The van Leeuwen­hoek Medal

by Roberto

Jill Ban­field with NIOZ sci­en­tist Anja Spang. Photo: Eva­lien We­ter­ings. Source

When it comes to awards rec­og­niz­ing ma­jor con­tri­bu­tions to mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, my per­sonal fa­vorite is the van Leeuwen­hoek Medal given by the Royal Dutch So­ci­ety for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. Un­like most such ac­co­lades that are pre­sented year af­ter year, this honor has a long tra­di­tion of be­ing awarded every ten years (more or less). I be­lieve that by do­ing so, the mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent jury in charge of se­lect­ing the awardee can look at pos­si­ble can­di­dates with a much greater per­spec­tive of where their con­tri­bu­tions fit in the his­tory of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. As an afi­cionado of the his­tory of our dis­ci­pline I look at the track record of this award, go­ing back to 1877, and I have to say that the se­lec­tion com­mit­tees have by and large been right on the mark. Just look at the list of past re­cip­i­ents:

   1915  Sir David Bruce
  1925  Félix d'Herelle
  1935  Sergei Niko­lae­vitch Wino­grad­sky
  1950  Sel­man Abra­ham Waks­man
  1960  An­dré Lwoff
  1970  Cor­nelius Bernar­dus van Niel
  1981  Roger Yate Stanier
  1992  Carl Woese
  2003  Karl Stet­ter
  2015  Craig Ven­ter

This is an amaz­ing list. Yet, in some of those decades the choice had to be par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult. For ex­am­ple, where is Robert Koch? 1895? But you couldn't take Pas­teur off the list! And what about Jan Kluyver in 1935? But that would have Wino­grad­sky out. Im­pos­si­ble! I can imag­ine the tough dis­cus­sions that went on be­hind closed those. Then, I will con­fess that in one or two cases I do ques­tion the wis­dom of the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee. But I'll say no more, his­tory may prove me wrong.
 

Fig. 2. Jill Ban­field and Ken­neth Williams col­lect a sam­ple of wa­ter from the East River in Col­orado to study the ecosystem's mi­cro­bial life. Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt/Berkeley Lab. Source

Note that there are no women on this list. I am happy to say that has changed with the se­lec­tion of a win­ner for 2023. Since the Medal tra­di­tion­ally had only been awarded every 10–12 years, was the Royal Dutch So­ci­ety for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy in a hurry to name a new re­cip­i­ent just seven years af­ter the 2015 win­ner? Not so. Turns out that 2023 marks the 300th year since the death of An­tonie van Leeuwen­hoek. So, it stands to good rea­son that this year the Medal be awarded, de­spite it be­ing less that ten years since the last re­cip­i­ent. The Royal Dutch So­ci­ety for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy re­cently an­nounced Jil­lian Ban­field as the 2023 win­ner of the Medal. Bravo! In my opin­ion, Jill more than de­serves this very im­por­tant recog­ni­tion. For sev­eral decades now, Jill's in­no­v­a­tive ap­proaches to mi­cro­bial com­mu­nity analy­ses have been trans­for­ma­tional for the dis­ci­pline. Last Monday's post on the Borgs of Ar­chaea high­lighted but one of nu­mer­ous amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tions from Jill's group that have cov­ered vir­tu­ally every as­pect of the mi­cro­bial world. All of us here at STC heartily ap­plaud this se­lec­tion and of­fer Jill our most heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions.

 

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