Nobel Laureate Martin Karplus Receives Highest Austrian Decoration

Martin Karplus (front) with Ambassador Petra Schneebauer (right) and guests.

Photo: Embassy of Austria

Martin Karplus has been awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria – the highest honor that can be bestowed on a non-head of state. The award was presented by the Austrian Ambassador to the United States, Petra Schneebauer, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 16, 2024.

Karplus was born in Vienna on March 15, 1930. His scientific, upper-class family was Jewish and therefore on the radar of the Nazis. His father was arrested, but he, his mother and brother managed to flee to Switzerland, France and the United States, where his father was later able to join them.

Martin Karplus was interested in the natural sciences, and from 1947 he took courses in chemistry, physics and biology at Harvard University. He completed his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology under Linus Pauling, who later received two Nobel Prizes. He developed early computer models that simulated the structures of molecules and the course of chemical processes. At the University of Illinois, he formulated the Karplus Equation, which is used to infer the spatial structure of molecules from nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy data.

In 1966, he returned to Harvard, where he still conducts research as professor emeritus. He also works at the University of Strasbourg in France. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013 together with Arieh Warshel and Michael Levitt for his work on models for complex chemical systems that are still in use today.

“It was a unique moment to honor the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Martin Karplus with the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold with Sash on behalf of Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and Federal Minister Martin Polaschek,” Ambassador Schneebauer wrote on X. She was pleased that many ‘Karplusians’ attended the ceremony. In February, the Grand Gold Medal of Honor was awarded to Austrian Nobel Prize winners Anton Zeilinger, Peter Handke, and Eric Kandel.