Heineken Prizes 2002
The five Heineken prizes for art and science awarded by
Heineken Stichting and Stichting Alfred Heineken Fondsen
were presented by His Royal Highness Prince Willem-
Alexander in September 2002. The recipients of the
biennial Heineken prizes, with a total monetary value of
over €650,000, are selected by the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and
Biophysics was awarded to Prof. Roger Y.Tsien in the US,
for his unique and exceptional contribution to the develop
ment of a range of methods and techniques for measuring
and visualising processes within and between cells.
Prof. Tsien has successfully isolated and cloned the 6FP
(green fluorescent protein) molecule of the Aequora
Victoria jellyfish, which glows brightly in the dark, and has
even managed to synthesise different-coloured variants.
Introducing GFP variants into cells enables direct obser
vation of all kinds of biochemical processes within living
cells, including monitoring signals between cells, measur
ing intracellular acidity and sodium and calcium transfer
within and between cells and measuring phenomena with
in cell organelles. His methods are now widely used by
fellow researchers for other purposes, such as identifying
the factors involved in cell malignancy.
The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize forMedicine was awarded
to Prof. Dennis J. Selkoe in the US for his contribution to
the development of the molecular study of diseases of the
brain, in particular Alzheimer's disease. Since the 1970s,
he has been using methods drawn from biochemistry and
molecular biology to unravel, slowly but surely and with
great patience, the molecular components of the puzzle
which is the complex disorder known as Alzheimer's dis
ease. The process of identifying the causal relationships
and processes within brain cells has now reached the
stage where the first patients are taking part in a trial with
drugs intended to delay or prevent the disease, an
advance of inestimable social significance. His work has
also led to a better understanding of the ageing processes
in the brain and the onset and progression of Parkinson's
disease.
The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental
Sciences was awarded to Prof. Lonnie G.Thompson in
the US for his pioneering work in research into ice cores in
the polar regions and the tropics. He is convinced that ice
is the best record of the earth's climate. That frozen record
can be accessed not only at the North and South Poles,
but also in the tropics, for example on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
As one of the first to realise that global warming posed a
threat to a number of the world's ice archives, he is intent
on gathering more data without delay. The climatic and
atmospheric history recorded in the ice can go back as far
as 700,000 years. His research provides an insight into nat
ural climate change, which will ultimately make it possible
to assess humanity's impact on the earth's climate, which is
still the subject of heated debate among researchers.
The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History was awarded to
Prof. Heinz Schilling in Germany for his outstanding inter
disciplinary research into the history of early modern
Europe, in which he reveals the interrelationship between
confessionalisation and national identity formation.
His research encompasses the relationship between
Church and State, the role of migrants, the imposition of
norms and values and the comparison of developments
across Europe: issues which are still current today. His goal
is to identify the relationship between these and other
issues in early modern Europe (1550-1650), the time of the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation, by studying reli
gious, social and political factors in relation to each other.
He shows that the newly formed Protestant and Catholic
states began working closely with what was generally
the only official church within their region. He makes clear
that there is much greater unity in European history than
was previously assumed, transcending the boundaries
between countries and religions.
The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art was awarded to
Aernout Mik in the Netherlands for his consistent oeuvre
of installations in which he combines video and other artis
tic media. His working method has had a major influence
on the present generation of video artists in the Nether
lands. In Mik's video films the events which occur 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 architec
tural structure, thus creating a physical link between the
viewer and the work. A good example of this was his 1999
installation based on an architectural structure consisting
of steadily narrowing corridors and low doorways, show
ing video films of collapsing buildings and injured people,
next to a life-size dummy of an anthropoid ape.
HEINEKEN N.V. ANNUAL REPORT 2002
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