Portfolio

Roger Y. Tsien has been awarded the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2002 for his extraordinary and unique contribution to the development of a series of methods and techniques for measuring and visualising processes within and between cells.
Roger Tsien can attribute his greatest claim to fame in the scientific world to Aequorea victoria, a jellyfish which glows brightly in the dark. It does this this with the help of the ‘green fluorescent protein’ (GFP) molecule, which Tsien has been a leader in improving and exploiting. His laboratory has even managed to create mutants with other colours. Introducing GFP or its variants into a cell makes it possible to follow all kinds of biochemical processes within living cells ‘in real time’: they are literally made visible. Tsien’s molecules can be used to track the transmission of signals between cells, monitor intracellular acidity and follow the movement of sodium and calcium within cells. Measurements in cell organelles are now also possible using GFP. Tsien’s methods are widely used by researchers for other purposes, including searching for the factors involved in the creation of malignant cells. Tsien himself is responsible inter alia for laying bare a molecular mechanism involved in the synaptic adaptive capacity of the brain.

Further reading
The Green Fluorescent Protein. Annual Review of Biochemistry 67 (1998) 507-544. 
Griffin, B.A., Adams S.R. and Tsien R.Y., Specific Covalent labeling of Recombinant Protein Molecules Inside Live Cells. Science 281 (1998), 269. 
Baird G.S., Zacharias D.A. and Tsien R.Y., Biochemistry, mutagenesis, and oligomerization of dsRed, a red fluorescent protein from coral. Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci. 97 (2000) 11984-11989. 
Zacharias D.A., Baird G.S. and Tsien R.Y., Recent advances in technology for measuring and manipulating cell signals. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 10 (2000) 416-421. 
Honda A., Adams S.R., Sawyer C.L., Lev-Ram V., Dostmann W.R.G. and Tsien R.Y., Spatiotemporal dynamics of guanosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate revealed by a genetically encoded, fluorescent indicator. Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98 (2001) 2437.

Biography
Roger Y. Tsien was born in New York in 1952. He studied chemistry and physics at Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude in 1972, following which he joined the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University in the UK with the aid of a Marshall scholarship. After obtaining his Ph.D. there in 1977, Tsien remained as a researcher in Cambridge until 1981. He then returned to America to take up a post at Berkeley, where he ultimately became a professor in the Physiology & Anatomy faculty. Since 1989 he has been attached to the University of California in San Diego, as Professor of Pharmacology and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and is also an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Tsien has been receiving prizes for his work since as far back as 1968, including the W. Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University (1991) and the Pearse Prize from the Royal Microscopical Society (2000). In 2008 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie. Since 1998 he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Tsien died 24 August 2016.

Aernout Mik was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2002 for his consistent oeuvre of video installations, in which he uses the medium of video in combination with other artistic resources. His working method has had a major influence on the present generation of “video artists” in the Netherlands.
Visual artist Aernout Mik was awarded the prize for his consistent oeuvre of video installations, in which he uses the medium of video in combination with other artistic resources. His working method has had a major influence on the present generation of ‘video artists’ in the Netherlands’.
In the video films created by Mik the events that take place between the characters stand on their own, but evoke conflicting emotions of a disquieting or humorous nature. This effect is reinforced by the fact that Mik creates several layers of reality, in which he combines staged action – both live and on video – with sculptural forms embedded in an architectural structure, thus creating a physical link between the viewer and the work. A good example of this was the solo presentation which Mik staged in gallery Fons Welters in Amsterdam in 1999. In an architectural structure consisting of steadily narrowing corridors and low doorways, video films were shown of collapsing buildings and injured people, next to a life-size ‘dummy’ of an anthropoid.

