Edit Mátyus Wins This Year’s Ignaz L. Lieben Prize

The $36,000 prize is awarded annually to a researcher under the age of 40 working in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, or Hungary, who has made outstanding contributions in the fields of molecular biology, chemistry, or physics.

Edit Mátyus received the award for her pioneering research in the field of molecular quantum dynamics. According to the Academy’s commendation, she develops highly accurate quantum mechanical methods that make it possible to calculate molecular quantum states while accounting for both electronic and nuclear motion. Her research also enables precise calculations incorporating relativistic and quantum electrodynamical effects, contributing fundamentally to the fields of spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, and molecular astrophysics.

The Ignaz L. Lieben Prize was established in 1863 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and is named after the founder of the Lieben banking house, which funded the prize. It was suspended in 1937 due to the Nazi persecution of the Lieben family but was revived in 2004 with the financial support of Isabel and Alfred Badel. Many distinguished researchers have received the award, including, from our university, Csaba Pál (2008), former research fellow at the Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology; Mihály Kovács (2011), professor at the Department of Biochemistry; and Illés Farkas (2017), former senior research fellow of the MTA-ELTE Statistical and Biological Physics research group.

This year’s laureate, Edit Mátyus, has already earned numerous prestigious awards for her research. She is the first researcher in Europe to receive both of the most important professional prizes for young scientists in molecular quantum mechanics: the IAQMS Medal of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and the Dirac Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC).

(Source: www.oeaw.ac.at; images: ÖAW/Joseph Krpelan)