Heineken Prize
winners have gone
on to win even
more accolades.
even Nobel Prizes
Small countries, big prizes
Setting the standards high
NOBLE ALFRED
MEETS
Text: Nanci Tangeman
Images: Helneken
ALFRED NOBEL
Alfred Heineken
Alfred Nobel
There are two Alfreds in the world of distinguished awards: one a Swede;
the other a Dutchman. They say one man invented dynamite; the other
invented "global beer marketing as we know it." One Alfred bequeathed his
fortune to five international prizes, for physics, chemistry, physiology or
medicine, literature and peace. The other founded awards in biochemistry
and biophysics, medicine, environmental sciences, history and art.
The first man, Alfred Nobel, never lived to see the legacy of his bequest.
The second, Alfred "Freddy" Heineken, saw over 30 prizes awarded over
the last four decades of his life.
Similar, but distinctive, the legacies of the two Alfreds live on in the
awards bearing their names: the Heineken Prizes and the Nobel Prizes.
Today there are six Heineken Prizes, including a new one since September
those for cognitive science, history and art. Nobel's will stipulated that his
original five prize categories remain. The Bank of Sweden added a sixth
prize, for economic science, in Nobel's name in 1968.
The awards are separate, but they are not unrelated: seven of the
Heineken Prize winners have gone on to win Nobel Prizes later in their
careers.
Dr. Christian de Duve, 1973 Heineken Prize winner for his discovery of the
cell organelles called the lysosome and peroxisome, set the expectations
high for future winners when the following year, he won the Nobel Prize for
physiology or medicine (with Albert Claude and George Emil Palade.).
De Duve's Heineken award was the Dr. H. P. Heineken Prize for biochemistry
and biophysics.
That award for biochemistry and biophysics is also the Heineken Prize
which has produced the most Nobel Prize winners—three in addition to de
Duve: Dr. Aaron Klug (1979) won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1982;
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