Four outstanding researchers receive the highest awards in Dutch science, the Spinoza and StevinPremies in October. Research financier NWO announced this. Geneticist Thijn Brummelkamp and historian Judith Pollmann will be rewarded this year with the Spinoza premium. The Stevin premium goes to Ilse Aben, researcher Earth observation and Ingrid Robeyns, Ethicus. All four researchers receive an amount of 1.5 million euros, which they can spend at their own discretion on scientific research and activities around it.
Judith Pollmann: ‘In our history image there is a gap in the first half of the 18th century’
The historian Judith Pollmann (1964) is professor of early modern history in Leiden. According to the jury of the Spinoza premium, she is “a curious scientist who challenges her colleagues with new perspectives and an original approach”.
She recently published a book about the Dutch Civil War that – you could say – was the real story behind the national myth of the uprising against Spain in the sixteenth century (1572. Civil war in the Netherlands). And she investigates unusual sources, such as local chronicles.
Judith Pollmann.
Photo Studio Oostrum
And partly those chronicles now inspire one of the research topics that she wants to spend the Spinoza premium. She says it in a video interview. “In our history statue is a gap in the first half of the eighteenth century. We have a good story about what we called the Golden Age until 1672, and we also know everything from 1750, with the lighting, the patriot movement and the rise of the nation state. But in between? It often comes down to the enormous national debt and that the military did not go so well.”
But, she says, “Why were those men of the Pek and Tear of the 17th century suddenly no longer able to embrace innovation? In those chronicles, I see traces of something completely different. Those chronicles then contain more and more figures and they hit a different tone about ways to solve problems. Cities, but in those of the provinces, Holland, but also the States of Overijssel, or Gelderland, they had the power to think about transport, postal services, demography. “
And Pollmann wants to know much more. For example, what knowledge infrastructure existed in the countryside of, say, 1450 to 1850. ‘The’ native ‘knowledge about how to deal with the landscape and the water, with agricultural techniques, with food, everything. In fact, everything that is later as superstum and backward handy, you can now see those old customs, only because you can already see those old customs, already because you can see those old customs now.
And that is really relevant to our twenty-first-century people, Pollmann advocates from her office in Leiden. “This kind of research can also help us to deal better with different methods of knowledge acquisition, in respect for other epistemologies as UNESCO puts it so nicely.”
Hendrik Spiering
Thijn Brummelkamp: ‘Actually this is the only thing that I am really good at’
Thijn Brummelkamp (1975) is scientific director of the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and professor of Experimental Genetics at Utrecht University. He received a Spinoza premium for his research into the function of genes in human cells.
“I was very pleasantly surprised when the chairman of NWO called me about the prize,” says Brummelkamp on the phone. “It happened just before I went to give a lecture in Utrecht, but of course I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on. I feel very grateful for this recognition for the work of me and my colleagues.”
Thijn Brummelkamp.
Photo Studio Oostrum
During his PhD research on the NKI, Brummelkamp methods developed to eliminate specific genes in cells. “Scientists had been looking for this for a long time. It was soon applied worldwide and that also helped with my career. After my promotion I was allowed to set up my own research group in America.” In 2011, Brummelkamp returned to the NKI with his research group, where he continued the same research.
“What we do is best to see when” interviewing “of cells,” he explains. “We ask cells how they perform certain tasks, and what genes they use for this. This allows you to gain fundamental knowledge about the effect, but you can also use it to test the starting points of new medicines.”
“I found out that this work is the only thing that I am really good at, and that gives me a lot of enthusiasm. I used to see how devices work by removing them. Now I do the same with the human cell: the most complex device in nature. I am ambitious and put a lot of energy in it, but that energy is sometimes wrong. year on the wrong track.
The great thing about the Spinoza premium is that you can use money for unbound research, says Brummelkamp. “Most of the time, research financiers want to know exactly what will be investigated and discovered. Dsat is not necessary now. I would like to ask the money more questions about the tasks and functions of cells, for example about cell death. When the DNA of cells is damaged, a security mechanism ensures that they die and be tired of this. For example, we can tell us more about how patients respond to chemotherapy. “
Marcel Hobma
Ingrid Robeyns: ‘I don’t come from a family where people say: go and get a PhD in Cambridge’
Has Ingrid Robeyn’s lucky lucky with the allocation of the Stevin premium, or is the award mainly its own merit?
On the phone from London, where she has just attended a conference, the professor of Ethics bursts out laughing. “Both, I think. I decided to do this form of philosophy – socially involved, interdisciplinary – was a choice. I see that as my own merit. But I was also lucky.”
Ingrid Robeyns.
Photo Studio Oostrum
The latter, for example, when she saw the famous economist and philosopher Amartya Sen if she could promote him. “I don’t come from a family where people say: go to Cambridge. I thought it was impossible for a long time. A friend made me promise me in a cultural café in the middle of the night that I would try. I was lucky with that.” In 2003 she obtained his PhD at Sen.
The demand for merit, happiness (and breakdown) is relevant, because the concepts play a major role in the work of Robeyns (1972), born in Leuven and since 2014 professor of Ethics at Utrecht University. She made a name for himself with criticism of the meritocratic ideology of merit and with her plea for ‘limitarism’, a hard upper limit to the ability of citizens. Too great inequality in capital is socially undesirable, she argues in the public book Limitarism (2023), and especially a matter of bad luck or happiness. “The vast majority of wealthy people simply had more happiness than others,” she said in an interview in NRC in February 2024.
Robeyns has also committed himself in recent years to the fight against cutbacks in higher education and is a critic of the “neo -liberal” university that has become a “diploma factory”, she wrote in this newspaper. In an opinion article together with Rens Bos and Remco Breuker, she set up NRC That universities no longer know how to “deal with students who also want to develop as a democratic citizen and moral being”.
NWO praises Robeyns because it offers “concrete solutions for inequality and democratic decay” and “shows that philosophy can contribute to real change.” Robeyns: “The importance of science for society is often first of all thinking of innovations that deliver something directly or that you can make a revenue model. With philosophy it is different. I do not develop a vaccine that works quickly. Philosophical concepts need more time to find the entrance.”
What will she do with the money? “I would really like to raise an international group of people, physically, who have thought about shaping a new, caring and sustainable economy.”
Sjoerd de Jong
Ilse Aben: ‘I want to further expand the practical use’
“It is extremely honorable to get this prize,” says Ilse Aben. “I see it as recognition for the very special Dutch Tropomi instrument and everyone who has worked on it.”
That it is now a lot about methane emissions Tropomi. The instrument, which consists of advanced spectrometers combined with a telescope, is on the Sentinel 5P satellite from ESA. It measures gases such as methane and carbon monoxide, which occur in relatively small concentrations in the atmosphere. “But make no mistake, those gases do largely determine our living environment,” says Aben.
Ilse Aben.
Photo Studio Oostrum
Aben, senior researcher at Sron and special appointment professor at the VU, receives the prize because one of the initiators is Tropomi and with her team is still committed to using measurements to combat climate change. “Thanks to its pioneering work from space, invisible problems are made visible – and resolved,” writes the NWO.
Methane is after co2 The most important greenhouse gas, it causes a third of climate warming. Methane remains short in the atmosphere, about 10 years, while co2 Hundreds of years will continue to exist. “That makes methane low -hanging fruit,” says Aben. “If you stop emitting now, the climate will benefit relatively quickly.”
Tropomi visuals great emhans from methane, point sources such as a leak in oil and gas infrastructure or emissions from coal mines or from landfill places. “It gave a dramatic picture, when we first saw it. We had no idea that there are so many of those superputs worldwide. But it did offer the opportunity to act,” says Aben. Every day Tropomi measures the entire earthmosphere in a resolution of 5 by 7 kilometers, 20 million measurements per day. If a lot of methane has been measured with tropomi somewhere, other satellite instruments are zoomed in on it to get a picture of up to 25 meters. Based on this two-stage rocket, the UN Institute undertakes Imeo Action towards emotors.
“It is very satisfactory to be able to contribute scientifically to such a system,” says Aben. “You already notice it in my enthusiasm, and my younger colleagues are also very motivated. I want to further expand the practical application of the scientific work. For example, we support garbage dumps with reducing emissions. New satellites will soon be launched, it will be a nice scientific challenge to get along from the joint measurements.”
Laura Wismans
