Crafoord Prize facts for kids

The Crafoord Prize is a special science award created in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish businessman, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. This prize is given out each year. It is a team effort between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund, Sweden. The Academy is in charge of picking the winners, called Laureates.

The prize is given in four main areas:

• Astronomy and mathematics
• Geosciences (which is about Earth's rocks, oceans, and atmosphere)
• Biosciences (especially ecology, which studies how living things interact with their environment)
• Polyarthritis (a disease that causes swelling and pain in many joints, which Holger Crafoord suffered from)

These subjects were chosen to be different from the ones that win Nobel Prizes. Only one Crafoord Prize is given out each year. The categories rotate, meaning one year it might be astronomy and math, the next geosciences, and then biosciences. The polyarthritis prize is only given when experts decide there has been a big step forward in understanding or treating the disease.

The winners are announced in mid-January. Then, in April or May, the King of Sweden himself gives out the prize at a special event called Crafoord Days. This is similar to how he presents the Nobel Prizes in December. As of 2024, the prize money is 6,000,000 Swedish kronor, which is about US$700,000. Many people think the Crafoord Prize is as important as the Nobel Prize, especially for Earth sciences.

The very first winners in 1982 were Vladimir Arnold and Louis Nirenberg. They won for their important work in a math area called non-linear differential equations. Most winners have been men. The first woman to win was astronomer Andrea Ghez in 2012.

Crafoord Prize Winners

Here are some of the scientists who have won the Crafoord Prize:

