Portfolio

Michael J. Berridge has been awarded the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1994 for his contribution to the study of cellular signal mechanisms and the role of inositol trisphosphate in them.

Biography
Michael John Berridge was born in Gatooma, Rhodesia, in 1938 and obtained the B.Sc. degree from the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury. In 1965 he received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge, and then spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and at Case Western Reserve University in the USA. In 1969 he returned to Cambridge where he was appointed to a scientific position in the Invertebrate Chemistry and Physiology Unit of the Department of Zoology, now Laboratory of Molecular Signalling. In 1994 Berridge was made honorary professor. He is working as an Emeritus Babraham Fellow at the Babraham Institute.
Professor Berridge is a fellow of the Royal Society and has won many prizes and awards for his scientific work. These include the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the CIBA-GEIGY/DREW Award in Biomedical Research. He has given numerous award lectures, such as the 16th FEBS Ferdinand Springer Lecture and the Inaugural Albert L. Lehninger Lecture. He sits on the editorial boards of many prestigious scientific journals.
Professor Berridge passed away in February 2020.

Painter and teacher Matthijs Röling received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 1994 for his entire painted oeuvre.

About the laureate
Matthijs Röling was born in the village of Oostkapelle in the Dutch province of Zealand in 1943. In 1960 he began his training at the Koninklijke Academie in The Hague. In 1963 he transferred to the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, from which he was expelled a year later. Since 1973 Matthijs Röling has taught at the Academie Minerva in Groningen.
In 1962 Röling began exhibiting his work regularly in museums and galleries throughout the Netherlands. Galleries which have shown his work include M.L. de Boer and Galerie Mokum in Amsterdam as well as Galerie Wiek XX in Groningen.
In 1983 Matthijs Röling began working on large-scale decorative projects, such as monumental canvases and wall and ceiling paintings. His colleague Wout Muller has collaborated with him on a number of these. These projects have come to occupy an increasingly important place within Röling’s highly diverse oeuvre. His manner has been compared to that of the Old Masters, and the illusionistic scenes he paints on walls and ceilings are reminiscent of frescoes. Notwithstanding these parallels with the past, Röling’s work is distinguished by his independence, integrity and craftsmanship.

Luc Montagnier has been awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 1994 for his greatest contribution to medical virology to date: the discovery in 1983 of the virus that causes AIDS.
His exceptional willingness to share his data with other research learns contributed significantly to our knowledge of the AIDS virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV). This in turn facilitated the rapid development of a diagnostic test to determine infection with the AIDS virus. This test was crucial for charting the spread of the epidemic and for the development of preventive strategies.
Montagnier’s team also isolated a closely related virus, HIV-2, which is primarily responsible for the West African epidemic. This discovery played a key role in investigations of the origins and evolution of immunodeficiency viruses.
Professor Montagnier has been of great service to humanity by making the results of his pivotal research immediately available to the scientific community. His openness has spared many people the fate of infection with the HIV virus through blood or blood products or as a result of unprotected sex. His sense of social responsibility has made him a leading figure in the struggle against AIDS in France and elsewhere.

Biography
Virologist Luc Montagnier was born in Chabris, France, in 1933. Montagnier received his MD from the University of Paris in 1960. In 1973 he became head of the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute and was appointed Professor of Virology in 1985. Since 1974 he has been Director of Research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France.
In 1963 Montagnier unravelled the replication mechanism of an RNA virus, the encephalomyocarditis virus. Shortly thereafter he published a test that made it possible quantitatively to determine polyoma virus induced transformation in mammalian cell cultures. Both of these achievements have had a significant impact on subsequent developments in fundamental virology.
Professor Montagnier has previously received the following prizes: Rosen (1971), Gallien (1985), Lasker (1986), Gairdner (1987), Santé (1987), Japan (1988) and King Faisal (1993). He is Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (1984), Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1986), Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (1990) and Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur (1993). In 2008 he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen.
Professor Montagnier passed away in February 2022.

