The first recipient, in 1908, was the eminent veterinary scientist Sir Arnold Theiler (1867–1936), for his work on trypanosomes and African horse sickness.
De Lange obtained her Masters on "Chromatin structure of the human ß-globin gene locus" at the University of Amsterdam in 1981, and subsequently her PhD at the same institution in 1985 with Piet Borst on surface antigen genes in trypanosomes.