NWO Spinoza laureates use prize for education

9 September 2011

Heino Falcke, Patti Valkenburg and Erik Verlinde, the NWO Spinoza laureates of 2011 have announced how they will each each use their prize of 2.5 million euros. Enthusing young people for science is a top priority for the researchers. The NWO Spinoza Prize is the highest Dutch award in science.

Heino Falcke

Heino Falcke, professor of Radio Astronomy and Astroparticle Physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen will use a small part of his NWO Spinoza Prize for educational projects for children throughout the entire world. He will do this in collaboration with UNAWE, a unique programme that brings children from underprivileged backgrounds into contact with the inspiring aspects of astronomy. He wants to develop objects for the children that will introduce them to astronomy and science. In addition to this he will develop educational projects for older primary school pupils. These pupils will be given the opportunity to gain hands on experience with radio telescopes.

Falcke will devote the vast majority of his prize money to his research into black holes. He dreams of being the first to image the edge of a black hole, the so-called observation horizon. He hopes to make his unique observations using the CARMA radio telescope in California, which he is updating in collaboration with UC Berkeley. In addition to this, he will continue his search for new black holes using the LOFAR radio telescope in Drenthe.

Patti Valkenburg

Patti Valkenburg, professor of Youth and Media at the University of Amsterdam, has investigated every conceivable subject in her discipline over the past 20 years: for example, she has investigated the influence of advertising on nagging behaviour in the supermarket, the influence of internet pornography on the sexual morals of teenagers, and the influence of social media on the friendships of children and young people.

Over the past year she has received a European ERC Grant of 2.5 million euros, the Hendrik Müller Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the NWO Spinoza Prize. She will use this series of awards to realise what she refers to as her life work: a long-term, large-scale study of 900 families into which she will invest all her experience from the past 20 years. 'Over the years I have investigated many different aspects of youth and media, and based on this I have developed a model to investigate the individual susceptibility of children for various aspects of media use,' says Valkenburg.

Erik Verlinde

For Erik Verlinde, theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam, the NWO Spinoza Prize came at just the right time. Recently, all of his work culminated in a staggering new insight concerning the origin of gravity. Over the next few years he hopes to take major steps forwards together with a team of experienced researchers.

In addition to this, Verlinde wants to spend part of his prize on making his ideas accessible to a wider public. 'When I was a high school student, physics didn’t really interest me. Until I saw a film about the work of Stephen Hawking and Gerard 't Hooft. After that I wanted to be a physicist. Now I want to make it clear to high school pupils that the most important discoveries in physics were not only made decades or even centuries ago but that there are still many important and fascinating questions and that exciting discoveries are still taking place. Indeed, new scientific revolutions are afoot which are comparable to those of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.'

The NWO Spinoza Prize

The NWO Spinoza Prize has been awarded since 1995 to top scientists. Those allowed to make nominations are the principals of universities, the chairs of the departments of Literature and Physics of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the advisory councils of the KNAW, the Netherlands Academy of Technology and Innovation, the Dutch National Network of Female Professors, and the NWO Divisional Boards.

www.nwo.nl/spinozalaureaten (photos, jury reports, overviews)
www.nwo.nl/spinoza (information about the procedures)
www.spinoza.tv (includes a compilation of the announcement)

About NWO

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is the independent Dutch science funding body and its mission is to facilitate excellent scientific research in the Netherlands by means of national competition. Each year NWO spends more than 700 million euros on grants for top research and top researchers, on innovative instruments and equipment, and on institutes where top research is performed. NWO funds the research of more than 5300 talented researchers at universities and institutes. Independent experts select proposals by means of a peer review system. NWO facilitates the transfer of knowledge to society.

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last modified on 16 September 2011