The Helmholtz Medal honors the lifetime achievements of scientists whose work has shaped entire fields of research.
The Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (German: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, BBAW), which awards the Helmholtz Medal, is one of Germany’s most prestigious scientific institutions. The Helmholtz Medal is the Academy’s highest scientific distinction, reserved for recognizing lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to scholarship across a wide range of disciplines, from humanities and mathematics to natural and engineering sciences.
Awarded every two years, the medal is named after Hermann von Helmholtz, the German physician and physicist who was one of the most eminent scientists of the nineteenth century. Among his many achievements were the formulation of the law of the conservation of energy and the mechanical foundations of thermodynamics. Helmholtz was the first to measure the speed of nerve impulses. He also invented the ophthalmoscope and was a pioneer in the study of vision and hearing.
Beyond his scientific discoveries, Helmholtz made important contributions to the philosophy of science, exploring the relationship between the laws of perception and the laws of nature. He also worked on questions of aesthetics and examined the broader impact of science on society.
The history of the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences has been shaped by the work of more than eighty Nobel Prize laureates. Its members have included such eminent figures as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Lise Meitner, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Alexander von Humboldt. The Academy serves simultaneously as a learned society, a research institution, a scientific advisory body, and an active forum for dialogue between science and society. Its principal missions include the preservation and exploration of cultural heritage, the stewardship of long-term research projects, and the examination of scientific and societal challenges that will shape the future.The Academy is the largest independent humanities research institution in the German capital region. The BBAW maintains numerous large-scale scholarly enterprises, including dictionaries, critical editions, historical source-research programs, and digital knowledge bases. With a history spanning more than 325 years, the Academy in its present form was established in 1992 through an agreement between the states of Berlin and Brandenburg as the successor to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Today, it brings together approximately 400 members. In Germany, the role of the national academy of sciences is fulfilled by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, founded in 1652. Its primary mission is to provide scientific advice to policymakers and society and to represent German science at the international level. At the same time, a distinctive feature of the German academic system is that it is not centered on a single academy, as is the case in Hungary. Instead, several regional academies operate alongside one another, among them the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. These are independent and highly prestigious scholarly societies that run their own research programs, publications, and scientific projects. |
László Lovász is one of the defining scientists of our time at the interface of mathematics and computer science. For more than fifty years, he has profoundly shaped the development of this field by solving important open problems and pioneering new areas of research. His broad mathematical knowledge has enabled him to build unexpected bridges between different branches of mathematics, to advance their theoretical development, to transfer these results into computer science, and to open up new areas of application for mathematics,” wrote Martin Grötschel, former president of the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, in his nomination letter for the medal. In his tribute, Professor Martin Grötschel, who served as President of the BBAW from 2015 to 2020, emphasizes that, unlike many renowned researchers whose activities have been largely confined to their own fields, Professor Lovász has also served science as a whole in the highest leadership positions. He was President of the International Mathematical Union, later President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union’s principal organization supporting frontier research. In addition, he was one of the founders of Combinatorica, the journal of the János Bolyai Mathematical Society, which has been published since 1981 and has become one of the leading journals in its field. He has served as its Editor-in-Chief ever since. He is also involved in the editorial work of more than ten other scientific journals. Professor Lovász has received six honorary doctorates, has been elected to twelve scientific academies, and has been awarded twenty-four major distinctions. These include the Abel Prize, the Kyoto Prize, the Wolf Prize, the John von Neumann Theory Prize, the Gödel Prize, the Knuth Prize, Hungary’s Széchenyi Grand Prize, and the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary. The depth and breadth of his research, together with the elegance of his methods, have inspired generations of researchers to build upon and further develop his results.
Among the recipients of the Helmholtz Medal are world-renowned scholars such as Noam Chomsky (1996), linguist; Sir Roger Penrose (1998), mathematician and physicist; Jürgen Habermas (2000), philosopher; Friedrich Hirzebruch (2002), mathematician; Gábor Somorjai (2020), chemist and pioneer of modern surface chemistry; and Katalin Karikó (2022), neurobiologist. Now László Lovász joins their ranks as one of the leading figures in combinatorics and theoretical computer science.
