Utrecht University: Frits Hilgen wins prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli award

Frits Hilgen external linkwill receive the prize at Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei’s headquarters in Rome on Friday November 12th. The Accademia is one of Europe’s oldest and most distinguished scientific societies, and was founded in 1603 with Galileo Galilei as one of its first members.

According to the scientific society, Frits Hilgen is an absolute innovater who, starting from detailed rock studies, has built the Astronomical Time Scale for the last 30 million years. His work has triggered similar research for various parts of the geological time scale of the past 545 million years, with fundamental applications for dating and understanding climate change induced by orbital parameters recorded in marine and continental sedimentary archives.

The Antonio Feltrinelli prize is awarded every five years for outstanding achievements in literature, philosophy, mathematics and history, among others. It’s only the second time that an Earth Scientist has won the prize, the first one being awarded to Harry Hammond Hess in 1966. Hess was, coincidentally, once a part of the expeditions of Andries Vening Meinesz: the geophysicist that the Vening Meinesz building external linkwas named after.