Mario Markus Prize
Dr. Lauren Niu is awarded the Mario Markus Prize 2025 for her innovative insights into the geometry of knitted fabrics. She discovered that even simple stitches, such as knit and purl, lead to complex geometric patterns. Instead of modelling the material at the level of individual stitches, she created swatches, large-scale models and hand-knitted fabrics. She observed that the swatches tend to roll up, generating Gaussian curvature. She proposed that knitted fabrics could be modelled as thin elastic sheets that maintain their area while forming saddle points, with orientations varying between knit and purl.
Her playful approach to research reflects the criteria for which the Mario Markus Prize is awarded.
With its Mario Markus Prize for Ludic Science, the GDCh wants to recognise a scientific work in the field of natural science that is “playful”. The term “playful” is used here to designate discoveries that arose from research that was undertaken not with any specific application in mind, but simply out of curiosity about the natural world.
The work should have been published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2020 or later.
The GDCh’s Mario Markus Prize for Ludic Science honours outstanding research in the natural sciences that arose from curiosity-driven, “playful” exploration rather than a specific practical application. The prize is endowed with €10,000 plus travel expenses and will be presented at a special award ceremony. Please submit a short covering letter, CV and at least one publication describing the work, published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2020 or later.
The winner Juliane Simmchen received the Mario Markus Prize for her scientific work on the biomimetic behaviour of artificially produced active matter. The playful nature of the discovery is particularly clear in her publication "Apparent phototaxis enabled by Brownian motion" and is therefore honoured.
The award-winning team consisting of Dr. Johann Ostmeyer, Christoph Schürmann and Prof. Dr. Carsten Urbach received the Mario Markus Prize for their scientific work on the flight behaviour of beer mats. The Society of German Chemists honours outstanding scientific work with a playful character. The winners impressed the jury with their unconventional approach and were honoured on 6 December 2022 in Frankfurt am Main.
Prof. Dr. Mario Markus is the donor of the award. He grew up as the child of German parents in Chile, where he studied mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. In 1965, he continued his studies of mathematics and physics in Heidelberg, where he also received his doctorate in 1973. Prof. Markus conducted research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main in 1974 before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Nutritional Physiology (now MPI for Molecular Physiology) in Dortmund in 1975 as a research associate in the department of the biochemist and biophysicist Benno Hess. In 1988, he completed his habilitation at the University of Dortmund, where he initially worked as a Privatdozent and, from 1997, as an associate professor. Prof. Markus has led his own research group at the MPI of Molecular Physiology since 1993.
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Kremer, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Chair)
Prof. Dr. Barbara Albert, University Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Michael Schreckenberg, University Duisburg-Essen
Dr. Juliane Simmchen, The University of Strathclyde/UK
Prof. Dr. Joachim Stolze, TU Dortmund
Prof. Dr. Mario Markus, Dortmund (Founder)
