JUNG PRIZE: MILESTONE IN THE RESEARCH CAREER
Being awarded with the Jung Prize for Medicine means much more than the prize money and the certificate alone can express – it is an important milestone in the research career of the laureates. This is evidenced by the extremely positive responses of the recipients of the Jung Prize for Medicine to a brief recent survey that was conducted by the Jung Foundation. 19 of the 33 laureates who participated in the survey see a direct or indirect connection between their Jung Foundation award and other, subsequently awarded prizes.
Every November, the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which is made up of seven renowned international scientists, selects the laureates for the following year. These are among the top representatives of their field – and all of them receive other important awards in the course of their careers. Three of them have even been awarded the Nobel Prize: Prof Dr Rolf Martin Zinkernagel in 1996, Prof Dr Harald zur Hausen in 2008 and Prof Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2020.
These as well as many other awards are both reward and recognition for the pioneering research work of the scientists. Each one makes an important contribution to further disseminating the results to the scientific community and society. The Jung Foundation also wants to use its prize to draw international attention to particularly groundbreaking work. Therefore, its survey also posed the following question: Has the receiving of the Jung Prize helped the winners win further awards?
The results are clear: 19 of the 33 prize winners who participated in the survey see a direct or indirect connection between their Jung Foundation award and their other, subsequently awarded prizes. In this respect, the respondents mention a large number of appointments at universities and admissions to renowned medical academies as well as a total of 57 awards.
These range from many German awards (such as the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the Körber European Science Prize, and a Grand Cross of Merit) and European grants and prizes (such as the ERC Advanced Grant, the Marcel Benoist Swiss Science Prize and the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine) to the most prestigious international awards (such as the Albany Medical Center Prize, the Breakthrough Prize, the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine).