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The William Thierry Preyer Award for Excellence in Research on Human Development will be given to a European psychologist or a group of European psychologists – who is/are recognized internationally for an original and substantial contribution to a better understanding of human development and its contexts, as demonstrated by first-rate publications in scholarly journals, based on empirical research into the antecedents, processes and outcomes of human development-in-context.

The William Thierry Preyer Award was donated to the European Society for Developmental Psychology (ESDP) by the President of the 2007 European Congress on Developmental Psychology and the Rector of the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany. According to an agreement with ESDP, the university will support this Award with a donation for the next three congresses. ESDP will take care for its continuation. William Thierry Preyer (1841-1897), born in England, was the Chair of Physiology at the University of Jena, Germany. His vision was inspired by Charles Darwin, and his main works have importance till today – "Spezielle Physiologie des Embryos" and "Die Seele des Kindes" (The Mind of the Child). Both books lead the foundation in their respective scientific disciplines, developmental physiology and developmental psychology, and seen from modern interdisciplinary views on human development, Preyer is a major forerunner of rigorous research on human development, based on observation and experimentation. Details of the application procedure can be found under the topic "Awards".