Science is the basis of a sustainable modern society. It provides the tools to understand the dimensions of the challenges we face. It proposes solutions, highlights their potential and thus prepares the ground for reasoned political action – from pandemics to climate warming to species extinction. Trust in science means understanding the path to knowledge and appreciating results. This basis should be put beyond dispute in the political debate – then science and society would have reason to celebrate far beyond the pandemic.

Elke Ziegler is science editor with Ö1 and was awarded the Robert Hochner Prize 2021 for her coverage of the pandemic in journals, features and podcasts. The jury found that Ziegler had “tirelessly prepared the sometimes contradictory wealth of information for radio listeners in a factual, comprehensible, balanced, level-headed and always cutting-edge manner”.