Prize recipient 2022 | Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and furthermore holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Ice, Freshwater Marine Coupling and Climate Change at the University of Manitoba. She is a highly esteemed researcher on a global scale. She has received several orders and medals in recognition of her research, which is universally acknowledged and has been published in the highest ranking scientific journals. She has received multiple high-prestige grants nationally and internationally.

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has revolutionised her field, and her enormous impact – not only on the scientific community but also on society in general – as well as her insights on the paleoclimate have been instrumental in bringing focus to the pressing problems of climate change. She possesses a unique combination of vision, strong research leadership and openness to insights and methodologies from a broad range of scientific fields.

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has initiated and led several large international operations to drill, sample and interpret ice core data, and her research has fundamentally changed our view on the climate system.

The Greenland ice cores dated by Dorthe Dahl-Jensen demonstrate the impact on the atmosphere of human activities and natural hazards over the last 2000 years, including forest burning, industrialisation and volcanic eruptions. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has synchronised ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to identify 25 very abrupt climate changes.

Throughout her career, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has strived for excellency in research and in the training of talented researchers at all career stages.

Beyond her own research, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has a strong commitment to the scientific community and the public, and she has served on numerous research committees. She has been an advisor to governing institutions and politicians nationally, in the European Union and to the White House in Washington, D.C. She is an active and passionate communicator of research nationally and internationally. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has advanced Danish and international science, has excelled in frontier research and has perpetuated it to posterity.

The Prize Committee

Chair:

• Marie Louise Nosch, President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Professor at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen

International members in the humanities and social sciences:

• Joanna Story, Professor of Early Mediaeval History at the University of Leicester in the UK
• Heinrich Detering, Professor of Modern German Literature and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Göttingen in Germany

International members in the natural sciences:

• Susanne Renner, Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis in the USA

Members who have previously won the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes:

• Andreas Roepstorff (2015), Professor, Director of the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University
• Mette Birkedal Bruun (2017), Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen
• Karl Anker Jørgensen (2017), Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University
• Poul Nissen (2018), Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University