International sources have noted that, by receiving the Helmholtz Medal, László Lovász has entered the distinguished company of mathematicians such as Friedrich Hirzebruch and Sir Roger Penrose in the history of the award. His selection further underscores the profound impact of his work on modern mathematics and computer science, as well as his standing among the most influential scientists of his generation.
Like László Lovász, Friedrich Hirzebruch (1927–2012) was a recipient of the Wolf Prize. The German mathematician made fundamental contributions to linking topology, algebraic geometry, and differential geometry. He is best known for the Riemann–Roch–Hirzebruch theorem (1954), a result that revolutionized algebraic geometry. In 1980, he founded the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPIM) in Bonn and served as its director until 1995. As President of the German Mathematical Society and the first President of the European Mathematical Society, he also played a major role in rebuilding scientific ties between Eastern and Western Europe. Hirzebruch was not only an outstanding mathematician but also a charismatic organizer and teacher. His life's work had a lasting influence on twentieth-century mathematics, particularly at the intersection of geometry and topology. Nobel Prize–winning mathematician and theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose (1931–) is one of the iconic figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century mathematical physics and one of the most influential researchers in general relativity and cosmology. Also a recipient of the Wolf Prize (shared with Stephen Hawking), and knighted in 1994, Penrose was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on the mathematical description of black holes. Together with Stephen Hawking, he developed the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, which describe the extreme-density states associated with the beginning and possible fate of the universe. In 1967, Penrose introduced twistor theory, an ambitious framework aimed at unifying the geometric and quantum descriptions of space-time. He received one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating that “the formation of black holes is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.” (The other half was awarded jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way, ed.). Although officially regarded as a mathematical physicist, Penrose’s work is deeply mathematical in character. In essence, he received the Nobel Prize for physical discoveries achieved through mathematical methods – most notably the singularity theorems that showed black holes are not merely theoretical curiosities but a natural consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. His results laid the mathematical foundations of modern black-hole research, and his work continues to shape contemporary thinking about space-time, quantum gravity, and even the nature of consciousness. |
Upon receiving the Helmholtz Medal, László Lovász remarked that the award was a particularly great honor for him, given the extraordinary breadth of disciplines represented by its previous recipients, all of whom had made lasting contributions to science. Professor Lovász emphasized that he considers it especially significant that the medal was awarded not only for his research achievements in mathematics, but also for his lifelong commitment to building scientific schools, organizing and supporting the scientific community, and actively defending the independence of science. “Today, as always, I am ready to stand up for the independence and survival of Hungarian science and of science in general. It was a deeply moving experience in Berlin when the scientific community applauded Hungary’s return to Europe in my presence, and an important element of that process is the reintegration of Hungarian science into the international scientific community,” Lovász said. Today, Professor Lovász continues to work closely with a vibrant group of young researchers at the HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, where successive generations of mathematicians still learn from him in an active and creative research environment. He also remains deeply committed to science education, regularly giving public lectures, including at his alma mater, Fazekas Mihály Secondary School in Budapest. As Professor Lovász puts it: “Mathematics is a discipline whose essence – the joy of rigorous thinking – can already be experienced in secondary school. Moreover, mathematics is becoming increasingly central not only to physics and computer science but also to biology. Mathematical thinking has enormous power as a tool of discovery, and not only for mathematicians. Throughout my life, it has been important to me to pass this experience on to others. It is a great pleasure to see that at Rényi Institute there is a research environment fully capable of sustaining the continued development of Hungarian mathematics at a world-class level. I hope that, despite the challenges, a similar environment can also be maintained within the departments of Hungarian universities.”
These remarks reflect a defining feature of László Lovász’s career: alongside his groundbreaking scientific contributions, he has remained deeply committed to nurturing future generations of researchers and to safeguarding the institutional foundations on which scientific excellence depends.