Peter R.L. Brown was awarded the Amsterdam Prize for Historical Science 1994 for his research on the transition from paganism to Christianity in late Antiquity.
Peter R. L. Brown received the prize in recognition of the fact that his work is not afraid to challenge conventional historical wisdom. In a series of brilliant, highly readable studies, Peter Brown has subtly described the gradual transition from paganism to Christianity in late Antiquity. Brown has shown an uncanny knack for bringing to light aspects of this process which have been largely ignored. As an historian Brown oversteps the traditional chronological boundaries between the late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages in his search for what distinguished and what united pagans and Christians, and for the answers to the questions as to how and why the pagan world of ancient Rome was gradually transformed into the Christian. Professor Brown has a long list of publications to his credit, many of which have been translated into other languages. His masterful biography of the great Latin doctor of the Church St Augustine, which appeared in 1967, was followed three years later by his brilliant World of Late Antiquity. From Marcus Aurelius to Mohammed. Brown’s Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. Towards a Christian Empire (1992) is a compelling account of how the Church adopted the pagan ideal of co-operation between the urban elite and the central imperial government under the guise of Christianity.
Professor Brown’s research engages and informs the educated layman as effectively as it does the professional scholar. His studies of a subject of no less weight than the Christian conversion of Europe are as intellectually profound as they are pleasurable to read.

Biography
Peter R.L. Brown was born in Dublin in 1935. He received his university training at New College, Oxford (MA) and remained at Oxford until 1975, as Fellow of All Souls (1956-1975), as Lecturer in Late Roman and Early Byzantine History (1970-1973) and as Reader with the same teaching responsibilities (1973-1975). From 1975 until 1976 he was Professor of History and Classics at Royal Holloway College, University of London. In 1978 he left England to become Professor of History and Classics at Berkeley (1975-1986). In 1986 he moved to Princeton University and in 1991 Brown was appointed foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Colin Bibby was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 1994 for BirdLife International, in recognition of the pioneering international research being conducted by BirdLife International and also to help ensure its continuation.

BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a worldwide co-operative of organisations in the field of bird protection. They seek to protect birds and their natural habitats as one means of safeguarding the environment. Their endeavours are in the interest of all human and animal life on earth.
Birds are outstanding indicators of the condition of the environment, since they can be observed more easily and studied more closely than almost any other group of organisms. The scientific team of BirdLife International takes advantage of this fact by implementing and constantly evaluating its programme for the protection of biodiversity. The scientists at BirdLife are pioneers in documenting the worldwide threat to biodiversity.
The publication Putting Biodiversity on the Map (1992) convinced the jury to award the prize to BirdLife International. The study is an attempt to document patterns in the spread of biodiversity over the earth. It showed that one fourth of all bird species occur in a very small part of the world.

About the laureate
Until 2001 Dr Bibby (1948) headed a small group of researchers at BirdLife International in Cambridge, England. At the same time he directed BirdLife International’s research programmes in some seventy countries. He left BirdLife in 2001 and devoted his professional time to helping other conservation organisations and international companies to develop their strategic thinking for biodiversity conservation. He passed away on 7 August 2004.

Piet Borst received the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1992 in recognition of his extraordinary record of scientific achievement in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology.
What distinguishes Borst is his catholicity: he has made significant contributions to scientific research in several different fields. In the early stages of his career, Borst became interested in the metabolism of mitochondria. The malate-aspartate cycle, or ‘Borst cycle’, owes its name to the laureate, who discovered it is the principal route for the oxidation of extra-mitochondrial NADH in animal tissue. His studies on the biogenesis of mitochondria led to the discovery and characterisation of circular mitochondrial DNA in animal cells and yeast, and to important insights into the way this DNA is replicated. He was instrumental in mapping the genes in and the transcription of yeast mitochondrial DNA, besides its physical and genetic characteristics. One of the most widely used methods in molecular biology agarose gel electrophoresis of DNA – grew out of this research. More recently Professor Borst has devoted himself to the study of trypanosomes. These unicellular parasites cause sleeping sickness, which is often fatal. His work on the antigenic variation of trypanosomes led to several important findings, including discontinuous RNA synthesis and trans-splicing (the first example of pre-RNA splicing in protozoa), and the growth and contraction of trypanosome telomeres. He also discovered unique specialised organelles, the glycosomes. At the Netherlands Cancer Institute Borst began working on genes involved in the multidrug resistance of cancer cells and on the structure of amplified DNA. The laureate is not only an outstanding scientist, but also an excellent administrator, a gifted speaker, and both an inspired and inspiring teacher.

Biography
Piet Borst was born in Amsterdam in 1934. He studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam, where he received a PhD in biochemistry in 1961 and the MD degree in 1963, before spending two years as a research fellow at New York University. In 1965 he was made associate and in 1969 full professor of physiological chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, where he subsequently held the chair of biochemistry and molecular biology since 1974. In 1983 he was appointed research director of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, while retaining a part-time university professorship of clinical biochemistry. Professor Borst is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academia Europaea, a foreign member of the Royal Society, London, a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, USA. He has received various honours and prizes for his scientific work. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, or EMBO; he sat on the EMBO’s council from 1978 to 1984 and chaired its Scientific Advisory Committee from 1987 to 1991. He served and serves on the Scientific Advisory Committees of several European research institutes and he has chaired the juries of the Jeantet Prize (Europe) and of the Sloan General Motors Prize (USA). Since 1983, professor Borst writes a column for the scientific supplement of the Dutch paper NRC-Handelsblad.

