The Prix Pierre-Simon de Laplace was awarded to Sara van de Geer on June 2, 2025, at the 56th Journées de Statistique, the annual conference of the Société Française de Statistique (SFdS), in Marseille. Christophe Biernaki, president of the SFdS, presented her with the medal of Honorary Member of the Society. Marc Hallin, president of the Prix Laplace Jury, gave this introduction:

The Pierre-Simon de Laplace Prize is awarded every three years to a senior statistician who has made “significant contributions to the development of Statistics in France.” The highest scientific distinction awarded by the SFdS, this Prize typically crowns an exceptional career. The winner is selected by a jury, which I had the privilege of chairing this year, comprising eight members—four French and four foreign, four men and four women—plus its (stateless and asexual) president.

Like the president of the Goncourt Jury, I would have liked to announce the winner’s name at the end of a lavish lunch at Drouant, in front of a pack of journalists eager for information. However, the SFdS’s finances only allow for internet meetings and email discussions. Nevertheless, I am pleased to announce that, after electronic deliberations, the jury unanimously agreed on the name of Sara van de Geer as the eighth recipient of the prize.

I am particularly pleased to see this prize awarded to a female statistician for the first time, following seven consecutive male winners. I hope this reflects a welcome and permanent evolution in the demographics of our community. I am also delighted that the Jury for the third time chose a laureate of foreign nationality—Dutch in this case—which testifies to the SFdS’s great European and international openness.

It would be tedious to list all of Sara van de Geer’s scientific distinctions. She is a member of the Royal Academy of the Netherlands, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the [German National Academy of Sciences] Leopoldina. She has received the most prestigious “named lectures” (including an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematics) and has served on the editorial boards of leading journals in Probability, Statistics and Machine Learning.

Sara van de Geer began her brilliant career at Leiden University and was recently granted emeritus status at ETH Zurich. Between the Netherlands and Switzerland, she also was a professor at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Although her time there was relatively brief, Sara forged lasting links with the French statistical community, with numerous participations in the Journées de Statistique, the Ecoles d’Été de Saint-Flour, and doctoral courses at CIRM.