Nobel Prize installation at the University of Vienna C: Universität Wien / derknopfdruecker
Honorary doctorate for Emmanuelle Charpentier
On Wednesday, March 12, 2025, the University celebrated its Dies Academicus; it was founded 660 years ago. Rector Sebastian Schütze marked the occasion by awarding an honorary doctorate to Emmanuelle Charpentier, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The academic ceremony was followed by the unveiling of the „Nobel Prize and the University of Vienna" installation, which had been adapted and expanded to include Emmanuelle Charpentier and Anton Zeilinger.
"With the honorary doctorate of the University of Vienna, Emmanuelle Charpentier receives a highly deserved award from the University of Vienna," said Rector Sebastian Schütze. The Nobel Prize winners Emmanuelle Charpentier and Anton Zeilinger also received their place in the main building of the University of Vienna.
After the academic ceremony, the newly adapted installation "Nobel Prize and University of Vienna - group picture with question mark" was unveiled in the Aula of the University of Vienna - in the presence of Emmanuelle Charpentier, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020, Anton Zeilinger, Nobel Prize in Physics 2022, and the artist duo Bele Marx & Gilles Mussard.
About Emmanuelle Charpentier
Emmanuelle Charpentier worked and researched at the University of Vienna from 2002 to 2009. She was a research group leader, visiting professor and assistant professor at the Institute of Microbiology & Genetics at the University of Vienna. In 2006, she habilitated at the Center for Molecular Biology at the University of Vienna and subsequently worked as a laboratory head and associate professor at the Max Perutz Labs of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna until 2009. During this time, she laid the foundation for the groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, for which she and her colleague Jennifer Doudna were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.
About Anton Zeilinger
Anton Zeilinger attended the Humanistic High School in Vienna and studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he received his doctorate in 1971. After working as a research assistant for Helmut Rauch at the Vienna Atomic Institute, several stays abroad and his habilitation at the Vienna University of Technology in 1979, he first became an associate university professor and then a full university professor of experimental physics; first at the University of Innsbruck in 1990 and from 1999 at the University of Vienna. Anton Zeilinger was the founding director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and President of the ÖAW from 2013-2022.
His research focuses on the fundamentals of quantum physics. He was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with entangled photons.
