Katharina Heinroth

As a child she grew up in the village of Wohwitz west of Breslau where she kept frogs and other animals at home, observing the growth of butterflies.

She moved to Munich in 1925 where she lived with Gustav Adolf Rösch, an assistant to Karl von Frisch.

When he died in 1945 and with the escape of the earlier Nazi director, Lutz Heck (whose father Ludwig Heck had also worked in the Berlin zoo), she was given charge as scientific director of the Berlin zoo and helped restore it from the damages of war.

On a trip to Uganda, she noted that African marabous did not fly on approach by humans, due to the protection given to them.

A major work on the birds of central Europe, Mitteleuropäische Vögel (1962) was written by Katharina Heinroth along with J. Steinbacher with art by Franz Murr.

The award is conferred for outstanding bachelor's and master's theses or independent research projects in the field of the life sciences.