At a ceremony in February 2002, four winners will garner the NWO/SPINOZA Prize for 2001, which is given by the Hague-based Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The winners, two of whom are engaged in physics-related work, will each receive 1.5 million euros (nearly $1.4 million).
Bert Meijer is a professor of organic chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology and an adjunct professor at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. According to the NWO, he is one of the founders of the discipline of macro-organic chemistry and also is “a leading scientist in the field of the design, synthesis, and characterization of dendrimers.” Besides being responsible for the discovery of a large-scale synthetic process of a specific dendrimer, his group in Eindhoven used dendrimers as nanocontainers for guest molecules (the so-called “dendritic box”) and other structures that now lead to possible drug-delivery systems. More recently, he was able to assemble small molecules into polymer chains by using quadruple hydrogen bonding units. These materials possess properties that were traditionally only observed with polymers made of long macromolecules, being covalently linked chains. The reversibility of the hydrogen bonding makes the new materials self-healing.
Meijer’s group also has contributed to the synthesis and understanding of materials for polymeric and molecular electronics, in which chirality was used to get a basic understanding of the interactions between conjugated polymer chains. Meijer plans to use the prize money to focus on both supramolecular electronics and functional objects for biomedical applications.
Johannes Oerlemans, a professor of meteorology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, will also receive the prize. He is a recognized expert on the relationship between the state of the polar ice sheets and climate, according to the NWO. “He has improved our understanding of the world’s present climate but also established new insights into the causes of climate changes during the ice ages and how they affected the level of the sea.” Oerlemans was the first investigator to take account quantitatively of the effect of the sagging of Earth’s crust under the enormous weight of an ice sheet. This research allowed him to produce a better description of how the ice sheets grew and melted in the past.
Extensive measurements have allowed Oerlemans to create a theory of the dynamics of glaciers that can apply to glaciers worldwide. This theory explains why glaciers are retreating as a result of the current minor change in climate. He intends to use the prize money to carry out detailed measurements of temperature profiles in the ice on Greenland. These further measurements will reveal more about the present state of the ice sheet, which is an essential component of climate modeling.
The award, which has been dubbed the “Dutch Nobel Prize” by many members of the scientific community, is the highest scientific honor in the Netherlands. It is given to researchers who have displayed internationally recognized excellence and have inspired and recruited young researchers.
