German Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology laureate Prof. Erwin Neher is the first winner of China's Friendship Award for foreign experts from Hong Kong and Macau, according to a report by the Chinese-language newspaper Macao Daily News this week.
Xinhua has reported that State Councillor Shen Yiqin in Beijing on Monday presented the Friendship Award to 100 foreign experts working in the country in recognition of their contributions to China's development. The report quoted Shen as saying that "foreign experts have made outstanding contributions to China's modernisation drive, which the Chinese people will always remember."
Prof. Neher, 80, is the director of "Neher's Biophysics Laboratory for Innovative Drug Discovery" of the private Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST). The laboratory was set up in 2016.
Prof. Neher is the Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, northern Germany. He heads the emeritus group of the institute's Department of Membrane Biophysics.
According to the website of the institute, Neher studied physics at Technical University (TUM) and the University of Wisconsin. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Göttingen, where Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, both towering figures of the Communist Party of China (CPC), studied in the 1920s.
Founded in 2000, MUST describes itself as the largest multi-disciplinary university in Macau. According to Macao Daily News, the university's chancellor, Dr Liu Chak Wan, and president, Prof. Lee Hun-wei, attended Monday's ceremony in Beijing.
Usually, the Friendship Award ceremony takes place annually in Beijing on September 30, i.e., on the eve of National Day.
Caption: Undated file photo of Prof. Erwin Neher. - Photo courtesy of Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences
