The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) has announced the winners of its 2007 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. At its meeting on 7 December 2006, the DFG Joint Committee named ten scientists and academics — eight men and two women — as recipients of Germany’s most highly endowed research award. For the first time, the prize winners for 2007 will receive up to 2.5 million euros (previously: 1.55 million euros) and be able to use these funds flexibly over a period of seven years (previously: five years) to finance their research.

The Leibniz Programme, established in 1985, aims to improve the working conditions of outstanding researchers, expand their research opportunities, relieve them of administrative duties, and make it easier for them to employ particularly qualified young researchers. Scientists and academics from any research area can be nominated for the prize. The DFG Nominations Committee considers the slate of candidates and selects researchers who can be expected to particularly advance their scientific achievements through this award. This year’s prize winners once again include several young researchers.

Today’s announcement brings the total number of prizes awarded under the Leibniz Programme to 249. Of these, 54 recipients have been from the humanities, 70 from the life sciences, 89 from the natural sciences, and 36 from engineering. A total of 25 awards have gone to women.

Of 129 nominations received for the 2007 prize, the following ten researchers were selected [...]

Prof. Dr. Oliver Primavesi (45), Classical Philology, Department of Classical Philology, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich (2.5 million euros)

Oliver Primavesi is a Grecian with an unusually broad scope who has successfully initiated a dialogue between his discipline and ancient philosophy. Furthermore he has presented important interpretations of Homer’s works and prepared the reconstruction of a lost Aristotelian treatise on the Pythagoreans by using Aristotle quotations found in other authors’ writings. Together with Alain Martin, he edited the Strasbourg Empedocles papyrus. For the first time, this edition makes a pre-Platonic philosophical text palpable in original fragments and, contrary to popular textbook opinion, portrays the philosopher not as representative of a wide-ranging emancipatory movement away from religious myth and toward the philosophical logos; rather, he shows how intricately cosmology and science, religion and philosophy of nature, myth and logos are interwoven in Empedoclean thought.

Oliver Primavesi initially studied music with success, but then decided to switch to classical philology. After studying in Heidelberg and Oxford, he obtained his doctorate in Frankfurt, where he went on to qualify as a university lecturer in 1997. Following a brief interlude as lecturer at the University of Frankfurt, he accepted a chair at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 2000. Here he is currently professor of Greek philology. Primavesi was awarded the Prix Reinach by the Association pour l’Encouragement des Études Grecques (Association for the Promotion of Greek Studies), and the Prix Joseph Gantrelle by the Académie Royale de Belgique (Belgian Royal Academy).