Hubert Vaudry (France) and Albert Heck (The Netherlands) are this year's winners of the Descartes-Huygens Prize (EUR 23,000). The prize will be presented on 26 April at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam, with the French ambassador attending.

Albert Heck (born 1964) is a professor at Utrecht University and scientific director of the Netherlands Proteomics Centre. His research focuses on developing and implementing mass spectrometry, a method of analysis that allows rapid fingerprinting of the many thousands of proteins produced in the human body. Charting the identity, composition, structure, function, and interaction of proteins is an important part of determining their role in health and disease. The Descartes-Huygens Prize will allow Prof. Heck to pursue his collaboration with French researchers, particularly with the research teams at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGMCB) and the Université Louis Pasteur (both in Strasbourg).

Hubert Vaudry (born 1946) is the scientific director of the Laboratoire de Neuroendocrinologie Cellulaire et Moléculaire at the University of Rouen. Dr Vaudry has built up a renowned research institute with more than 400 scientists in the disciplines of physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, and physics. He also collaborates with the Nijmegen Institute for Neurosciences. Dr Vaudry will use some of the Descartes-Huygens Prize to organise an international conference on neuro-endocrinology in 2010, in collaboration with the Dutch professors Ron de Kloet, Peter Burbach, and Eric Roubos (Universities of Leiden, Utrecht, and Nijmegen, respectively).

The Descartes-Huygens Prize was introduced at the initiative of the French and Dutch governments in 1995 and is awarded to scientific researchers in recognition of the quality of their research and their contribution to Dutch-French cooperation. The EUR 23,000 prize is intended to finance a stay as a guest researcher in the Netherlands or France. The KNAW selects the French candidate and the Académie des Sciences the Dutch candidate.

Presentation ceremony

The presentation ceremony will take place at 1 p.m. on Thursday 26 April 2007 at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam. We hope you will be able to attend. Albert Heck will give a lecture entitled A Zealander - Descartes - Utrecht - A Puzzle: Proteins, the Pieces in the Puzzle of Life; Hubert Vaudry will lecture on Of Frogs and Men. A Quarter of a Century of Dutch-French Amicable Cooperation.

• Laudation for Professor Hubert Vaudry (pdf) by Professor Frits van Oostrom, president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Discours de Monsieur Jean-Michel Gaussot, Ambassadeur de France, à l'occasion de la remise du prix Descartes Huygens 2006 au Professeur Albert J.R. Heck - in French - in Dutch