Sculptor and graphic artist Carel Visser received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 1992 in recognition of his work as a sculptor, a maker of drawings and especially, his graphic work.
He was one of our most wayward artists, whose work refuses to be classified in terms of a style or tendency. Whereas part of this earlier work, in particular, can be referred to as constructivist or geometrically abstract, the greater part of his oeuvre exhibits a structure that is not founded on an abstract concept but is sooner inspired – sometimes very literally – by nature and by visual reality.
The impressions are transformed, incorporated into a form that exists independently of and parallel to that reality. This characteristic applies to his entire oeuvre, despite the seeming oppositions between fairly abstract, constructed sculptures, drawings and graphic work from the fifties and sixties, and the much freer language of forms that Visser uses in later years. Carel Visser’s graphic oeuvre consists almost entirely of woodcuts, always printed on thin Japanese paper, a material that forms a total contrast to his heavy and sizeable sculptures. Nonetheless, he makes his work on paper according to the same principles as the rest of his work. From the beginning on, these display clearly structured arrangements of forms. Initially they were linkings, heapings, reflections and repetitions, all built from a small repertoire of geometric forms.
Later, around 1970, there came a series of austerely geometric woodcuts, which nearly display the systematics of minimal art. But Carel Visser is essentially far removed from that form of abstraction: his work is too rooted in an intense experience of his world for this, too connected to life and to a human scale.
During the course of the seventies, freer, non-geometric forms and arrangements begin to appear in the woodcuts. Also, colours other than the black or yellow of his earlier graphic work make their entrance. And finally, in the 1980s, a new and very productive period arrives. Now the woodcuts are sometimes very large: the forms and compositions – often with a figurative impact – become increasingly free and active, while the colour takes on a more and more pronounced presence. It seems as though this new development has yet to reach its end for some lime.
The graphic oeuvre of Carel Visser can be regarded as the light-footed essence of this work, the simplest and clearest expression of that which inspires him as an artist. Simplicity and clarity are not qualities that come easily. Nor are they qualities that gain much esteem in these times. But they are pre-eminently characteristic of Carel Visser’s graphic oeuvre.

Biography
Carel Visser was born in the Dutch town of Papendrecht in 1928. After studying architecture at the Technical University, Delft, between 1948 and 1949, he went on to the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 1949 until 1951. Though Visser has been known primarily as a sculptor since the early 1950s, he has also received national and international recognition for his graphic art. 
Carel Visser passed away in March 2015.

Salvador Moncada was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 1992 for his work in medicine and in particular on the role of nitric oxide. His work has deepened our understanding of cardiovascular disease.
In 1992, he was investigating a vasodilatory factor in the endothelium of blood vessels, the endothelium derived relaxing factor (EDRF), discovered over ten years ago. Moncada and his associates discovered that the factor is nitric oxide (NO), and that it is produced by the vascular endothelium in quantities sufficient to induce vasodilation. This bears directly on our understanding of cardiovascular diseases such as angina pectoris and infarcts.
The laureate has also done much to clarify the therapeutic effect of nitrates, utilised ever since 1867 in the treatment of angina pectoris. The most commonly used nitrate is Glyceryltrinitrate (nitroglycerin); dissolved in the mouth in tablet form, the drug relieves the pain in a matter of minutes by inducing acute dilation of the arteries and thus hypotension, which diminishes the load on the heart and the amount of oxygen needed by the myocard. The pain caused by anoxia of the myocard, resulting from the restricted flow of blood in the coronary arteries, disappears immediately. Though the drug may improve the flow of blood in these arteries, that is not its mode of action.
Dr. Moncada’s work also has great clinical importance for the understanding of the human immune system.

About the laureate
Dr Moncada is director of research of the Wellcome Research Laboratories in England. He was born in Honduras in 1944. He studied medicine at the University of El Salvador, where he received the MD degree in 1970. Thereafter he went to England to study pharmacology at the University of London’s Royal College of Surgeons and at the Wellcome Research Laboratories. He earned the doctorate in pharmacology in 1973, and the Doctor of Science degree from the University of London. Moncada has received many awards, including several honorary degrees.

