On 4 June, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced which four researchers will receive the NWO Spinoza prize for 2007. The prize is the biggest Dutch award in science. Each researcher receives one-and-a-half million euros to freely devote to his or her research. The researchers receive the prestigious prize for their outstanding, pioneering and inspiring scientific work.
The winners of the NWO Spinoza prize 2007 are:
- Prof. D.M. (Deirdre) Curtin, lawyer at Utrecht University. Curtin has made outstanding contributions to the development and promotion of international and European law and has developed groundbreaking visions for the governance of international organisations such as the European Union.
- Prof. M. (Marcel) Dicke, ecological entomologist at Wageningen University. Dicke discovered, for example, that in response to insect feeding plants produce specific volatile chemicals that attract enemies of their enemies.
- Prof. L.P. (Leo) Kouwenhoven, physicist at Delft University of Technology. Kouwenhovens groundbreaking work on so-called spin qubits is vitally important for the use of quantum information, for example in a fundamentally new type of computer.
- Prof. J.W.M. (Wil) Roebroeks, archaeologist at Leiden University. Roebroeks has made original observations on early hominids and the development of human society.
The NWO Spinoza prize, also viewed as the 'Dutch Nobel Prize', is awarded to Dutch researchers who rank among the world's top scientists. The laureates are internationally renowned, and know how to inspire young researchers.
This is the thirteenth occasion on which the Spinoza prizes have been awarded. The first occasion was in 1995. The awards are made on the basis of nominations. Those allowed to make nominations are the principals of universities, and the chairs of the departments of Literature and Physics of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Netherlands Society of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Dutch National Network of Female Professors, and the Social Sciences Council.
The official presentation of the monetary prize and the Spinoza statuette will take place on Wednesday 28 November 2007 in the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.
ENCLOSURE WITH PRESS RELEASE NWO SPINOZA PRIZES 2007
Jury report for Prof. D.M. (Deirdre) Curtin:
Professor International and European Governance at Utrecht University
Professor Curtin receives the NWO Spinoza Prize 2007 for her outstanding contribution to the development and promotion of international and European law and for her groundbreaking visions concerning the governance of international organisations such as the European Union.
Deirdre Curtin (17 January 1960, Dublin, Ireland) studied law at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. After several years of working as a Legal Secretary (Référendaire) to the Irish judge at the Court of Justice of the European Communities, Luxembourg, she was awarded her doctorate in 1991 from the National University of Ireland. At the age of just 32, Curtin was appointed as professor of Law of International Organisations at the Faculty of Law and director of the Europa Institute at Utrecht University. In 2003 she moved to the professorship of International and European Governance and the multidisciplinary Utrecht School of Governance (USBO). In that same year she was the first woman to be appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the section law. Additionally for many years she was visiting professor at the Europa College in Bruges and she is currently associated with the Centre for European Law at the University of Cambridge.
Deirdre Curtin is the leading Dutch expert in the area of law and governance of the European Union. Her specialist fields are international law and international governance. She studies phenomena such as democracy, legitimacy and accountability in a groundbreaking manner. Together with her colleagues from USBO she has further developed the term accountability into a phenomenon that can be empirically investigated. With this approach she demonstrated how the EU suffers from shortcomings in accountability. In addition to the jurisprudential angles she also draws upon public administration concepts in her analyses. Cross-fertilisation between these two perspectives led amongst other things to important, innovative insights into the governability of international organisations.
Curtin exerts an enormous influence on her research field and is a highly sought after speaker as well as a member of numerous national and international advisory committees. Her article about the constitutional structure of the European Union published in 1993 is still one of the most cited articles about the European Union. She has exerted a considerable influence on the European legislation (2001) granting public access to documents of certain European institutions, for which she wrote part of the draft. Her multidisciplinary view on the EU as a political and administrative entity has clearly shaped the current debate about the EU.
Deirdre Curtin is the author of a large number of publications in the foremost international journals and handbooks. Her list of publications is not only of exceptional quality but for a lawyer also extremely extensive. This is a considerable achievement, as since the late 1990s she has only worked part-time (0.6 fte) at the university due to the care for her four children.
Deirdre Curtin is a first-rate and leading player in the field of European law. With considerable charisma the lawyer knows how to promote her ideas. Long before anyone else she warned of the insidious growth in the number of independent governing bodies that threaten to become a wide-ranging and unwieldy European administrative apparatus. In this area in particular the Spinoza committee expects to hear a lot more from her in the future.
