Shaw Prize honors cryo-electron tomography innovator

Biochemist Wolfgang Baumeister, director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, has received the 2025 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.

Cryogenic electron tomography (cryo-ET) uses a cryo-electron microscope to collect 3D data about a biological sample by tipping it back and forth relative to an electron beam. The technique can offer more insight into structures in their context in the cell than standard cryo-electron microscopy delivers. Baumeister is a leader in the emerging field of visual proteomics, which proposes to use cryo-ET and other techniques to identify proteins within cells and understand how they work together. Since his arrival at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in 1983, his laboratory has reported structures for increasingly complex macromolecular machines, including nuclear pore complexes, viruses, chloroplasts, and the structures that anchor cilia and flagella to cells. But his lab is best known for its contribution to understanding proteasomes and other mechanisms of protein turnover.

The Shaw Prizes have been awarded annually since 2004 to recognize laureates in three areas: astronomy, mathematical sciences, and life science and medicine. Each award comes with a monetary prize of $1.2 million.