It is my pleasure to welcome you all to Copenhagen for the award of The Brain Prize 2018.

Although we in Denmark have fostered great scientists such as Niels Bohr and August Krogh – to name but a few - part of the Danish self-understanding was to stay humble, almost to the point of self-laceration.

It was perceived as a virtue to pay tribute to the modesty, to such an extent that we in Denmark have had a tendency to pay tribute to the mediocre and to neglect the elite.

However, in my generation and in the next, there is an understanding that growth and progress are only achieved through focused and dedicated efforts and that we must pay tribute to the very best in business, arts, sports and, not least - science.

Striving for excellence leads to inspiration and motivation.

It is important to be ambitious – to set goals that can only be achieved through hard work and focused efforts by the talented and dedicated businessman, artist, athlete or researcher.

In Denmark we can take pride in having a lot of talent in business, art, sports and science, and I am pleased that the Lundbeck Foundation has the declared ambition that Denmark should be one of the world's leading brain research countries.

The Brain Prize is a key instrument in the pursuit of this ambition.

The Brain Prize honors outstanding contributions to brain research. It inspires future generations of outstanding researchers to work even harder and even more focused.

And we need that. The brain is our finest and most important organ of our body. We know that the brain and its function defines us as human beings. However, in dealing with the brain we are still within partially unexplored territory, and we have desperately few and rather ineffective treatments of brain diseases.

So when the brain disintegrates and shrinks, we also disappear as human beings. It is hard and saddening to look at.

Therefore, I am pleased to be able to present this year's Brain Prize to four of the world's leading researchers who have contributed so crucially to our understanding of Alzheimer's disease and have given insights that in a near future may lead to effective treatments.