Austrian Academy of Sciences Awards Prestigious Prize to Hungarian Chemist

This year, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) awarded the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize to Hungarian chemist Edit Mátyus.

Edit Mátyus, head of the Molecular Quantum Dynamics Research Group at the Institute of Chemistry of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE, Budapest), won the award for her pioneering research in the field of molecular quantum dynamics.

The Academy praised her for developing high-precision quantum mechanics methods that allow the calculation of molecular quantum states by taking into account electron and atomic motions. Her research also enables accurate calculations with the addition of relativistic and quantum electrodynamic effects, and makes fundamental contributions to the fields of spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, and molecular astrophysics, said the statement by ELTE.

Edit Mátyus has already earned several prestigious awards for her research, and is the first researcher in Europe to win two of the most important professional prizes for young scientists working in the field of molecular quantum mechanics: the IAQMS Medal and the WATOC Dirac Medal.

The Ignaz L. Lieben Prize was established in 1863, by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and named after the founder of the Lieben banking house that funded it. The award was suspended in 1937, because the donor family had suffered Nazi persecution. Thanks to the financial support of an American couple, Isabel and Alfred Bader, the prize was revived and has been awarded again since 2004.

Each year, the $36,000 prize is awarded to a researcher under 40 years of age working in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, or Hungary who has made outstanding contributions in the fields of molecular biology, chemistry, or physics.

Via elte.hu, Featured image: Pixabay