Dr Nenad Ban has been bestowed the award for "his pioneering research findings on the structure and function of eukaryotic ribosomes." The award has been given to Professor Dr. Med. Tobias Moser, "for his ground-breaking work in signal transduction in the inner ear and his innovative therapy concepts for treating hardness of hearing," according to a statement released on the Jung Foundation website.
"The exceptional scientists have both obtained important fundamental results that can be used for further application-related research in their respective fields and are sharing the considerable prize money of 300,000 euros equally."
The Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine is generally awarded to two scientists each year.
The statement on the foundation's web site reads that Ban comes from "a family of natural scientists" in Croatia. He discovered his passion for biology early on and was quoted as saying that "during my childhood, I loved experimenting and investigating marine organisms at the Adriatic coast, where I spent my summer holidays."