Crafoord Prize Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids The Crafoord Prize
Presented by	Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Country	Sweden
Reward	6,000,000 Swedish kronor
First awarded	1982 (1982)

The Crafoord Prize is a special science award. It was started in 1980 by a Swedish businessman named Holger Crafoord and his wife, Anna-Greta Crafoord. They gave money to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to create it.

This prize is given out by the Academy and the Crafoord Foundation. The Academy chooses who wins. The Crafoord Prize is awarded in four main areas:

Mathematics and astronomy
Geosciences (which is about Earth sciences)
Biosciences (which focuses on ecology, the study of how living things interact with their environment)
Polyarthritis research (this is research into a type of arthritis that affects many joints, like rheumatoid arthritis, which Holger Crafoord had).

The Crafoord Prize was created to honor fields not covered by the Nobel Prize. Only one prize is given each year. The categories rotate: first astronomy and mathematics, then geosciences, then biosciences. Since 2012, the astronomy and mathematics prizes are given separately at the same time. The polyarthritis prize is only given when there has been a lot of progress in that field.

The winners are announced in mid-January each year. The prize is given out in April or May by a member of the Monarchy of Sweden. As of 2024, the prize money is 6,000,000 Swedish kronor. This is about US$560,000.

Usually, one person wins the prize. But sometimes, up to three people can share it. The very first winners in 1982 were Vladimir Arnold and Louis Nirenberg. They won for their work in mathematics. Most winners of the prize have been men. The first woman to win was astronomer Andrea Ghez in 2012.

Who Has Won the Crafoord Prize?
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Who Has Won the Crafoord Prize?

The Crafoord Prize has been awarded to many brilliant scientists over the years. Here are some of the winners and what they were recognized for:

Early Winners: 1980s

1982 (Mathematics): Vladimir Arnold and Louis Nirenberg for their work on complex math problems called non-linear differential equations.
1983 (Geosciences): Edward Norton Lorenz and Henry Stommel for helping us understand how the atmosphere and oceans move on a large scale.
1984 (Biosciences): Daniel H. Janzen for his studies on how different species evolve together.
1985 (Astronomy): Lyman Spitzer for his important studies of the space between stars.
1986 (Geosciences): Claude Allègre and Gerald J. Wasserburg for their studies of isotopes in rocks and what they tell us about Earth's history.
1987 (Biosciences): Eugene Odum and Howard T. Odum for their work on how ecosystems work.
1988 (Mathematics): Pierre Deligne and Alexander Grothendieck for their research in algebraic geometry, a field that uses algebra to study shapes.
1989 (Geosciences): James Van Allen for discovering the radiation belts around Earth, now called the Van Allen belts.

Winners in the 1990s

1990 (Biosciences): Paul R. Ehrlich for his research on how animal populations survive, and E. O. Wilson for his ideas on how many species live on islands.
1991 (Astronomy): Allan Sandage for his important work on galaxies and how they change over time.
1992 (Geosciences): Adolf Seilacher for his studies on how life has changed over Earth's history.
1993 (Biosciences): W. D. Hamilton for his theories on why animals help their relatives, and Seymour Benzer for his studies on fruit flies.
1994 (Mathematics): Simon Donaldson and Shing-Tung Yau for their work in geometry.
1995 (Geosciences): Willi Dansgaard and Nicholas Shackleton for using ice cores and ocean sediments to study past climates.
1996 (Biosciences): Robert May for his research on how populations and ecosystems change.
1997 (Astronomy): Fred Hoyle and Edwin Ernest Salpeter for their work on how stars create elements and evolve.
1998 (Geosciences): Don L. Anderson and Adam M. Dziewonski for helping us understand the inside of the Earth.
1999 (Biosciences): Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, and George Christopher Williams for their ideas on how living things evolve.

Winners in the 2000s

2000 (Polyarthritis): Marc Feldmann and Ravinder N. Maini for finding a way to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
2001 (Mathematics): Alain Connes for his work on a new type of geometry called non-commutative geometry.
2002 (Geosciences): Dan McKenzie for his contributions to understanding plate tectonics, which explains how Earth's crust moves.
2003 (Biosciences): Carl Woese for discovering a "third domain of life," showing that life is more diverse than we thought.
2004 (Polyarthritis): Eugene C. Butcher and Timothy A. Springer for their studies on how white blood cells move in the body.
2005 (Astronomy): James E. Gunn, James Peebles, and Martin Rees for helping us understand the large-scale structure of the Universe.
2006 (Geosciences): Wallace Smith Broecker for his research on how carbon moves through Earth's systems and affects climate.
2007 (Biosciences): Robert Trivers for his studies on how cooperation and conflict happen in social evolution.
2008 (Astronomy and Mathematics): Rashid Alievich Sunyaev for his work on black holes and neutron stars. Maxim Kontsevich and Edward Witten for their math contributions inspired by physics.
2009 (Polyarthritis): Charles Dinarello, Tadamitsu Kishimoto, and Toshio Hirano for their work on proteins called interleukins, which are involved in inflammation.

Winners in the 2010s

2010 (Geosciences): Walter Munk for his studies on ocean currents, tides, and waves.
2011 (Biosciences): Ilkka Hanski for his research on how where animals and plants live affects their populations.
2012 (Astronomy and Mathematics): Reinhard Genzel and Andrea M. Ghez for observing stars orbiting a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Jean Bourgain and Terence Tao for their important work in many areas of mathematics.
2013 (Polyarthritis): Peter K. Gregersen, Lars Klareskog, and Robert J. Winchester for their discoveries about how genes and environment cause rheumatoid arthritis.
2014 (Geosciences): Peter Molnar for his work on how continents deform and how mountains form.
2015 (Biosciences): Richard Lewontin and Tomoko Ohta for their studies on genetic polymorphism, which is about differences in genes within a population.
2016 (Astronomy and Mathematics): Roy Kerr and Roger Blandford for their work on rotating black holes. Yakov Eliashberg for his developments in a field of math called contact and symplectic topology.
2017 (Polyarthritis): Shimon Sakaguchi, Fred Ramsdell, and Alexander Rudensky for discovering regulatory T cells, which help control the immune system and prevent diseases like arthritis.
2018 (Geosciences): Syukuro Manabe and Susan Solomon for their contributions to understanding how gases in the atmosphere affect Earth's climate.
2019 (Biosciences): Sallie W. Chisholm for discovering and studying Prochlorococcus, a tiny organism that does a lot of photosynthesis on Earth.

Recent Winners: 2020s

2020 (Astronomy and Mathematics): Eugene N. Parker for his studies of the solar wind and magnetic fields. Enrico Bombieri for his important contributions to many areas of mathematics.
2021 (Polyarthritis): Daniel L. Kastner for defining autoinflammatory diseases, which are conditions where the immune system attacks the body.
2022 (Geosciences): Andrew H. Knoll for helping us understand the first three billion years of life on Earth and how life interacted with the environment.
2023 (Biosciences): Dolph Schluter for his work on how new species form and adapt to their environment.
2024 (Astronomy and Mathematics): Douglas Gough, Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard, and Conny Aerts for developing methods to study the inside of the Sun and other stars. Claire Voisin for her contributions to complex and algebraic geometry.
2025 (Polyarthritis): Christopher Goodnow and David Nemazee for discovering how the immune system learns to tolerate its own cells.

Crafoord Prize facts for kids

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