Biography
Aernout Mik was born in Groningen in 1962. He studied at the Academie Minerva in Groningen from 1983 to 1988, and participated in the Ateliers ’63 alternative art school in Haarlem. The artist has since built up an impressive list of exhibitions both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has taken part in a number of important group exhibitions, including in the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam (Wild Walls, 1995), the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz (Mise en Scène, 1998) and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto (Still/ Moving, 2000), and was represented at the Biennales in Sao Paolo (1991), Venice (1997) and Melbourne (1999). More recently, he has staged large presentations at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (Reversal Rooms, 2002), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London (3Crowds, 2000), and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (Primal gestures, minor roles, 2000), where he presented (virtually) his entire oeuvre in a ‘total installation’. In 1997 Mik received the Sandberg Prize for his videos Lick and Fluff. His work is included in the collections of important Dutch museums, including the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

Works of art

Dennis J. Selkoe was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 2002 for his invaluable contribution to the development of the molecular study of diseases of the brain, in particular Alzheimer’s disease.
When the brains of Alzheimer’s patients are examined, they are found to contain ‘plaques’ consisting largely of amyloid beta proteins. For Dennis Selkoe, this formed the starting point for his research in the late 1970s. By applying methods drawn from biochemistry and molecular biology, he has slowly but surely – and with great patience – managed to unravel the molecular components of the puzzle which is the complex disorder known as Alzheimer’s disease. What happens in the brain cells? Which substances play a role? What comes first, what is a consequence of what? Progress in finding answers to these questions has now reached the stage where the first patients are taking part in a trial with drugs intended to delay or prevent the disease. The social importance of this development is difficult to overestimate.
Selkoe’s work has, however, also led to unexpected insights into the functioning of membrane proteins, which have much wider implications for biology. Our better understanding of the ageing processes in the brain and the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease is now yielding results.

Further reading
Haass C., Schlossmacher M.G., Hung A.Y., Vigo-Pelfrey C., Mellon A., Ostaszewski B.L., Lieberburg I., Koo E.H., Schenk D., Teplow D.B., Selkoe D.J., Amyloid beta-peptide is produced by cultured cells during normal metabolism. Nature 359 (1992) 322-325.
Yamazaki T., Selkoe D.J., Koo E.H., Trafficking of cell surface ß-amyloid precursor protein: Retrograde and transcytotic transport in cultured neurons. J. Cell Biol. 129 (1995) 431-442. Xia W., Zhang J., Perez R, Koo E.H., Selkoe D.J., Interaction between amyloid precursor protein and presenilins in mammalian cells: Implications for the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Pro.Natl. Acad.Sci.USA 94 (1997) 8208-8213.
Wolfe M.S., Xia W., Ostaszewski B.L., Diehl T.S., Selkoe D.J., Two transmembrane aspartates in presenilin-1 required for presenilin endoproteolysis and y-secretase activity. Nature 398 (1999) 513-517.
Bertram L., Blacker D., Mullin K., Keeney D., Jones J., Basu S., Yhu S., McInnis M.G., Go R.C., Vekrellis K., Selkoe D.J., Saunders A.J., Tanzi R.E., Evidence for genetic linkage of Alzheimer’s disease to chromosome 10q. Science 290 (2000) 2302-2303.

Biography
Dennis Selkoe was born in New York in 1943. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree at Colombia University and his Medical Master’s Degree at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1969. From 1975 he was attached to Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he became Professor of Neurology in 1990. In 2000 Selkoe was made ‘Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases’, also at Harvard Medical School. He currently works as a neurologist in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Selkoe enjoys an international reputation among his professional colleagues as the best researcher in the field of molecular pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. He is a member of several editorial committees of scientific journals dealing with neurological topics, such as the Annual Review of Neuroscience and Neuron. His scientific articles in Nature, Annual Review of Cell Biology, Annual Review of Neuroscience, Cell and Neuron are highly influential. It was therefore no surprise when Selkoe appeared at number 14 in the list of the ‘Best Brains of the Brain Decade’, which was drawn up by Science Watch on the basis of the 200 most-cited articles on neuroscience in the ten years between 1989 and 1998. Selkoe has received a great many distinctions, including an honorary degree from Harvard University, the ‘Mathilde Solowey Award in the Neurosciences’ from the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (NIH), the Boerhaave medal from the University of Leiden, and the ‘Pioneer Award’ from the Alzheimer’s Association in the United States.

Heinz Schilling was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2002 for his outstanding interdisciplinary research into the history of early modern Europe, in which he reveals the interrelationship between confessionalisation and national identity formation.
The relationship between Church and State; the role of migrants; education; the imposition of norms and values; comparison of developments across Europe: most of the research themes studied by Heinz Schilling could have come straight from the leader columns of today’s newspapers. The difference is that in Schilling’s case it is the relationship between all these themes in the past which is important, and thus the historical origins of key elements of the world in which we now live. Schilling is concerned above all with European history in the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and his work has brought us a more coherent picture of this period. For many years historians studying early modern Europe (1550-1650), either studied the processes of state formation or religious developments. Schilling, by contrast, studies religious, social and political factors in relation to each other. He has pointed out that both the newly formed Protestant and the Catholic states began working closely with what was generally the only official Church within their region. Schilling makes clear that there is much greater unity in European history than was previously assumed, and he raises that history above the boundaries between countries and religions.

Further reading
Niederländische Exulanten im 16. Jahrhundert. Ihre Stellung im Sozialgefüge und im religiösen Leben deutscher und englischer Städte, Gütersloh 1972.
Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe, Gütersloh (Gütersloher Verlagshaus) 1981.
Religion, Political Culture, and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Essays in German and Dutch History, Leiden 1992.
Confessional Europe: Bureaucrats, La Bonne Police, Civilizations, in: Handbook of European History 1400-1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, hg. von Th. A. Brady, H.A. Oberman und J.D. Tracy, Bd. II, Leiden 1995, S. 641-681.
Die neue Zeit. Vom Christenheitseuropa zum Europa der Staaten. 1250 bis 1750, Berlin (Siedler) 1999, Siedler Geschichte Europas, Bd. 3.

Biography
Professor Heinz Schilling was born in 1942 in Bergneustadt, Germany. In 1963 he embarked on a study of history, German studies, philosophy and sociology at the universities of Cologne and Freiburg. His dissertation (1971) deals with Dutch emigrants in the 16th century. The topic of his Habilitation (a postdoctoral dissertation which is a requirement for those wishing to become a professor at a university in Germany) was the relationship between religious conflicts and state formation. From 1980 he was attached successively to the universities of Osnabrück and Giessen, and since 1992 Heinz Schilling has been a professor in the Department of History at Humboldt University in Berlin. He has also been a guest lecturer at the universities of Wisconsin, Madison and Berkeley. Not only is Schilling himself an extremely productive researcher, but his work has also provided a baseline for comparative research by others.
Professor Schilling also actively seeks to make his subject accessible to a wider public, and makes regular contributions to radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and exhibitions. He is also a member of various societies and editor of several journals and series.

Lonnie G. Thompson was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 2002 for his pioneering work in research into ice cores in the polar regions and the tropics.
Lonnie Thompson is convinced that ice forms the best archive of the earth’s climate. And that frozen history is located not only at the North and South Poles, but also in the tropics – for example at the peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where the ice caps are in fact melting rapidly. Thompson was one of the first to realise that global warming poses a threat to a number of the world’s ice archives. Partly because of this, gathering data is high on his list of priorities. He has often moved heaven and earth to gain permission to work with his drilling team in a particular location. Under the most extreme conditions, at altitudes where even mountaineers can barely survive, he has succeeded in collecting ice cores. His ice samples come from all over the world: from Bolivia, Peru, China and a host of other locations. The freezers in his laboratory, where Thompson analyses the ice, are now full to overflowing. The information on the climate and the atmosphere which is stored in the ice can go back 700,000 years. The ice contains a clear record of phenomena such as El Niño and the Asian Monsoon, for example; in a somewhat similar way to tree rings, except that the ice history goes much further back in time and contains much more information. Thompson’s research provides an insight into natural climate change, ultimately making it possible to assess the effects of human beings on the earth’s climate, something which has been a source of heated debate among researchers for many years.

Further reading
Thompson, L.G. and Mosley-Thompson E., Microparticle concentration variations linked with climatic change: evidence from polar ice cores. Science212 (1981) 812-815.
Thompson, L.G., Davis M., Mosley-Thompson E., Liu K., Pre-Incan agricultural activity recorded in dust layers in two tropical ice cores. Nature 336 (1988) 763-765.
Thompson, L.G., Yao T., Davis M.E., Henderson K.A., Mosley-Thompson E., Lin P.N., Beer J., Synal H.A., Cole-Dai J., Bolzan J.F., Tropical Climate Instability: The Last Glacial Cycle from a Qinghai-Tibetan Ice Core. Science 276 (1997) 1821-1827.
Thompson, L.G., Davis M.E., Mosley-Thompson E., Sowers T.A., Henderson K.A., Zagorodnov V.S., Lin P.N., Mikhalenko V.N., Campen R.K., Bolzan J.F., Francou B., Cole-Dai J., A 25,000 Year Tropical Climate History from Bolivian Ice Cores. Science 282 (1998) 1858-1864.
Thompson, L.G., Yao T., Thompson E.M., Davis M.E., Henderson K.A., Lin P.N., A high-resolution millennial record of the South Asian monsoon from Himalayan ice cores. Science 289 (2000) 1916-1919.

Biography
Lonnie Thompson was born in 1948 in Huntington, West Virginia and graduated in geology in 1973 from Ohio State University, to which he has remained attached since then. He obtained his doctorate there in 1976 (based on research into micro-particles in ice and the climate), and in 1994 he became a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences. Thompson is also closely involved in the research of the Byrd Polar Research Center at his university. He is very productive, and the results of his research regularly appear in the journals Nature and Science. Thompson also sits on a number of advisory bodies in the field of the climate; he is a member of the editorial team of several journals, a member of a number of international partnerships, and leads one or more research expeditions every year. In 2001 Time Magazine and CNN added his name to the list of ‘America’s Best in Science and Medicine’. Thompson also works hard to ensure that the findings of his research are brought to the attention of politicians and the public at large.

James E. Rothman was awarded the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2000 for clarifying the mechanism of intracellular membrane fusion.
He made the historic discovery that the cell contains very small membrane-enveloped vesicles that carry a large variety of proteins between different compartments in the cytoplasm. This delivery process, which involves vesicle flow and membrane fusion, is vital for the growth and division of every cell. How this process comes about was a great mystery, and one of the great unsolved questions of biochemistry and cell biology. James Rothman discovered the molecular principles of intracellular membrane fusion and demonstrated that the specificity of fusion was dictated by the pairing of SNARE proteins between membranes. This historic discovery provided a single unified principle for understanding important physiological processes, including the release of insulin into the blood, communication between nerve cells in the brain and the entry of viruses like HIV (the AIDS virus) to infect cells. Defects in the control of these pathways are important in diabetes and most likely also in certain cancers. Currently a major effort is under way to develop a new generation of drugs to control AIDS by blocking the membrane fusion process.

Further reading
Thomas H. Söllner, Sidney W. Whiteheart, Michael Brunner, Hedlye Erdjument-Bromage, Scott Geromanos, Paul Tempst & James E. Rothman: ‘SNAP receptors implicated in vesicle targeting and fusion’, Nature 362, 318 (1993);
Walter Nickel, Thomas Weber, James A. McNew, Francesco Parlati, Thomas H. Söllner & James E. Rothman: ‘Content mixing and membrane integrity during membrane fusion driven by pairing of isolated v-SNAREs and t-SNAREs’, PNAS, 96, (22), 12571 (1999);
B. Brugger, W. Nickel, T. Weber, F. Parlati, J.A. McNew, J.E. Rothman, T. H. Söllner: ‘Putative fusogenic activity of NSE is restricted to a lipid mixture whose coalescence is also triggered by other factors’, EMBO Journal, 19 (6), 1272 (2000).

Biography
James Rothman was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA, in 1950 and is an American citizen. He has a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry (Harvard Medical School), and has worked at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York since 1991. In that same year he was appointed Chairman of the Programme in Cellular Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he holds the Paul A. Marks Chair. Dr Rothman has also been vice-chairman of the Sloan Kettering Institute since 1994. Amongst his other honours, Dr Rothman has received the Gairdner Foundation International Award (1996), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (1996) and the Lounsbery Award of the National Academy of Sciences (1997). In 2013 he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof).

Article
— Interview with James Rothman in Akademie Nieuws (Dutch)

Video

Guido Geelen was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2000 for the unorthodox and innovative way in which he uses the traditional material of clay.
Geelen, who prefers to be called a creator of sculptures, creates images in which ceramics form an important element. These images are often constructed from ceramic reproductions of a wide variety of everyday objects. Guido Geelen has, for example, created a ceramic sculpture composed of dogs, car tyres, vacuum cleaners, televisions and computers, all made of red clay compacted together. By organising these items in a particular way and then stacking them on top of one another, Guido Geelen has created a ceramic wall which fascinates viewers despite – or perhaps because of – its seemingly morbid character. The Netherlands has a rich tradition in ceramic art, ranging from the centuries-old Delftware industry to the innovative Dutch pottery from around 1900 (when independent potters first began to flourish) and right up to the revolutionary ceramic work being produced in our own day. This partially motivated the award of the prize to Guido Geelen for his entire oeuvre.

Biography
Guido Geelen was born in Thorn, the Netherlands, in 1961. He attended the Institute for Draughtsmanship, Craftsmanship and Textiles (TEHATEX) in Tilburg and went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts for two years. Guido Geelen was awarded the incentive prize for applied art by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts in 1988, the Charlotte Köhler Prize for Sculpture in 1989, and the incentive prize for fine art by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts in 1990. Guido Geelen’s work can be viewed at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, the PTT Art and Design Collection in The Hague, the Kruithuis Museum for Contemporary Art in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Noord Brabant Museum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam and the De Pont Museum in Tilburg.

Eric R. Kandel was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 2000 for his pioneering research on the molecular mechanisms underlying learning processes and memory.
Using the marine snail Aplysia californica as a model, Eric Kandel and colleagues have managed to bridge the enormous gap between the physiology of behaviour and classical psychology. The simple structure of the nervous system in this primitive invertebrate is especially well suited to investigating learning and memory formation at the cellular and molecular level. In an impressive series of neurophysiological experiments, now used as standard examples in most neuroscientific textbooks, the group led by Eric Kandel has explained the fundamental neuronal mechanisms underlying learning processes at the cellular level. This work and recent studies by Kandel and colleagues involving genetically modified mice have led to the discovery of neuronal mechanisms responsible for non-associative and associative learning processes (for example classical conditioning) and for the development and functioning of short- and long-term memory in lower and higher animal species. His discoveries open up entirely new ways of understanding human memory and its disorders.

Further reading
Goelet, P., Castellucci, V., Schacher, S. en Kandel, E.R. (1986) The long and short of long-term memory. Nature 322, 419-422;
Bartsch, D., Ghirardi, M., Skehel, P.A., Karl, K.A., Herder, S.P., Chen M., Bailey, C.H. en Kandel, E.R. (1995) Aplysia CREB2 represses long-term facilitation: Relief of repression converts transient facilitation into long-term functional and structural change. Cell 83, 979- 992;
Mayford, M., Bach, M.E., Huang, Y.-Y., Wang, L., Hawkins, R.D. en Kandel, E.R. (1996) Control of memory formation through regulated expression of a CaMKII transgene. Science 274,1678-1683;
Tsien, J.Z., Chen, D.F., Gerber, D., Tom, C., Mercer, E.H., Anderson, D.J., Mayford, M., Kandel, E.R. en Tonegawa, S. (1996) Subregion- and cell type-restricted gene knockout in mouse brain. Cell 87, 1317-1326.

