A look at the data on 455 prizewinners on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2025

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize is awarded for outstanding research achievements and is currently endowed with €2.5 million. Up to ten prizes may be awarded each year. The aim is to honour top-level researchers of outstanding calibre, expand their research opportunities and make it easier for them to employ highly qualified early career researchers.

Since the first award was made in 1986, 455 prizewinners have received a total of approximately €880 million in prize money. They include researchers from all scientific disciplines covered by the DFG subject classification system, with just under one third receiving the award for research in the natural sciences (see Figure 1). 

They are followed by the life sciences at 29 per cent and the humanities and social sciences at 23 per cent. Prizewinners in the engineering sciences form the smallest group at 16 per cent. 

Over a period of four decades, there has been a shift in the distribution of prizewinners among scientific disciplines: whereas initially approximately two thirds of prizewinners were from the natural sciences, in the current period from 2016 to 2025 this figure has fallen to just one quarter. Meanwhile, the share of prizewinners recognised for research in the humanities and social sciences has increased from approximately 19 to 28 per cent, and in the life sciences from one quarter to almost one third (see Figure 2).

Among the total of 377 male prizewinners, most received the award for research in the natural sciences and life sciences (34 and 28 per cent respectively), while among the 78 female prizewinners, most received it for research in the life sciences (37 per cent) and in the humanities and social sciences (32 per cent; see Figure 3).

The average age of prizewinners at the time of the award was 46 in the first four years (1986 to 1989), subsequently falling to 43 in the following years. Since 2010, the average age of prizewinners has steadily increased and most recently stood at 49 in the period from 2022 to 2025 (see Figure 4). Since men account for around 82 per cent of prizewinners and women for around 18 per cent, the overall average age is largely determined by the average age of the male prizewinners. Female prizewinners differ only slightly in terms of their average age, however.

Institutional background of prizewinners – federal state and type of research institution

The clear majority of prizewinners are concentrated in the three most populous federal states, namely Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria (see Figure 5). Over the past two decades there has been an increase in the number of prizewinners from Bremen and Thuringia.

Figure 6 shows the type of research institution at which prizewinners are based. These are predominantly universities, followed at some distance by Max Planck Society institutes.

Other awards received by winners of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize

Winners of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize are often well-known public figures who have received many other distinctions. Of the 455 prizewinning researchers, for example, 450 are listed in the German-language version of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia; for 278 of them, an entry also exists in English. The following analyses are based on information from Wikidata, the underlying data source for Wikipedia.

Figure 7 lists the 15 most frequent additional awards recorded in Wikidata in addition to the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (see column “Type”, title “Top 15”). An indication is also provided as to whether the researchers were awarded these distinctions before or after receiving the Leibniz Prize. In addition, all other DFG prizes are listed, and also the Nobel Prizes, due to their outstanding significance (see column “Type”, title “DFG” or “Nobel Prize”). This shows that some awards typically precede or follow the Leibniz Prize. The Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art, which has been in existence since 1853, for example, followed the Leibniz Prize in all 25 cases. Named after the physicist and former DFG president, the DFG’s Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize is also known as the “little Leibniz Prize”. It has been awarded since 1977 to researchers at an early stage of their career. In 22 instances it was awarded to researchers prior to their receiving the “main” Leibniz Prize.

The fact that the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize is sometimes referred to as the “German Nobel Prize” is not unfounded: a total of 12 researchers have received a Nobel Prize after being awarded the Leibniz Prize – five in chemistry (Hartmut Michel, Gerhard Ertl, Stefan Hell, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Benjamin List), three in physics (Theodor Hänsch, Reinhard Genzel, Ferenc Krausz) and four in physiology or medicine (Bert Sakmann, Erwin Neher, Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard, Svante Pääbo). On average, the Nobel Prize was awarded to these researchers about 12 years after they won the Leibniz Prize. The time interval ranges from just two years (Hartmut Michel, 1986/1988) to three decades (Svante Pääbo and Reinhard Genzel).

List of prizewinners

Table 1 lists the 455 recipients of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by year of award, name, research institution and the federal state in which the latter is located. The names of the prizewinners link to the corresponding Wikipedia entry, where available. These entries often provide further information on the biographies, academic careers and research topics of the prizewinners.