This jury report served as the basis for the speech given by Prof. Jenny Gierveld upon the announcement of the NWO Spinoza Prizes 2007 on 4 June 2007.
Jury report for Prof. M. (Marcel) Dicke:
Professor of Entomology at Wageningen University
Professor Dicke receives the NWO Spinoza Prize 2007 for his ecological research into the interaction between plants and insects. He has discovered, for example, that in response to insect feeding plants produce specific volatile chemicals that attract enemies of their enemies.
Marcel Dicke (28 November 1957, Dordrecht) gained his degree in biology with distinction in 1982 at Leiden University. After working for several years as a teacher he gained his doctorate with distinction at Wageningen University in 1988. From 1997 to 2001 he was Uyttenboogaart-Eliasen professor at the Department of Entomology, Wageningen University, where he has been Professor of Entomology since 2002. In that same year Dicke received a Vici subsidy from NWO. In 2006 he was one of the winners of the prestigious British Rank Prize.
Marcel Dicke is a pioneer in the area of tritrophic interactions: plant – herbivorous insect – predatory insect. He made his first groundbreaking discovery in 1986. At that time it was known that plants could defend themselves against herbivores (insects and mites) by releasing toxins. Dicke demonstrated that plants also released volatile substances to attract predatory mites which in turn attacked the herbivorous mites. This pioneering work opened up a new research area in ecology: tritrophic interactions. In 1988 Dicke was the first to publish about this field.
Dicke is a prolific researcher with a diverse range of interests. His work is highly multidisciplinary: he studies insects from gene to community. Besides greenhouse experiments he also carries out field experiments. He is a prominent reviewer and organiser and accordingly well known and appreciated. He has received national and international fame for his original publications – including articles in Nature and Science – review articles and lectures. Several of his almost 300 publications belong to the best-cited articles of the journals concerned.
Marcel Dicke is an innovator, who has built up an enthusiastic team. Since his first discovery he has started a new wave in the ecology of insect-plant relationships every five years. He puts original hypotheses to the test and bridges the gap between theory and practice. The fundamental insights he obtains are, for example, useful for plant breeding and biological control. Accordingly his research contributes to the reduction in the use of pesticides in agriculture and horticulture.
The ecological entomologist is exemplary in ensuring that his research benefits society. Besides involving companies in his work he also makes numerous contributions to popular scientific books and magazines. In 2006, Dicke and his team managed to interest more than 20,000 visitors for scientific research into insects with their winning entry for the Academische Jaarprijs ‘Wageningen, City of Insects’.
In a nutshell Marcel Dicke is an innovative, original researcher with an exceptional talent for translating his research into practical applications and for the benefit of society. Moreover he is an outstanding lecturer who is highly praised by his many students and PhD researchers. The jury expects that with his NWO/Spinoza Prize he will make groundbreaking discoveries over the next few years and, with his unprecedented flair, make these accessible for both users and the interested public.
This jury report served as the basis for the speech given by Prof. Didi Braat upon the announcement of the NWO Spinoza Prizes 2007 on 4 June 2007.
Jury report for Prof. L.P. (Leo) Kouwenhoven:
Professor of Quantum Transport at Delft University of Technology
Professor Kouwenhoven receives the NWO Spinoza Prize 2007 for his breakthroughs in the area of quantum transport in semiconducting materials. His groundbreaking work on so-called spin qubits is of vital importance for the use of quantum information, for example, in a fundamentally new type of computer.
Leo Kouwenhoven (10 December 1963) studied technical physics at Delft University of Technology and gained his doctorate with distinction there in 1992. From 1993 to 1998 he was a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow at this university; he spent part of this period at Berkeley. In 1999 he was offered a professorship by Harvard. He turned this down to become a professor at Delft. Since 2001 he has been a member of the physics faculty at Harvard. In 2002 he received a Vici subsidy from NWO and in 2004 he received nine million euros from the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) for a 10-year research programme with Leiden University into quantum information. Since 2006 he has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Leo Kouwenhoven is a world leader in the area of electronic properties of nanostructures. His exceptional scientific talent was already apparent in his student years. As a student he was involved in the discovery that electrical conduction in point contacts is quantised. This means that the degree of conductance can only be in whole multiples of fundamental units. His doctoral thesis contained no less than 6 top publications. Kouwenhovens impact on the research field of mesoscopic phenomena was already considerable before he obtained his doctorate.
