The Heineken Prizes for Arts and Sciences consist of 11 awards biannually bestowed by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The prizes are named in honor of Henry Pierre Heineken, son of founder Gerard Adriaan Heineken, Alfred Heineken, former chairman of Heineken Holdings, and Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, current chair of the Heineken Prizes Foundations, which fund all Heineken Prizes for Arts and Sciences. Thirteen winners of the Dr H. P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics or the Dr A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine subsequently were awarded a Nobel Prize.
The five science prizes ($200,000 each) are:
1. Dr H. P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics [1]
2–4. Dr A. H. Heineken Prizes for History, [2] Medicine [3] and Environmental Sciences [4]
5. C. L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Sciences [5]
In 1988, the Dr A. H. Heineken Prize for Art was established to be awarded to an outstanding artist working in the Netherlands. The prize is €100,000, half of which is to be spent on a publication and/or exhibit. [6]
Since 2010, Heineken Young Scientists Awards are given to young talent in similar research fields as the Dr H. P. Heineken, Dr A. H. Heineken and C. L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prizes. [7]
The selection system of the Heineken Prizes can be compared to that of the Nobel Prizes. Scientists from all over the world are invited to nominate fellow scientists for the Heineken Prizes. The Royal Netherlands Academy appoints special committees consisting of eminent scientists and chaired by a member of the board of one of the academy's two divisions. Both members and nonmembers of the academy are eligible for membership of these committees. An independent jury of members of the academy, acting in a personal capacity, chooses the winners of the Dr A. H. Heineken Prize for Art.
The Heineken Prizes are awarded in a special session of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, which takes place every even year at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. [8] In 2002, 2004, [9] 2006, [10] 2008, [11] 2010 [12] and 2012 [13] the Prizes were presented by the Prince of Orange.
The following winners of the Heineken Prizes for Medicine and Biochemistry and Biophysics have since won a Nobel Prize:
Physiology is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and physical functions in a living system. According to the classes of organisms, the field can be divided into medical physiology, animal physiology, plant physiology, cell physiology, and comparative physiology.
Archibald Vivian Hill, better known to friends and colleagues as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist, one of the founders of the diverse disciplines of biophysics and operations research. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his elucidation of the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles.
Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisomes and lysosomes, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Albert Claude and George E. Palade. In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis on a single occasion.
Paul Greengard was an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. In 2000, Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system. He was Vincent Astor Professor at Rockefeller University, and served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund, as well as the Scientific Council of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. He was married to artist Ursula von Rydingsvard.
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, with Carol W. Greider. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate.
Edmond Henri Fischer was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes. From 2007 until 2014, he was the Honorary President of the World Cultural Council. At the time of his death at age 101 in 2021, he was the oldest living Nobel Prize laureate.
James Edward Rothman is an American biochemist. He is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and the Director of the Nanobiology Institute at the Yale West Campus. Rothman also concurrently serves as adjunct professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University and a research professor at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London.
Mario Ramberg Capecchi is an Italian-born molecular geneticist and a co-awardee of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off, known as knockout mice. He shared the prize with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Anthony James Pawson was a British-born Canadian scientist.
The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemistry.
Britton "Brit" Chance was an American biochemist, biophysicist, scholar, and inventor whose work helped develop spectroscopy as a way to diagnose medical problems. He was "a world leader in transforming theoretical science into useful biomedical and clinical applications" and is considered "the founder of the biomedical photonics." He received the National Medal of Science in 1974.
Carolyn Widney Greider is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Distinguished Professor in the department of molecular, cell, and developmental biology in October 2020.
Roger Yonchien Tsien was an American biochemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, in collaboration with organic chemist Osamu Shimomura and neurobiologist Martin Chalfie. Tsien was also a pioneer of calcium imaging.
Jack William Szostak is a Canadian American biologist of Polish British descent, Nobel Prize laureate, University Professor at the University of Chicago, former Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Szostak has made significant contributions to the field of genetics. His achievement helped scientists to map the location of genes in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His research findings in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project. He was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol W. Greider, for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres.
The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences is intended to recognize breakthrough research in pure or applied life science research that is distinguished by its excellence, originality and impact on our understanding of biological systems and processes. The award may recognize a specific contribution or series of contributions that demonstrate the nominee's significant leadership in the development of research concepts or their clinical application. Particular emphasis will be placed on research that champions novel approaches and challenges accepted thinking in the biomedical sciences.
Sir Christopher Martin Dobson was a British chemist, who was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.
The Genetics Society of American Medal is a medal awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics in the last 15 years.
Karl Alexander Deisseroth is an American scientist. He is the D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
The Massry Prize was established in 1996, and was administered by the Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation until 2019. The Prize, of $40,000 and the Massry Lectureship, is bestowed upon scientists who have made substantial recent contributions in the biomedical sciences. Shaul G. Massry, M.D., who established the Massry Foundation, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He served as Chief of its Division of Nephrology from 1974 to 2000. In 2009 the KECK School of Medicine was asked to administer the Prize, and has done so since that time. Ten winners of the Massry Prize have gone on to be awarded a Nobel Prize.
Charles Moen Rice is an American virologist and Nobel Prize laureate whose main area of research is the hepatitis C virus. He is a professor of virology at the Rockefeller University in New York City and an adjunct professor at Cornell University and Washington University School of Medicine. At the time of the award he was a faculty at Rockefeller.