The names of the 2018 Balzan Prizewinners were proclaimed today in a public announcement:
Marilyn Strathern (UK), University of Cambridge, for Social Anthropology
Jürgen Osterhammel (Germany), University of Constance for Global History
Detlef Lohse (Germany/The Netherlands), University of Twente, for Fluid Dynamics
Eva Kondorosi (Hungary), Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, for Chemical Ecology.
The Balzan Prize for Humanity, Peace and Fraternity Among Peoples was attributed to Terre des Hommes (Switzerland).
The Prizewinners were announced today in Milan by the Chairman of the Balzan General Prize Committee, Luciano Maiani, together with the President of the Balzan "Prize" Foundation, Enrico Decleva, at the Corriere della Sera Foundation.
The amount of each of the four annual Prizes will be 750,000 Swiss Francs (approx. € 670,000; $ 770,000); the Prizewinners must destine half of the prize to finance research projects that are preferably carried out by young scholars or scientists. The Prizewinner for Humanity, Peace and Fraternity among Peoples will receive 1,000,000 Swiss Francs (€ 890,000; $ 1,000,000).
The Awards Ceremony and the Prizewinners' Forum will take place in Rome in November.
The profiles of the winners and the citations were presented today by four prestigious members of the General Prize Committee:
Nathalie Heinich (Research Director in sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris; member of the Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris) read the citation for the assignment of the Prize for Social Anthropology to Marilyn Strathern:
"For the profoundly innovative and heuristic character of her critique of Western conceptual oppositions, such as individual/society, man/woman, nature/culture, singular/collective, subjectivity/objectivity, cause/effect, in favour of the importance accorded to the domestic sphere, the differential distinction of the sexes, the manipulation of symbols, relation, replication, agency".
Andrea Giardina (Professor of Roman History at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences; Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome) read the citation for the assignment of the Prize for Global History to Jürgen Osterhammel:
"For his fundamental contribution to studies in global history and the definition of the discipline. For his method, which combines the rigour of empirical research while opening onto wide perspectives in an admirably balanced way, both through comparison and through the study of interconnected histories. For his elegant, fascinating style of writing".
Etienne Ghys (Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Pure and Applied Mathematics Unit, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon) and Carlo Wyss (Former Director for Accelerators at CERN) read the citation for the assignment of the Prize for Fluid Dynamics to Detlef Lohse:
"For his exceptional contributions in the most diverse fields of fluid dynamics, such as the transition to turbulent regimes in the Rayleigh-Bénard convection, the study of multi-phase turbulent flow, sonoluminescence, the properties of bubbles and drops down to a microscopic level, micro and nano fluidics".
Charles Godfray (Professor of Population Biology at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Martin School and Fellow of Jesus College; Fellow of the Royal Society) read the citation for the assignment of the Prize for Chemical Ecology to Eva Kondorosi:
"For her investigations into the molecular biology of the symbiosis between legume plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and the identification of many of the signalling molecules involved.".
The President of the International Balzan Foundation "Prize" Enrico Decleva read the citation for the assignment of the Prize for Humanity, Peace and Fraternity Among Peoples to Terre des Hommes:
"For the commitment of the Terre des hommes Foundation-Helping children worldwide to improving the daily lives of the most vulnerable human beings (children and their families), and for saving millions of needy children around the world; and in particular for the Foundation's project SIMSONE in the Ségou region of Mali, which will make it possible - through the provision of caregivers in the field - to save infants during childbirth and to care successfully for their mothers, a project that could be copied and implemented in other countries on a large scale".
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The award fields of the Balzan Prize vary each year and can be related to either a specific or an interdisciplinary field, and look to go beyond the traditional subjects both in the humanities (literature, the moral sciences and the arts) and in the sciences (medicine and the physical, mathematical and natural sciences), so as to give priority to innovative research.
Half of the amount received by the winner of each of the four prizes must be destined to research work, preferably involving young scholars and researchers.
The General Prize Committee announced that the 2019 Balzan Prizes will be awarded in the following fields:
1 Film Studies
2 Islamics Studies
3 Theory of Partial Differential Equations
4 Pathophysiology of respiration: from basic sciences to the bedside
The amount of each of the four 2019 Balzan Prizes will be 750,000 Swiss Francs.
The Balzan Prize for Humanity, Peace and Fraternity Among Peoples is a special prize awarded at intervals of no less than three years. It is destined to a person or an organisation that has achieved distinction for outstanding humanitarian work.
The Prizewinner 2018 is the eleventh in the history of the Foundation.
Since 1961, when the Nobel Foundation received the first-ever Balzan Prize, it has been awarded to the Pope John XXIII (1962 ), Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1978), The United Nations Refugee Agency - UNHCR (1986), Abbé Pierre (1991), The International Committee of the Red Cross (1996), Abdul Sattar Edhi (2000), The Community of Sant'Egidio (2004), Karlheinz Böhm (2007) and Vivre en Famille (2014).
The International Balzan Foundation, founded in 1957, operates through two separate institutions. The International Balzan Foundation - "Prize" (chaired in Milan by Enrico Decleva) selects the subjects to be awarded and the candidates through its General Prize Committee. The Balzan Foundation "Fund" (chaired in Zurich by Gisèle Girgis-Musy) administers the estate left by Eugenio Balzan, so as to place at the disposal of the International Balzan Foundation "Prize" the necessary financial means to realize its objective.
Info and Downloads: http://www.balzan.org