The Crafoord Prize is one of the world´s most prestigious science prizes awarded in mathematics and astronomy, geosciences, biosciences and polyarthritis since 1982. It is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund. The prize sum of SEK 6 million makes the Crafoord Prize one of the world´s largest scientific prizes.
ERC grantees Crafoord laureates
Conny Aerts – Astronomy, 2024
She won the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy in 2024 “for developing the methods of asteroseismology and their application to the study of the interior of the Sun and of other stars.”
- Read bio Conny Aerts
Conny Clara Aerts, born 26 January 1966, is a Belgian (Flemish) professor in astrophysics. Aerts studied mathematics at Antwerp University and completed her PhD in astrophysics in 1993 at KU Leuven. She was independent Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) from 1993 to 2001, spending research time at various institutes worldwide, while also acting as advocate for equal opportunities for women in science. She was appointed lecturer at KU Leuven in 2001 and completed the promotion path to full professor by 2007. Conny Aerts was awarded two Advanced Grants and a Synergy Grant by the European Research Council. She became the first woman to be awarded the Belgian Francqui Prize (2012) and the FWO Excellence Prize (2020) in the category of Science & Technology. In 2022, she became the third woman to be awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her pioneering work and leadership in asteroseismology.
Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard – Astronomy, 2024
He won the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy in 2024 “for developing the methods of asteroseismology and their application to the study of the interior of the Sun and of other stars.”
- Read bio Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard
Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard, born 6 October 1950, is a Danish astronomer at Aarhus University in Denmark, specialised in asteroseismology and helioseismology. Christensen-Dalsgaard obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1978, under the supervision of Douglas Gough. He has been the head of "Rumforskningsudvalget" (the committee of space of the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) and the Stellar Astrophysics Centre (SAC) supported by the Danish National Research Foundation. He is co-investigator on the Kepler mission and, with Hans Kjeldsen in Aarhus, leads the 500+ researchers in the Kepler and TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortia (KASC and TASC). He is International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Claire Voisin - Mathematics, 2024
She won the Crafoord Prize for Mathematics in 2024 “for outstanding contributions to complex and algebraic geometry, including Hodge theory, algebraic cycles, and hyperkähler geometry.”
- Read bio Claire Voisin
Claire Voisin, born 4 March 1962, is a French mathematician known for her work in algebraic geometry. She is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and works as a senior researcher at CNRS.
Voisin won the European Mathematical Society Prize in 1992 and the Clay Research Award in 2008 for her disproof of the Kodaira conjecture on deformations of compact Kähler manifolds. In 2007, she was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics for, in addition to her work on the Kodaira conjecture, solving the generic case of Green's conjecture on the syzygies of the canonical embedding of an algebraic curve. In 2009 she became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In May 2016, she was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. She was awarded the Heinz Hopf prize (ETH Zurich) in 2015 and the Shaw prize (jointly with János Kollár) in 2017. She was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2021 and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. For 2023 she was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (jointly with Yakov Eliashberg).
Lars Klareskog – Polyarthritis, 2013
He won the Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis “for discoveries concerning the role of different genetic factors and their interactions with environmental factors in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and clinical management of rheumatoid arthritis”.
- Read bio Lars Klareskog
Lars Klareskog, born 1945, is a Swedish physician, immunologist, and rheumatologist, known for research into the etiology and pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Klareskog received his medical degree from the University of Uppsala in 1974 and received his doctorate in 1978. From 1990 to 1993, he held the chair of clinical immunology at Uppsala University. He then held the chair of rheumatology at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska Clinic until 2012. Between 2008 and 2017 he was also director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska. He has been a visiting professor and visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School, Imperial College London (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology), Cornell University Hospital of Special Surgery, Seattle, Leeds and Denver (University of Colorado). From 1995 to 2012 he was a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet.
Ilkka Hanski † – Biosciences, 2011
He won the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences “for his pioneering studies on how spatial variation affects the dynamics of animal and plant populations”.
- Read bio Ilkka Hanski
Ilka Aulis Hanski, born 14 February 1953, was a Finnish ecologist specialised in studying species living in fragmented landscapes and metapopulation ecology.
He received his Doctoral degree from the University of Oxford in 1979. He worked in the Academy of Finland from 1978 to 1988 and from 1991 to 1992. He worked as an acting professor of zoology in the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1991, and was appointed (full) professorship of zoology in 1993. Hanski served as an Academy Professor for the Academy of Finland from 1996 until his death. In 2000, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
