---
title: "Eduard Rhein Foundation"
chunk: 1/1
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Rhein_Foundation"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:08:57.354296+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Eduard Rhein Foundation was founded in 1976 in Hamburg (Germany) by Eduard Rhein. The goal of the foundation is to promote scientific research, learning, arts, and culture. This is done in particular by granting awards for outstanding achievements in research and/or development in the areas of radio, television and information technology.


== Awards and honors ==
The foundation grants the following awards and honors:

Technology Award (30,000 euro)
Cultural Award (10,000 euro)
Ring of Honor (moonstone set in gold) for outstanding work which has been accomplished over a long period of time, the number of living bearers of rings is limited to ten


== Ring of Honor Recipients ==
1980 	Vladimir K. Zworykin
1981 	Walter Bruch
1982 	Max Grundig
1983 	Karl Holzamer
1984 	Herbert von Karajan
1985 	Hugh Greene
1986 	Masaru Ibuka
1987 	Werner Höfer
1988 	Ray Dolby
1992 	Rudolf Hell
1994 	Count Lennart Bernadotte of Wisborg
1998 	Heinz Zemanek
1999   Vladimir A. Kotelnikov
2000 	Heinrich von Pierer
2001 	Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker
2002 	Hans-Jürgen Warnecke
2004 	Hubert S. Markl
2007 	Valentina Tereshkova
2008 	Herbert Mataré
2012 	Michael Sohlman
2015   Wolfgang Heckl
2020   Gerd Hirzinger


=== Award winners ===
1979 to 2006 award winners are listed in the German article.
2007:

Technology Award: Prof. Dr. Dr. Gerhard Sessler for the design of electret transducers, the invention of the foil electret microphone (together with James West) and of the silicon condenser microphone (with D. Hohm).
Cultural Award: Prof. Dr. Paul Dobrinski for the publication of scientific and technical works of young scientists.
Ring of Honor: Dr. Dr. Valentina Tereshkova for her contributions in the area of crewed space flight.
2008

Technology Award: Siegfried Dais and Uwe Kiencke for invention, international standardisation and propagation of the "Controller Area Network" (CAN), an open, reliable real-time communication system for embedded devices in automotive, medical and automation applications as well as in consumer goods, which today dominates the world market.
Cultural Award: Norbert Lossau for brilliantly written science and technology related articles published in the newspaper "Die Welt". Over a sustained period of time his outstanding contributions are received by the readers as splendidly written, comprehensive in scope yet to read sources of information.
Ring of Honor: Herbert F. Mataré for his invention of the solid state amplifier in 1948, performed independently and parallel to Bell Lab's transistor. Further, in recognition of his important contributions to information technology, solid-state physics and -manufacturing over a period of more than 60 years.
2009 

Technology Award: Dr. Martin Schadt Electro-optical core technologies for flat panel displays
2010 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr. Jens-Rainer Ohm and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wiegand Contributions to video coding and to the development of the H.264/AVC standard
2011 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hilberg 	Invention of the radio clock
2012 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr. Bradford Parkinson Development of the Global Positioning System (GPS)
Technology Award: Dov Moran for inventing the USB flash drive.
2013 

Technology Award: Ching W. Tang for inventing the first highly efficient organic light emitting diode and further contributions to the development of organic semiconductor devices.
2014 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr. Dr. Kees Schouhamer Immink for contributions to the theory and practice of channel codes that enable efficient and reliable optical recording, and creative contributions to digital recording technology.
2015 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. rer. nat. h.c. mult. Karlheinz Brandenburg, Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Grill and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Herre for decisive contributions to the development and practical implementation of the mp3 audio coding technique.
2016 

Technology Award: Prof. Blake S. Wilson,  Prof. Dipl-.Ing. Dr.tech. Erwin Hochmair and Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Dr. med. Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer for the development and commercialization of the world’s first multi-channel microelectronic cochlear implant.
2017 

Technology Award: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ernst D. Dickmanns for pioneering contributions to autonomic driving.
2018 

Technology Award: Dr. Rajiv Laroia for pioneering work on Flash OFDM as a Forerunner of Fourth-Generation Mobile Communications (4G).
2019 

Technology Award: Dr. Franz Laermer and Andrea Urban for the invention of the deep reactive ion etching process (Bosch Process), a key process for manufacturing semiconductor sensors.
2020 

Technology Award: Prof. Neal Koblitz, Ph.D. and Victor S. Miller, Ph.D. for the invention of cryptography based on elliptic curves.
2021 

Technology Award: Prof. Denis Le Bihan, MD, Ph.D. and Peter J. Basser, Ph.D. for the development of MRI diffusion tensor imaging, which is used for surgery and radiation planning, for research into neurological diseases associated with white matter changes, and for reconstruction of neural pathways in the brain (tractography).
2022

Technology Award: Prof. Hideo Hosono, Ph.D. for the invention of metal oxide thin film transistors for display applications.
2023

Technology Award: Prof. Gilles Brassard, Ph.D. and Charles H. Bennett, Ph.D. for the conception of the first key agreement protocol whose security is derived from the validity of quantum physics.


== References ==


== External links ==
http://www.eduard-rhein-foundation.de/