Biography
Eric Richard Kandel was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1929 and received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine in 1956. He is a University Professor of Physiology and Psychiatry at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is also a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Prof. Kandel has received an impressive list of honorary degrees, awards and other marks of distinction in the course of his long career, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000 (together with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard).

Jan de Vries was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2000 for his pioneering research into the development of the European economy between 1500 and 1800.
He conducted pioneering research into the early modern history of the European economy, specifically in the Dutch Republic (the Northern Netherlands). Professor De Vries has used economic theories and concepts to organise a huge quantity of wide-ranging historical data in a most original and transparent manner, allowing him to reveal astonishing viewpoints and patterns. He has succeeded in tracing the origins of the modern market economy and has shown the transition from the early modern economy to industrial society. He has gone further than any other historian thus far in analysing the role that urbanisation played during this period. Professor De Vries’s studies have focused mainly on the way in which different economic parties (households, farmers, artists, municipal authorities or groups of labourers) responded to market trade and, in turn, contributed to its development and expansion. He has succeeded in showing the links between macro-economic developments and history at local level, so that his work often has a very practical grounding. For example, he has analysed the role of the barge in the modernisation of Holland, and showed how the flourishing art market depended on economic variables. His work not only makes a highly significant contribution to the study of economic and demographic history, but also provides signposts for art historical research.

Further reading
The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500-1700. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1974;
The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1976;
Barges and Capitalism: Passenger Transportation in the Dutch Economy, 1632-1839. Wageningen: AAG-Bijdragen, 1978; 2e uitg. Utrecht: Hes Publishers, 1981;
European Urbanization, 1500-1800. Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1984;
Jan de Vries en Ad van der Woude, Nederland 1500-1815: De eerste ronde van moderne economische groei. Amsterdam, Balans, 1995;
David Freedberg en Jan de Vries (ed.), Art in History, History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-century Dutch Culture. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1991.

Biography
Jan de Vries was born in the Netherlands in 1943. He moved to the United States as a boy and is an American citizen. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1970 (Yale University). Since 1977 he has been Professor of History and, since 1982, Professor of History and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Professor de Vries and Ad van der Woude co-authored the standard work The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy from 1500 to 1815, which was awarded the Gyorgy Ranki Prize for ‘the best book on the economic history of Europe’. Professor De Vries was made a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989. He is also a member of the British Academy, the Society for Dutch Literature (Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde), and various international scholarly organisations. From 1991 to 1993 he held the post of president of the Economic History Association, and he is an editor of the Journal of Economic History.

Poul Harremoës was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 2000 for his contributions to the theory of biofilm kinetics in relation to biological waste water treatment and for his successful organisation of the international scientific community in water pollution research and control.
Poul Harremoës belongs to the pioneers who tried to track down pollution with radioactive tracers. As head of the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, he has contributed to making this department one of the biggest and broadest university departments world-wide and an acknowledged world leader in the field. Dominant fields of research have been oxygen depletion in rivers, nitrification-denitrification and biofilm kinetics applied to waste water treatment. Professor Harremoës organises scientific co-operation in water pollution research and control on an international scale in the International Association for Water Pollution Research and Control, IAWPRC (now International Water Association, IWA).

About the laureate
Poul Harremoës was born in Denmark in 1934. He graduated from the Technical University of Denmark in 1957 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959. He became a full professor at the Technical University of Denmark in 1972 and the head of the Department of Environmental Engineering. Professor Harremoës has lectured all over the world. He received the Stockholm Water Prize on behalf of the Department in 1992. Professor Harremoës has initiated and organised numerous international conferences and has been a member of the scientific committees for many such conferences. He joined the Scientific Committee of the European Environmental Agency in 1994.
Poul Harremoës died 26 November 2003.