Mario Markus Prize for Ludic Science

Here you will find the call for nominations for the Mario Markus Prize 2024.

Nomination deadline: May 31, 2024.

“Ludic” is derived from the Latin word “ludens”, which means playing.

With its new 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.

More information about Ludic Science.

The work should have been published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2019 or later.

Preisträgerin 2023: Juliane Simmchen, TU Dresden und University of Strathclyde

Die Preisträgerin Juliane Simmchen erhielt den Mario-Markus-Preis für ihre wissenschaftliche Arbeit über das biomimetische Verhalten in künstlich hergestellter aktiver Materie. Insbesondere in ihrer Publikation "Apparent phototaxis enabled by Brownian motion" wird der spielerische Charakter der Entdeckung deutlich und wird deshalb ausgezeichnet. 

Zur Publikation

Preisträgerteam 2022: Johann Ostmeyer, Universität Liverpool, Christoph Schürmann, Universität Bonn, und Carsten Urbach, Universität Bonn

Das Preisträgerteam bestehend aus Dr. Johann Ostmeyer, Christoph Schürmann und Prof. Dr. Carsten Urbach erhielten den Mario-Markus-Preis für ihre wissenschaftliche Arbeit über das Flugverhalten von Bierdeckeln. Die Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker würdigt damit herausragende wissenschaftliche Arbeiten mit spielerischem Charakter. Die Preisträger überzeugten die Jury mit ihrem unkonventionellen Ansatz und wurden am 6. Dezember 2022 in Frankfurt am Main ausgezeichnet.

Zur Publikation

Mario Markus

Prof. Dr. Mario Markus is the donor of the award. He grew up as a 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 did research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main in 1974 before he moved 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 biochemist and biophysicist Benno Hess. In 1988, he habilitated at the University of Dortmund, where he worked first 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.   

More information about Mario Markus

Jury members

Prof. Dr. Mario Markus, Dortmund (Founder)
Prof. Dr. Barbara Albert, University Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Michael Schreckenberg, University Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Joachim Stolze, TU Dortmund
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Kremer, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen