Heritage Prize

Marie and August Krogh Prize

The Marie and August Krogh Prize is awarded annually to a health researcher in Denmark whose work has made an outstanding contribution to biomedical science. The Prize is awarded by the Organisation of Danish Medical Societies and funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

In the name of the pioneers

The Prize was established in 1969 as the August Krogh Prize, named after one of Denmark’s most eminent scientists and the 1920 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

During a lecture tour in the United States in 1922, August’s wife Marie, who had diabetes, told her husband about research on treatment of diabetes in Canada. Following a visit to the University of Toronto, August Krogh returned to Denmark with the right to manufacture insulin in the Scandinavian countries. This was the beginning of the establishment of what is now the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Novo Nordisk A/S, one of the world’s leading companies in the treatment of diabetes.

In 2009, the Prize was renamed the Marie and August Krogh Prize, in recognition of Marie’s role as a pioneering female researcher and in the years leading up to the establishment of the Foundation.

The Prize is accompanied by DKK 1.5 million, of which DKK 1.25 million is a research grant and the rest a personal award.

The Prize is conferred every year at the annual conference of the Organisation of Danish Medical Societies.