Hungarian Nobel laureate donates prize money for Ukrainian people in need

Ferenc Krausz, the 2023 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, founded a charity to help Ukrainian people affected by war and in urgent need, while also striving to create lasting value in the country. He donates one-third of the 11 million Swedish crowns (approximately 300 thousand euros) of the highly coveted award, most of his prize money, to the same charity.

This year’s winners

Ferenc Krausz holds dual nationalities, as he is both Hungarian and Austrian. Yet, he achieved the most prestigious science award, the Nobel Prize, for his work in Germany. Mr. Krausz has been leading the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics’ Attosecond Division since 2003, where his team’s breakthroughs have earned high acclaim from fellow scientists.

According to the official citation for the prize, the laureates were honoured for “experimental methods for generating attosecond light pulses to study the dynamics of electrons in matter.” Mr Krausz shares this recognition with Pierre Agostini and Anne L’Huillier, who are also acclaimed scientists and collaborators. They have each received numerous awards in recent years, most notably the Wolf Prize, often considered an indicator of future laureates.

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Nobel laureate and philanthropist

Even though he had long been considered a favourite for the prize, Mr Krausz told Deutschlandfunk, the German public broadcast radio, that he was quite surprised when the Swedish Academy called. However, his attention is not limited to physics. According to portfolio.hu, the Hungarian Nobel laureate founded Science4People, a charity aimed at uniting the scientific community to assist the war-torn people of Ukraine. Through their initial projects, Science4People has helped approximately 30 children who had lost their homes in eastern Ukraine, finding shelter in a primary school in a small village in western Ukraine. In addition, more than 300 pupils attending school in a village on the Hungarian border received digital learning tools.

Read more: New Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Krausz slammed Orbán government?

Author: Dániel Huszár

Source: portfolio.hu