The physicist from Delft is responsible for a number of major breakthroughs in his field. As a driving force in his discipline he has made his mark in the research of quantum dots. These are minuscule structures in semiconducting material that exhibit special quantum properties due to their small dimensions. Together with his Japanese colleague Tarucha, he discovered that circular quantum dots had an electronic structure similar to that of electron shells in atoms. Their 'periodic system of two-dimensional elements' gained considerable fame and partly as a result of this the structures gained the name 'artificial atoms'.
At present Kouwenhoven is using the spin of electrons in quantum dots as qubits: the calculating unit of a quantum computer. His group was the first to read the spin state of a single electron. In 2006 they managed to manipulate this property. This is a major step on the way to a quantum computer, which calculates with so-called superpositions of spin states.
Kouwenhoven is a very productive scientist. During his relatively short career to date he has published more than 180 articles, of which 17 in Science and Nature. Seven of his articles have reached the front cover of a journal. During its first three years the large-scale FOM programme with Leiden University has already led to more than 20 publications in Nature, Science and Physical Review Letters.
Kouwenhoven’s work is of major significance from a practical as well as a scientific viewpoint. He works very closely with industry. More than one-quarter of his articles have been co-authored with industrial partners. He is good at inspiring people and knows how to attract new talent. The Spinoza committee therefore has the fullest confidence that the NWO/Spinoza Prize has rightfully been given to Kouwenhoven and will form the basis for new breakthroughs within nanophysics.
This jury report served as the basis for the speech given by Prof. Maarten Koornneef at the announcement of the NWO/Spinoza Prizes 2007 on 4 June 2007.
Jury report for Prof. J.W.M. (Wil) Roebroeks:
Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Leiden University
Professor Roebroeks receives the NWO Spinoza Prize 2007 for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society.
Wil Roebroeks (5 May 1955, Sint-Geertruid) graduated with distinction in social and economic history at the University of Nijmegen in 1979. After a postgraduate course in archaeology in Leiden, he gained his doctorate there with distinction in 1989 for his NWO-sponsored study into the Palaeolithic period in the Netherlands. His popular scientific book 'Oermensen in Nederland' [Early humans in the Netherlands], in which he described his research won the KIJK / Wetenschapsweek prize in 1991. At the start of the 1990s he played a leading role in a large joint European project about the earliest occupation of Europe. In 1994 he received a pioneer subsidy from NWO for research into human life in the Ice Age. Two years later he became a professor at Leiden University, where from 2000 to 2005 he was also scientific director of the research school ARCHON. He has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2001.
Wil Roebroeks investigates the archaeology of early hominins. From the perspective of various scientific disciplines he tries to answer questions about the origin of humans and the development of human societies. He bases his ideas on physical remnants, artefacts and traces of activity. His combination of his own extensive fieldwork and unique analyses have yielded him a pivotal position within archaeology.
Wil Roebroeks is the most prominent Dutch archaeologist at both a national and international level. He is a highly independent and unorthodox researcher. For example, recently he drew worldwide attention with a publication in Nature, together with Robin Dennell of the University of Sheffield, about the cradle of humanity. According to the prevailing view early hominins (Homo erectus) spread from Africa to Asia about two million years ago. Roebroeks and Dennell demonstrated that this hypothesis needs to be revised: there was far more two-way traffic between the two continents and it might also be the case that Homo erectus evolved in Asia and then colonised Africa.
This controversial publication is typical of Roebroeks' approach. He thinks in an original manner about the analysis and integration of evidence from different sources. In his analyses he gives priority to his own interpretations and observations and not to prevailing views. Key to his approach is a critical analysis of the source material.
Roebroeks is an innovative, original archaeologist who embraces the debate in his field. For example, in the past he has adopted controversial standpoints about the migrations of people in the Palaeolithic period (the period up until about 10,000 years ago), about the first colonisation of Europe, and about the behaviour of Neanderthals (who he believes were far more intelligent than is often assumed). At present he is investigating the communication and cognition of Neanderthals in an NWO project.
Despite his passion for scientific debates, Roebroeks is a team player. He knows how to bring together people of different ages and backgrounds in research and joint publications. Thanks to these characteristics he is a magnetic attraction for young talent. The Spinoza committee hopes that with his Spinoza Prize, Roebroeks will not only make controversial discoveries but in doing so will also enthuse new scientific talent for his discipline.
This jury report served as the basis for the speech given by Dr Hans van Eekelen upon the announcement of the NWO/Spinoza Prizes 2007 on 4 June 2007.