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One of this year’s Leibniz Prizes goes to the Alexander von Humboldt Professor Largus T. Angenent for his outstanding work in the field of environmental biotechnology, through which he has made key contributions to microbial electrochemistry. Angenent is one of the worldwide founders of this field of research and co-founder of the International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry and Technology, established in 2011, which he also chaired as president. His work is highly topical in view of climate change and the resulting need for a sustainable food, chemical and energy economy, the DFG stated in its announcement of the award.
Largus T. Angenent was a full professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, from 2015 to 2017. He has been a Humboldt Professor at the University of Tübingen since April 2017. He also serves as a peer reviewer, host and scout in the Humboldt Foundation’s Henriette Herz Scouting Programme.
One of the most important sociologists of our time, Hartmut Rosa, is also being recognised with a Leibniz Prize. His contributions to the question of which social dynamics foster or hinder the possibilities of a good life are read and discussed internationally in both academia and society at large. His study Beschleunigung. Die Verängerung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (2005) has been translated into many languages, and was published in English under the title Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. In it, Rosa provides a comprehensive, philosophically grounded analysis of the dynamics of acceleration through time that shape modern societies while at the same time posing enormous challenges to the individuals in these societies, the DFG wrote in its statement.
Hartmut Rosa has been Professor of General and Theoretical Sociology at the University of Jena since 2005 and Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt since 2013. In 2001/2002 he was a guest professor at New School University in New York with a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship. He additionally serves as a host and peer reviewer and is currently a scout for the Humboldt Foundation’s Henriette Herz Scouting Programme.
The newly selected Leibniz Prize recipients Claudia Höbartner, Achim Menges, Sarah Ellen O’Connor, Georg Schett and Anita Traninger also belong to the Humboldt network: They all serve on a voluntary basis as reviewers or as hosts to individuals who have been sponsored by the Humboldt Foundation and who come from abroad for research stays in Germany.
Each Leibniz Prize comes with €2.5 million. The award ceremony for the Leibniz Prizes will be held on 15 March 2023 in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin.