The Shaw Prize 邵逸夫獎

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The Shaw Prize is said to be comparable to the Nobel.

The Prize honours individuals, regardless of race, nationality and religious belief, who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or application, and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.

The Shaw Prize for 2005 consists of three annual awards: the Prize in Astronomy, the Prize in Life Science and Medicine, and the Prize in Mathematical Sciences. Each prize carries a monetary award of US$1 million. The nomination process begins in September 2004, the winners to be announced and the prizes presented next year in the summer and early autumn respectively.

The Shaw Prize is an international award managed and administered by The Shaw Prize Foundation based in Hong Kong.

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2004 will be awarded to

P. James E. Peebles

for his having laid the foundations for almost all modern investigations in cosmology, both theoretical and observational, transforming a highly speculative field into a precision science.

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine – Two Prizes

Prize One

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2004 will be awarded, half jointly to

Stanley N. Cohen & Herbert W. Boyer

for their discoveries on DNA cloning and genetic engineering;

and the other half to

Yuet Wai Kan

for his discoveries on DNA polymorphism and its influence on human genetics.

Prize Two

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2004 will be awarded to

Sir Richard Doll

for his contribution to modern cancer epidemiology.

The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2004 will be awarded to

Shiing Shen Chern

for his initiation of the field of global differential geometry and his continued leadership of the field, resulting in beautiful developments that are at the centre of contemporary mathematics, with deep connections to topology, algebra and analysis, in short, to all major branches of mathematics of the last sixty years.

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TVB, naturally enough, aired parts of the awards ceremony last week. And there, dapper as usual, stridding right up to the stage, was a very sharp and healthy looking Sir Run Run Shaw 邵逸夫. He'll be 97 next month. What secret potions does he take?

Come November, Ba Jin 巴金 will turn 100. Lots of commemorative stuff on sale in Chinese bookstores these days.

Any other Chinese antiquities still with us?

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Sir Run Run has been old since I was a kid

One of the awardees Richard Doll is also 90 years old. So you see one of the criteira for getting these heavy-weight awards is that you have to live long enough to see your contribution recognised.

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The presentation ceremony of the 2005 awards happens to take place tonight. The awardees are -> http://www.shawprize.org/en/announcement/2005/index.html

Astronomy – jointly awarded to Professor Geoffrey Marcy of University of California, Berkeley and Professor Michel Mayor of University of Geneva for finding and characterizing the orbits and masses of the first planets around other stars, thereby revolutionizing our understanding of the processes that form planets and planetary systems.

Life Science and Medicine – Professor Sir Michael Berridge of Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK, for his discoveries on calcium signalling in the regulation of cellular activity.

Mathematical Sciences – Professor Andrew John Wiles of Princeton University for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

天文學獎

天文學獎將平均頒予美國加州大學伯克萊分校天文學教授的傑弗里‧馬西教授 (Professor Geoffrey Marcy) 和瑞士日內瓦大學天文學教授的米歇爾‧麥耶教授 (Professor Michel Mayor)，為表彰他們最早發現太陽系以外的一個恆星的行星，了解其質量與軌道，從而引導出對行星之產生的革命性的新認識。

生命科學與醫學獎

生命科學與醫學獎頒予英國劍橋大學細胞信訊榮譽教授的邁克爾‧貝里奇爵士 (Professor Sir Michael Berridge), 為表彰他發現調控細胞的運作中鈣的關鍵作用。

數學科學獎

由美國普林斯頓大學數學系教授安德魯‧維爾斯教授 (Professor Andrew John Wiles) 獲得，為表彰費馬最後定理的證明。

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The 2006 awardees -> http://www.shawprize.org/en/shawprize/announcement/announcement.html

Astronomy – awarded jointly to Professor Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, USA; Professor Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA; and Professor Brian Schmidt of the Mount Stromlo Observatory of the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia for discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, implying in the simplest interpretation that the energy density of space is non-vanishing even in the absence of any matter and radiation.

Life Science and Medicine – awarded to Professor Xiaodong Wang of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, USA for his discovery of the biochemical basis of programmed cell death, a vital process that balances cell birth and defends against cancer.

Mathematical Sciences – awarded jointly to Professor David Mumford of the Brown University, USA for his contributions to mathematics, and to the new interdisciplinary fields of pattern theory and vision research; and Professor Wu Wentsun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Beijing, China for his contributions to the new interdisciplinary field of mathematics and mechanization.

天文學獎

天文學獎將平均頒予美國加州大學伯克萊分校及羅氏伯克萊國家實驗室索爾‧普密特教授 (Professor Saul Perlmutter); 美國巴爾提摩太空望遠鏡研究所和約翰霍普金斯大學亞當‧利斯教授(Professor Adam Riess); 和澳洲( 坎培拉)國立大學斯特朗洛山天文台的布萊‧施米茲教授 (Professor Brian Schmidt)。 為表彰他們發現宇宙膨脹的速度在增加，顯示即使沒有物質與任何輻射，空間的能量密度仍然大於零。

生命科學與醫學獎

生命科學與醫學獎將頒予美國德州大學西南醫學中心的王曉東教授 (Professor Xiaodong Wang)。 為表彰他發現細胞按程序凋亡的生物化學基礎。細胞按程序凋亡是平衡細胞生成和防止癌的關鍵步驟。

數學科學獎

數學科學獎將平均頒予美國布朗大學應用數學部的大衛‧曼福德教授 (Professor David Mumford) 為表彰他對數學, 與對二類新興學科的貢獻: 圖案學與視覺學; 和中國科學院的吳文俊教授 (Professor Wu Wentsun), 為表彰他對一新興學科的貢獻: 數學的機器證明法。