Walter Saxer-Versicherungs-Hochschulpreis (Insurance prize)

At the end of the 1960s an initiative was needed to draw students of mathematics to the field of insurance mathematics and to promote their interest in specializing in this field. Under the guidance of the ETH professors Ammeter, Bühlmann and Wyss the idea of a prize was proposed. A group of life and reinsurance companies showed much interest in establishing a prize, and on November 6, 1969, representatives of Fortuna, Rentenanstalt, Schweizer Rück, Union Rück, Vita and Winterthur-Leben met together with representatives of ETH Zürich and University of Zürich to create the association "Versicherungs-Hochschulpreis".

On February 11, 1971, the "Versicherungs-Hochschulpreis" was first awarded at the ETH Zurich. The first prize winner of this new distinction was Heinz Müller. He is now professor at the University of St. Gallen. He won the prize because of his excellent diploma thesis "Der Markt - ein Verkäufer - zwei Käufer" written under the direction of Prof. Hans Bühlmann.

The prize of a few thousand Swiss francs (depending on the type of the thesis) together with a certificate should serve for honoring excellent scientific works of insurance mathematics and related fields. Recipients are students, doctoral candidates, and younger members of the academic non-professional teaching staff. Honored works could be seminar papers, diploma theses, theses, and other scientific investigations and lectures in manuscript form. The age of the authors should not be older than 30 years.

In 1976 the prize was renamed the "Walter Saxer-Versicherungs-Hochschulpreis" in honor of the highly regarded, recently deceased professor of ETH Zürich and promoter of insurance mathematics.

For more historic details, see the contribution "20 Jahre Walter Saxer-Versicherungs-Hochschulpreis" by Prof. Josef Kupper in the Bulletin of the Swiss Association of Actuaries, no. 2 (1991) 167-169.

Current members of the association: Generali Assurances,PricewaterhouseCoopers, Swiss Life, Swiss Re, Winterthur Insurance, Zurich Financial Services

Current members of the prize committee:

• Prof. Dr. Erwin Bolthausen (Institute for Mathematics, University of Zürich)
• Prof. Dr. Paul Embrechts (Department of Mathematics, ETH Zürich)
• Dr. Hansjörg Furrer (FINMA)
• Arnold Schneiter

The following is a list of the honored scholars who have won this award: