F.-Ulrich Hartl, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, is awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences 2020 together with Arthur L. Horwich of Yale School of Medicine/HHMI. They are honored for discovering functions of molecular chaperones in mediating protein folding and preventing protein aggregation. If proteins are not folded correctly, they can aggregate – a major cause of nerodegenerative diseases. The prize will be awarded on November 3 in Silicon Valley, USA and is the highest endowed science prize in the world with 3 million US dollars.