International scientific cooperation has for years been one of the key drivers of research and innovation. As global challenges become increasingly complex, the internationalisation of science is gaining even greater importance, representatives of the Foundation for Polish Science argue. Since 2006, the Foundation has jointly awarded Polish-German scientific cooperation together with its German counterpart. This year, the Copernicus Award has gone to two mathematicians: Professor Leszek Skrzypczak and Professor Dorothee Haroske, whose joint work contributes to the development of new methods and tools in mathematical analysis.
“Science is never created in a single country, city or laboratory. Today, it concerns issues so complex that they require close cooperation. By isolating ourselves, we limit our own possibilities. Only by working with other countries and scientists around the world are we able to achieve success or make a breakthrough,” Professor Krzysztof Pyrć, President of the Foundation for Polish Science, told Newseria.
He added that international cooperation in science also has an important diplomatic dimension.
“We may ask what Poland gains from international cooperation in science. International cooperation is the foundation of many forms of diplomacy. There is even a term, ‘science diplomacy’, because it builds both technological and interpersonal relations, which later prove far more durable than any agreement,” he said.
According to the European Commission report “A European Framework for Science Diplomacy”, published in May and prepared with the participation of 130 experts in science and diplomacy, science and technology are increasingly becoming a geopolitical currency. As a result, science diplomacy can help strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and maximise its research and innovation potential.
The authors of the report stress that only a joint effort will allow the European Union to compete with more assertive economic and scientific powers. For this reason, it is crucial to involve and support the actors of European science diplomacy, including scientists, diplomats and business representatives. The report also includes recommendations intended to increase the visibility and role of science diplomacy.
“International cooperation in science and research is of tremendous importance. I would like to say that it is more important than ever on several levels. One of them is the fact that we have so many global research issues that require attention and answers. This can only be achieved in an international context and through cooperation. These include biodiversity loss, climate change, as well as issues of social responsibility and migration,” said Professor Katja Becker, President of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany’s largest research funding organisation.
Germany is one of Poland’s key partners in scientific research, innovation and academic exchange. Many institutions representing Poland’s research and higher education sector are involved in this cooperation. At the government level, it is developed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education as well as agencies supporting research and academic exchange.
“Poland and Germany are also very strong partners in the European context. International cooperation definitely contributes to bringing the European Research Area closer together and strengthening it as a whole,” Professor Becker emphasised. “There is also a bilateral dimension of cooperation between our countries, which is very strong. This means that interest in cooperation among scientists in Poland and Germany is very high, and the research is excellent.”
Twenty years ago, the Foundation for Polish Science decided to launch the Copernicus Award for outstanding researchers from Poland and Germany who work together.
“In this way, we wanted to honour excellent science carried out between the two countries, but also to bring scientists closer together so that cooperation could become even more effective. The Copernicus Award only finances the laureates’ research to a limited extent; above all, it is intended to encourage cooperation,” Professor Pyrć explained.
The Polish-German Scientific Award Copernicus is granted by DFG and FNP for outstanding scientific achievements resulting from German-Polish cooperation in any field of science, including the humanities and social sciences. This year, the eight-member jury, composed of researchers from both countries, recognised Professor Leszek Skrzypczak from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Professor Dorothee Haroske from Friedrich Schiller University Jena for their joint scientific work in mathematical analysis and partial differential equations.
“I have been working with my colleague from Poznań for more than 20 years, and there are several reasons for this. We both very much like this field of mathematics, mathematical analysis, and we also have a similar approach to the subject: we ask about details, give precise answers to arguments and think about how to transform them,” said Professor Dorothee Haroske, winner of the 2026 Polish-German Scientific Award Copernicus.
The most important achievement of the two researchers is the creation of a common language for different areas of advanced mathematics. Their cooperation has helped organise knowledge about so-called function spaces. These can be imagined as large digital maps on which mathematicians record information about how sounds, images or physical phenomena change.
“Many phenomena in the world around us, such as the propagation of light and sound or the flow of water, can be described using mathematical equations. These are like instructions that tell us how these processes unfold. It can be compared to birdwatching. We are not looking for specific solutions; we are not interested in a single individual. We are interested in the characteristics of the entire species, the properties of all possible solutions, how smooth and regular they are. This knowledge allows us to say something about the processes described by these equations: whether they are stable, unstable, chaotic or ordered,” explained Professor Leszek Skrzypczak, winner of the 2026 Polish-German Scientific Award Copernicus.
The jury particularly appreciated the way in which the researchers described the operation of the Fourier transform, a tool that breaks complex data down into simple individual components. Thanks to their discovery, it is now precisely known when this tool behaves predictably and flawlessly, even when applied to highly complex problems.
“Think of a vibrating string, for example in a guitar or violin. There are physical models describing this phenomenon,” Professor Haroske explained. “We can think like mathematicians and imagine that we only have the mass of the entire string distributed in a very sparse way, and then we can ask: ‘What would it sound like?’ Of course, no one can really prove or disprove this, because it is purely mathematical, but it is connected with the wave equation and the heat equation. This is exactly what we do.”
Although the models developed by the researchers are theoretical in nature, they may have an important impact on modern engineering. They may be applied in the optimisation of many processes: from advanced image and sound processing, including compression technologies and medical imaging, through numerical simulations used in construction, to stochastic models used in forecasting financial markets and climate change.
The cooperation between Professor Haroske and Professor Skrzypczak began in 2006. So far, it has resulted in more than 30 joint publications in prestigious mathematical journals and numerous jointly organised scientific conferences.
“Receiving the Copernicus Award is a great honour. I was very surprised when I received the news that I had become one of its laureates. I will not hide the fact that it was also a moment of great joy. Most of the award is a research subsidy, so I hope it will allow us to continue our research with Professor Haroske and involve young researchers in our research programme,” Professor Skrzypczak said.
“Once again, we have two fantastic winners of the Copernicus Award. This year, they are outstanding mathematicians working at a world-class level in their field, namely analysis and partial differential equations,” Professor Becker said.
The award is worth €200,000, with €100,000 going to each laureate. The competition has been organised every two years since 2006. Previous winners include researchers working on topics such as extrasolar planets, mitochondrial function and ischaemic heart disease.
“Over the past 20 years, the Copernicus Award has recognised cooperation between Polish and German researchers in a wide range of fields: from biology and physics to mathematics, which has been awarded this year for the first time in the history of the prize. The laureates conduct research that can be classified as basic research, but it is breakthrough research that changes the universe,” Professor Krzysztof Pyrć said.