Herman van der Wee received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Historical Science 1992 for his outstanding work in economic history. His interests extend from the Middle Ages to the present. 
Whether writing about the Low Countries, Europe or the world at large, he is capable of focusing on small but nonetheless significant details one moment, and then standing back and surveying global historical developments the next. His uncanny ability to analyse and synthesize complex sources using innovative methodologies has inspired countless other members of his profession.
In 1951 Van der Wee presented a thesis entitled Outline of a method for the history of prices and wages, and then turned his attention to the economic development of Antwerp and its European hinterland during the early modern period. Out of this research grew his monumental doctoral dissertation, which was published in 1963: The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy, fourteenth-sixteenth centuries. This pioneering study is distinguished by innovative approaches to historical inquiry, metrology, monetary history, statistics, and to the analysis of economic cycles and development. After completing his dissertation, Van der Wee continued his exploration of the institutional aspects of Western European monetary and financial history and quantitative social history. In the contest of an international project surrounding the history of banking in pre-industrial Europe, he studied the role of sixteenth-century Antwerp merchants in developing new financial techniques.
His interest in quantitative social history drew him into such matters as famine, employment, food, living standards and poverty. Van der Wee has not confined his research to the distant past. Not only has he published a study of the National Bank of Belgium, but also Prosperity and Upheaval: The World Economy. 1945-1980 (1983), which outlines global economic development since World War Two and also looks at current economic structures.

About the laureate
Herman van der Wee was born in 1928 in Lier, Belgium. He enrolled as a law student at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1945, where he received the doctor’s degree in 1950. His interest in the more speculative aspects of law led to a degree in philosophy in 1949. In 1951 and 1952 he earned further degrees in the political and social sciences as well as history. The academic year of 1951-1952 he spent in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the following year at the London School of Economics.
Alongside his research, Van der Wee has had a brilliant academic career in Belgium and abroad. At the Catholic University of Louvain he progressed from the rank of lecturer (1955) to associate professor (1966), to professor (1967) and finally to full professor (1969). In the course of the decades that followed he has worked at numerous universities around the world as either a visiting professor or research fellow.
He is a member of many national and international organisations, including the Royal Academy of Science, Arts and Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. In 1986 he was elected president of the International Economic History Association. He founded the Workshop on Quantitative Economic History at the University of Louvain in 1968, which attracts graduate students and young scholars from all over the world, and promulgates new statistical, sociological and economic methodologies.
Van der Wee has been honoured by the Eugene Baie Foundation (1966) and the Royal Academy of Belgium (1968), besides receiving two Fulbright-Hayes fellowships (1975 and 1981). He is a compelling teacher, who inspires his students with his distinctive commitment to learning and scholarly innovation.

Marko Branica has been awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 1992 in recognition of his pioneering research in the chemical analysis of various metal contaminants in the environment. He has had a decisive impact on environmental policy in the Mediterranean.
As a young scientist at the Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Professor Branica helped develop methods of tracking uranium and related elements in the environment. Building on his previous research, he went on to the chemical analysis of various metal contaminants, such as copper, lead, cadmium and zinc. Branica’s work led to a breakthrough in the field of environmental chemistry: for the first time, low concentrations of metals in small volumes of fresh and sea water could be determined, thus forming the basis for research on metals in the food chain. The laureate’s innovative methods have also made it possible to distinguish between the various inorganic and organic forms in which metals occur, such as free metals (which are absorbed by organisms) and complex metals (which are not).
Branica is known for bringing together young scientists from different countries. Since 1961 he has organised scientific meetings biennially, the results of which have been published in special editions of scientific journals. These meetings have influenced aquatic environmental chemistry significantly.

About the laureate
Marko Branica was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1931. He studied physical chemistry at the University of Zagreb, where he earned the doctorate in physical chemistry in 1963. Since 1954 he has been associated with the Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Zagreb, of which he was made scientific advisor in 1970. At the University of Zagreb he has held professorships in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and, since 1976, the College of Chemical Engineering.
Branica has devoted much of his time to international advisory and organisational activities. Among other things, he has chaired the Organising Committee of the International Symposia on Chemistry of the Mediterranean. In addition, he belonged to various scientific committees and to the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
He has also stimulated progress in the field of environmental management, especially in the Mediterranean. As a result of regulations drafted at the Barcelona Conference – in which all of the Mediterranean countries participated – metal contaminants in the Mediterranean have been monitored under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Program and the Conseil International pour l’Exploration Scientifique de la Méditerranée. This led to the construction of sewage treatment plants in a number of countries. 
Marko Branica passed away on 17 November 2004.