The award is presented annually to two researchers – one from Ukraine and one from abroad – for outstanding achievements in the natural sciences, technology, or the humanities and liberal arts. Leonid Bulavin, professor of physics at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, was honored alongside Wolffram Schröer for their work on understanding the physics of liquid matter.

Wolffram Schröer in particular was able to show that some changes in substances – even if they are caused by electrical attraction between charged particles – behave very similarly to substances without such electrical forces. Due to theoretical reasons and faulty experiments, this had long been unclear and the subject of much debate.

Wolffram Schröer was Professor of Physical Chemistry in Faculty 02: Biology / Chemistry from 1978 to 2008. After retiring, he remained active as an academic at the university,a was involved in various collaborations, as well as being the editor-in-chief of the Molecular Liquids journal.