The Dr. A.H. Heineken and Dr. H.P. Heineken Prizes, named in honor of Alfred Heineken

Freddy Heineken

Alfred Henry Heineken was a Dutch major stock holder and president of Heineken International, the brewing company bought in 1864 by his grandfather Gerard Adriaan Heineken in Amsterdam....

, former Chairman of Heineken Holdings

Heineken Pilsener

Heineken is a Dutch beer which has been brewed by Heineken International since 1873. It is available in a 4.6% alcohol variety in countries such as Ireland. It is the flagship product of the Heineken company and is made of purified water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. In 1886 H...

, and Henry Pierre Heineken, son of founder Gerard Adriaan Heineken

Gerard Adriaan Heineken

Gerard Adriaan Heineken was the founder of Heineken. In 1864 he decided to purchase the brewery 'Den Hoyberg.' Here he started to brew a new beer....

, are a series of awards bestowed by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands...

 (KNAW).

History

Alfred Heineken founded the biennial Heineken Prizes in the 1960s. They consist of five science prizes: the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prizes for History

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, Medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

, Environmental science

Environmental science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...

, and (since 2006) Cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, and the Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

 and Biophysics

Biophysics

Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that uses the methods of physical science to study biological systems. Studies included under the branches of biophysics span all levels of biological organization, from the molecular scale to whole organisms and ecosystems...

. The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art has been awarded to Dutch artists since 1988. The scientific awards consist of a trophy and US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

 150,000, art awards come with 50,000 Euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

.

Selection

The selection system of the Heineken Prizes can be compared to that of the Nobel Prizes. Scientists from all over the world are invited to nominate fellow scientists for the Heineken Prizes. Independent committees consisting of eminent scientists and chaired by a member of the board of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences select the winners. An independent jury of art historians acting in their personal capacity, chooses the winners of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art.

The Heineken Prizes are awarded in a Special Session of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, which takes place every even year at the Beurs van Berlage

Beurs van Berlage

The Beurs van Berlage is a building on the Damrak, in the center of Amsterdam. It was designed as a commodity exchange by architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage and constructed between 1896 and 1903. It influenced many modernist architects, in particular functionalists and the Amsterdam School...

 in Amsterdam. In 2002, 2004, and 2006 the Prizes were presented by HRH the Prince of Orange.

The prizes are sponsored by the Alfred Heineken Fondsen Foundation and the Dr. H.P. Heineken Foundation. The foundations are chaired by Mrs. Charlene L. de Carvalho-Heineken, daughter of the late Alfred Heineken.

Winners

The Heineken Prizes for Art and Sciences are now amongst the most prestigious international awards in the world. The following nine winners of the Heineken Prizes for Medicine and Biochemistry and Biophysics have since won Nobel Prizes:

• Christian de Duve
  Christian de Duve
  Christian René, viscount de Duve is a Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist. De Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, Great Britain, as a son of Belgian refugees. They returned to Belgium in 1920...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1973
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1974

• Aaron Klug
  Aaron Klug
  Sir Aaron Klug, OM, PRS is a Lithuanian-born British chemist and biophysicist, and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.-Biography:Klug was...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1973
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1974

• Thomas Cech
  Thomas Cech
  Thomas Robert Cech is a chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel prize in chemistry with Sidney Altman, for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Cech discovered that RNA could itself cut strands of RNA, which showed that life could have started as RNA...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1988
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1989

• Paul C. Lauterbur
  Paul Lauterbur
  Paul Christian Lauterbur was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging possible.Dr...
  
  
  • Dr. A.H.Heineken Prize for Medicine in 1989
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2003

• Paul Nurse
  Paul Nurse
  Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, PRS is a British geneticist and cell biologist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 1996
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001

• Barry J. Marshall
  Barry Marshall
  Barry James Marshall, AC, FRS, FAA is an Australian physician, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. Marshall is well-known for proving that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori Barry James Marshall, AC, FRS, FAA...
  
  
  • Dr. A.H.Heineken Prize for Medicine in 1998
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005

• Eric R. Kandel
  • Dr. A.H.Heineken Prize for Medicine in 2000
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000

• Andrew Z. Fire
  Andrew Fire
  Andrew Zachary Fire is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2004
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2006

• Roger Y. Tsien
  Roger Y. Tsien
  Roger Yonchien Tsien is a Chinese American biochemist and a professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2002
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008

• Jack W. Szostak
  Jack W. Szostak
  Jack William Szostak is a Canadian American biologist of Polish British descent and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with...
  
  
  • Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2008
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009

• Elizabeth Blackburn
  Elizabeth Blackburn
  Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, AC, FRS is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the...
  
  
  • Dr. A.H.Heineken Prize for Medicine in 2004
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009