Otto Warburg Medal 2023 for Matthias Mann

Prof. Dr. Matthias Mann from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry has been awarded the Otto Warburg Medal 2023. The Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM) as well as its cooperation partners, the information analytics company Elsevier and  Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) journals, honoured Prof. Mann for his outstanding findings in the field of mass spectrometry-based proteom analysis. On March 24, 2023, he received the 25,000 euro prize at the Mosbach Kolloquium.

The relatively young field of proteomics determines and characterizes the totality of all proteins of a cell or an organism - the proteome. Due to the dynamics of the object of investigation, analyses are usually highly complex and lengthy. Proteomics significantly simplified mass spectromety of proteins.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Mann is one of the pioneers of the introduction of mass spectrometry into proteomics. Already at a young age, he was involved in the development of electrospray ionization of proteins. In the medical field, his scientific work has played a decisive role in making it possible to derive causes of disease and therapies individually tailored to a patient from a single tissue section of a biopsy. Mann is therefore also considered a pioneer of individualized medicine.

Since 2005, he has been director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich and a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2013 and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 2019. The Institute for Scientific Information lists him as one of the 250 most cited scientists in his field.

"Our independent jury of experts has decided to honor the outstanding scientific lifetime achievement of Prof. Dr. Matthias Mann with the Otto Warburg Medal. With the development and advancement of methods for the systematic investigation of proteins, he has significantly facilitated the performance of proteomic analyses in life science and medicine. At the same time, he has always been a pioneer for new applications of proteomics to solve fundamental questions," said Prof. Dr. Blanche Schwappach-Pignataro, formerly President of the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.