Germany, and possibly world-wide. A maximum of ten Alexander von Humboldt Professorships can be awarded every year to researchers of all disciplines. From 2020 to 2024, an additional six Humboldt Professorships in the field of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
can be awarded each year.
Nominations are made by German universities, possibly in cooperation with research institutions. The award is financed by the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (german: link=no, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, ), abbreviated BMBF, is a cabinet-level ministry of Germany. It is headquartered in Bonn, with an office in Berlin. The Ministry provi ...
within the framework of the International Research Fund for Germany.
List of Alexander von Humboldt Professorships
Previous laureates were:
2009:
* Oliver Brock (* 1969), German computer scientist
* Piet Wibertus Brouwer (* 1971), Dutch theoretical solid state physicist
*
Gia Dwali (* 1964), Georgian particle physicist and cosmologist
* Ulrike Gaul (* 1960), German developmental biologist
* Norbert Langer (* 1958), German astrophysicist
*
Martin Bodo Plenio
Martin Bodo Plenio (born 20 May 1968) is a German physicist, Alexander von Humboldt Professor, and Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Ulm University.
He is notable for his work on entanglement theory, quantum technology and qua ...
(* 1968), German quantum optician
*
Burkhard Rost (* 1961), German bioinformatician
2010:
*
Marc Levine
Marc Levine (born April 26, 1974) is an American politician, who served in the California State Assembly representing the 10th district between 2012 and 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, Levine is the former Chairman of the California ...
(* 1952), US-American mathematician
* Jürgen Margraf (* 1956), German psychologist
*
Gerard J. van den Berg (born 1962), Dutch economist
* Philip van der Eijk (* 1962), Dutch classical philologist
* Matthias Wessling (* 1963), German process engineer
2011:
* Harald Clahsen (* 1955), German psycholinguist
*
David DiVincenzo
David P. DiVincenzo (born 1959) is an American theoretical physicist. He is the director of the Institute of Theoretical Nanoelectronics at the Peter Grünberg Institute at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and Professor at the Institute for Quantum ...
(* 1959), American physicist
*
Brian Foster (* 1954), British elementary particle physicist
* Gerhard Kramer (* 1970), Canadian-German communications engineer
*
Dirk Kreimer (* 1960), German theoretical physicist
*
Hannes Leitgeb (* 1972), Austrian philosopher and mathematician
* Vahid Sandoghdar (* 1966), Iranian-American physicist
* Alec Wodtke (* 1959), US-American chemist
2012:
* Rolf Harald Baayen (* 1958), Dutch linguist
*
Friedrich Eisenbrand (* 1971), German mathematician (funding ended prematurely)
* Jochen Guck (* 1973), German biophysicist
* Hans-Arno Jacobsen (* 1969), German computer scientist
* Robert Schober (* 1971), German engineer
*
Matthias Tschöp
Matthias H. Tschöp (born April 7, 1967) is a German physician and scientist. He is the chief executive officer and scientific director of Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health. He is also Alexander von Humbol ...
(* 1967), German physician
*
Michael Weiss Michael Weiss may refer to:
Sports
* Michael Weiss (figure skater) (born 1976), American former figure skater
* Michael Weiss (swimmer) (born 1991), American swimmer
* Michael Weiss (triathlete) (born 1981), Austrian triathlete and cyclist
* Mich ...
(* 1955), German mathematician
2013:
* Gregory Crane (* 1957), US-American classical philologist
* Frank Fehrenbach (* 1963), German art historian
*
Michael Neil Forster
Michael Neil Forster (born December 9, 1957) is an American philosopher and the Alexander von Humboldt Professor, holder of the Chair in Theoretical Philosophy, and Co-director of the International Center for Philosophy at Bonn University. Previo ...
(* 1957), US-American philosopher
*
Stephan Hartmann
Stephan Hartmann (born 1 March 1968) is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy of Science at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, known for his contributions to formal epistemology.
Biography
Hartmann received his PhD from Justus Lie ...
(* 1968), German philosopher of science
* Michael Köhl (* 1975), German physicist
*
Oskar Painter (* 1972), Canadian physicist (funding ended prematurely)
* Wolfram Ruf (* 1958), German medical doctor
2014:
*
Giuseppe Caire
Giuseppe Caire (born 1965 in Turin) is an Italian telecommunications engineer.
Career
Caire received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 1990, his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1 ...
(* 1965), Italian information theorist
*
Emmanuelle Charpentier
Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier (; born 11 December 1968) is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. As of 2015, she has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. In 2018, sh ...
(* 1968), French immunobiologist
* Stefanie Engel (* 1968), German environmental economist
*
Stuart Parkin
Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin (born 9 December 1955) is an experimental physicist, IBM Fellow and manager of the magnetoelectronics group at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He is also a consulting professor in the dep ...
(* 1955), British physicist
* Andreas S. Schulz (* 1969), German mathematician
* Jairo Sinova (* 1972), Spanish-US-American physicist
* Hidenori Takagi (* 1961), Japanese physicist
2015:
* Elisabeth Décultot (* 1968), French literary scholar
*
Harald Andrés Helfgott (* 1977), Peruvian mathematician
* Sharon Jeanette Macdonald (* 1961), British ethnologist
*
Karen Radner
Karen Radner (11 May 1972) is an Austrian Assyriologist, the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Ancient History at the University of Munich.
Early life and education
Karen Radner started her studies at the University of Vienna in 1990 in Ancient ...
(* 1971), Austrian Orientalist
* Marja Timmermans (* 1964), plant geneticist
2016:
*
Till Winfried Bärnighausen
Till Winfried Bärnighausen (born 1969) is an Alexander von Humboldt University Professor and Director of the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is also Adjunct Professor of Glo ...
(* 1969), German epidemiologist
* Sven Bernecker (* 1967), German philosopher
*
(* 1960), British mathematician
*
Heinrich Jasper
Heinrich Jasper (21 August 1875 – 19 February 1945) was a German politician (SPD). During the 1920s, he served three terms as regional prime minister (''Ministerpräsident'') of the Free State of Brunswick. He died in the Bergen-Belsen conc ...
(* 1974), German molecular biologist
* Tiffany Knight (* 1975), US ecologist and environmental researcher
* Katrin Kogman-Appel (* 1958), Austrian Judaist
* Judith Pfeiffer (* 1964), German Islamic scholar
* Wolfgang Wernsdorfer (* 1966), German solid-state physicist
2017:
* Largus T. Angenent (* 1969), Dutch environmental microbiologist
* Peter Baumann (* 1969), German cell biologist
* Jijie Chai (* 1966), Chinese structural biologist
*
James F. Conant
James Ferguson Conant (born June 10, 1958) is an American philosopher at the University of Chicago who has written extensively on topics in philosophy of language, ethics, and metaphilosophy. He is perhaps best known for his writings on Ludwig Wit ...
(* 1958), US-American philosopher
* Wolf-Bernd Frommer (* 1958), German plant molecular biologist
* Ran Hirschl (* 1963), Israeli constitutional lawyer
2018:
*
Anne van Aaken
Anne Sophia-Marie van Aaken (born 19 April 1969 in Bonn, West Germany) is a German lawyer and economist, who is a full professor of law and economics, legal theory, public international law and European law at the University of Hamburg.
Life
V ...
(* 1969), German jurist and economist
*
Wil van der Aalst
Willibrordus Martinus Pancratius van der Aalst (born 29 January 1966) is a Dutch computer scientist and full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science (PADS) group. His research and teaching interests include i ...
(* 1966), Dutch computer scientist
* Bogdan Andrei Bernevig (* 1978), Romanian physicist
* Marco Caccamo (* 1971), Italian computer scientist
* Margaret C. Crofoot (* 1980), US biologist
* Ewa Dąbrowska (* 1963), Polish linguist
* Raul Fidel Tempone (* 1969), Italian-Uruguayan mathematician
* Arno Rauschenbeutel (* 1971), German quantum optician and nuclear physicist
* Guus F. Rimmelzwaan (* 1959), Dutch virologist and immunobiologist
* Michael Sieweke (* 1963), German cell biologist
2019:
* Malte Gather, German physicist
*Anke Hoeffler, German economist and political scientist
*
Jens Meiler
Jens Meiler (born August 31, 1974) is a German-American biologist and structural chemist. He currently serves as a Professor of Chemistry and Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University. His research ...
, German structural biologist
*
Alexandre Obertelli (* 1978), French nuclear physicist
*
Stefanie Petermichl (* 1971), German mathematician
* Dietmar Schmucker, German neuroscientist
* Henning Walczak (* 1966), German immunologist
*
Enrique Zuazua (* 1961), Spanish mathematician
2020:
* NN
2021:
* NN
2022:
*
Catherina G. Becker, German neurobiologist
*
Matthias Doepke, economic theorist
* Bas E. Dutilh, bioinformatics scientist
*
Holger Hoos, computer scientist
* Stefanie Jegelka, computer scientist
* Yaochu Jin, Chinese computer scientist
*
Jan Karlseder
Jan Karlseder (born September 28, 1968, in Innsbruck) is an Austrian molecular biologist, a professor in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, the Director of the ''Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research'' and the holder of th ...
, molecular biologist
* Markus Klute, German physicist
*
Sven Koenig, computer scientist
* Sayan Mukherjee, Indian mathematician
*
Vincent C. Müller, philosopher
*
Kate Rigby
Catherine Elizabeth Rigby (born 1960 in Canberra, Australia) is a scholar in the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities.
Biography
Kate Rigby was born and grew up largely in Canberra, where she attended St John's Primary School, ...
, environmental humanities scholar
* Joacim Rocklöv, Swedish epidemiologist
* Suvrit Sra, mathematician
*
Radu Timofte Alexandru-Radu Timofte (; 7 April 1949 – 19 October 2009) was a Romanian soldier, politician and spy chief. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), he sat in the Romanian Senate from 1990 to 2001, representing Neamț County. From 2001 ...
, Romanian computer scientist
* Angela Yu, neuroscientist
2023:
* Samarjit Chakraborty, computer scientist
* Dirk Englung, physicist
*
Hanna Kokko, bioinformatician
*
Tina Malti, clinical-developmental psychologist
* Edvardas Narevicius, chemist
*
Thomas C. Südhof
Thomas Christian Südhof (; born December 22, 1955), ForMemRS, is a German-American biochemist known for his study of synaptic transmission. Currently, he is a professor in the School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular and Cellular P ...
, neuroscientist
* Heike Vallery, mechanical engineer
* André Platzer, computer scientist
* Thomas Strohmer, mathematician
*
Ingmar Weber, computer scientist
References
{{Reflist
Alexander von Humboldt
German science and technology awards