Year	Category	Image	Laureate	Nationality	Reason for Award
1982	Mathematics		Vladimir Arnold	Russian	For great work on non-linear differential equations.
1982	Mathematics		Louis Nirenberg	Canadian / American	For great work on non-linear differential equations.
1983	Geosciences	—	Edward Norton Lorenz	American	For helping us understand large movements in the atmosphere and sea.
1983	Geosciences		Henry Stommel	American	For helping us understand large movements in the atmosphere and sea.
1984	Biosciences		Daniel H. Janzen	American	For his studies on how living things evolve together.
1985	Astronomy		Lyman Spitzer	American	For important studies of the space between stars.
1986	Geosciences		Claude Allègre	French	For studies of how isotopes help us understand geology.
1986	Geosciences	—	Gerald J. Wasserburg	American	For studies of how isotopes help us understand geology.
1987	Biosciences	—	Eugene Odum	American	For helping create the field of ecosystem ecology.
1987	Biosciences	—	Howard T. Odum	American	For helping create the field of ecosystem ecology.
1988	Mathematics		Pierre Deligne	Belgian	For important research in algebraic geometry.
1988	Mathematics		Alexander Grothendieck	French	For important research in algebraic geometry.
1989	Geosciences		James Van Allen	American	For exploring space and discovering Earth's radiation belts.
1990	Biosciences		Paul R. Ehrlich	American	For research on how animal populations survive.
1990	Biosciences		E. O. Wilson	American	For his ideas on how species diversity works.
1991	Astronomy	—	Allan Sandage	American	For his work on galaxies and how they change over time.
1992	Geosciences	—	Adolf Seilacher	German	For his new ideas on how life and the environment have evolved.
1993	Biosciences	—	W. D. Hamilton	British	For his theories on why animals help each other.
1993	Biosciences		Seymour Benzer	American	For his studies on fruit flies and their behavior.
1994	Mathematics		Simon Donaldson	British	For his important work in four-dimensional geometry.
1994	Mathematics		Shing-Tung Yau	American	For his new methods in differential geometry.
1995	Geosciences	—	Willi Dansgaard	Danish	For using isotope methods to study past climate changes.
1995	Geosciences	—	Nicholas Shackleton	British	For using isotope methods to study past climate changes.
1996	Biosciences		Robert May	Australian	For his studies on how animal populations and ecosystems work.
1997	Astronomy		Fred Hoyle	British	For his early work on how stars create elements.
1997	Astronomy	—	Edwin Ernest Salpeter	American	For his early work on how stars create elements.
1998	Geosciences		Don L. Anderson	American	For helping us understand Earth's inside structure.
1998	Geosciences		Adam M. Dziewonski	Polish / American	For helping us understand Earth's inside structure.
1999	Biosciences		Ernst Mayr	American	For his important ideas in evolutionary biology.
1999	Biosciences		John Maynard Smith	British	For his important ideas in evolutionary biology.
1999	Biosciences	—	George Christopher Williams	American	For his important ideas in evolutionary biology.
2000	Polyarthritis	—	Marc Feldmann	British	For finding a way to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
2000	Polyarthritis		Ravinder N. Maini	British	For finding a way to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
2001	Mathematics		Alain Connes	French	For his work on operator algebras and non-commutative geometry.
2002	Geosciences	—	Dan McKenzie	British	For understanding how Earth's plates move.
2003	Biosciences		Carl Woese	American	For discovering a third group of life forms.
2004	Polyarthritis	—	Eugene C. Butcher	American	For studying how white blood cells move in the body.
2004	Polyarthritis	—	Timothy A. Springer	American	For studying how white blood cells move in the body.
2005	Astronomy		James E. Gunn	American	For helping us understand the large-scale structure of the Universe.
2005	Astronomy		James Peebles	American	For helping us understand the large-scale structure of the Universe.
2005	Astronomy		Martin Rees	British	For helping us understand the large-scale structure of the Universe.
2006	Geosciences		Wallace Smith Broecker	American	For his research on how carbon moves through Earth's systems.
2007	Biosciences	—	Robert Trivers	American	For his ideas on how social behavior evolves.
2008	Astronomy		Rashid Alievich Sunyaev	Russian	For his work on black holes and the background radiation in space.
2008	Mathematics		Maxim Kontsevich	Russian	For important math work inspired by physics.
2008	Mathematics		Edward Witten	American	For important math work inspired by physics.
2009	Polyarthritis		Charles Dinarello	American	For finding out about interleukins and their role in inflammation.
2009	Polyarthritis		Tadamitsu Kishimoto	Japanese	For finding out about interleukins and their role in inflammation.
2009	Polyarthritis		Toshio Hirano	Japanese	For finding out about interleukins and their role in inflammation.
2010	Geosciences		Walter Munk	American	For his work on ocean currents, tides, and waves.
2011	Biosciences		Ilkka Hanski	Finnish	For his studies on how animal and plant populations change in different places.
2012	Astronomy		Reinhard Genzel	German	For observing stars near the galactic center, showing a supermassive black hole.
2012	Astronomy		Andrea M. Ghez	American	For observing stars near the galactic center, showing a supermassive black hole.
2012	Mathematics		Jean Bourgain	Belgian	For his amazing work in many areas of mathematics.
2012	Mathematics		Terence Tao	Australian / American	For his amazing work in many areas of mathematics.
2013	Polyarthritis		Peter K. Gregersen	American	For discoveries about genetic factors in rheumatoid arthritis.
2013	Polyarthritis		Lars Klareskog	Swedish	For discoveries about genetic factors in rheumatoid arthritis.
2013	Polyarthritis		Robert J. Winchester [de]	American	For discoveries about genetic factors in rheumatoid arthritis.
2014	Geosciences	—	Peter Molnar	American	For understanding how continents and mountains form.
2015	Biosciences	—	Richard Lewontin	American	For their work on genetic differences within species.
2015	Biosciences		Tomoko Ohta	Japanese	For their work on genetic differences within species.
2016	Astronomy		Roy Kerr	New Zealand	For important work on spinning black holes.
2016	Astronomy		Roger Blandford	American	For important work on spinning black holes.
2016	Mathematics		Yakov Eliashberg	American	For developing contact and symplectic topology.
2017	Polyarthritis		Shimon Sakaguchi	Japanese	For discoveries about T cells that fight harmful immune reactions.
2017	Polyarthritis		Fred Ramsdell	American	For discoveries about T cells that fight harmful immune reactions.
2017	Polyarthritis		Alexander Rudensky	American	For discoveries about T cells that fight harmful immune reactions.
2018	Geosciences		Syukuro Manabe	Japanese / American	For understanding how gases in the atmosphere affect Earth's climate.
2018	Geosciences		Susan Solomon	American	For understanding how gases in the atmosphere affect Earth's climate.
2019	Biosciences		Sallie W. Chisholm	American	For discovering and studying Prochlorococcus, a tiny organism that makes a lot of oxygen.
2020	Astronomy		Eugene N. Parker	American	For his studies of the solar wind and magnetic fields in space.
2020	Mathematics		Enrico Bombieri	Italian / American	For his important work in many areas of mathematics.
2021	Polyarthritis		Daniel L. Kastner	American	For creating the idea of autoinflammatory diseases.
2022	Geosciences		Andrew H. Knoll	American	For helping us understand the first three billion years of life on Earth.
2023	Biosciences	—	Dolph Schluter	Canadian	For understanding how new species form and adapt.
2024	Astronomy	—	Douglas Gough	British	For developing ways to study the inside of the Sun and other stars.
2024	Astronomy		Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard	Danish	For developing ways to study the inside of the Sun and other stars.
2024	Astronomy		Conny Aerts	Belgian	For developing ways to study the inside of the Sun and other stars.
2024	Mathematics		Claire Voisin	French	For her great work in complex and algebraic geometry.

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See also

In Spanish: Premio Crafoord para niños

• List of general science and technology awards
• List of prizes known as the Nobel or the highest honors of a field#Geosciences, agricultural sciences and environmental sciences
• The Kyoto Prize
• Prizes named after people