At an event in the presence of President Reuven Rivlin, Prof. Dan Shechtman, chairman of the Wolf Foundation Board and winner of the Wolf Prize himself, and Reot Foundation CEO Yanon Berman were announced yesterday (Monday) as the winners of the 2018 Wolf Prize.
The five prizes, totaling 100 dollars in each field (half a million dollars in total), will be divided this year between nine winners from five countries: the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary and Great Britain. The prize will be awarded to the winners at the end of May in a state ceremony at the Knesset in Jerusalem by the President of the State and Chairman of the Wolf Fund Minister Naftali Bennett.
- Wolf Prize in Music It will be awarded this year to two artists: Sir Paul McCartney, one of the greatest creative singers of all time and Adam Fisher, an inspirational conductor and an eloquent defender of human rights.
- Wolf Prize in Agriculture It will be awarded to Prof. Gene Robinson from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, head of the Carl R. Voss Institute for Genomic Biology and head of the Bee Research Institute, for leading the genomic revolution in the biology of honey bee populations.
- Wolf Prize in Chemistry This year will be awarded to two winners: Prof. Makoto Fujita from the University of Tokyo and Prof. Omar Yaghi from the University of California at Berkeley for their various contributions to the field of supramolecular chemistry.
- Wolf Prize in Mathematics To be awarded to Prof. Alexander Beilinson and Prof. Vladimir Drinfeld, both of the University of Chicago, for their groundbreaking work in algebraic geometry, mathematical physics and representation theory.
- Wolf Prize in Physics It will be awarded to Prof. Charles H. Bennett, a computer scientist from IBM, and Prof. Gilles Bresser, a physicist and computer scientist from the University of Montreal in Canada, for developing and promoting the fields of quantum encryption and quantum teleportation.
The Wolf Foundation is an Israeli state foundation, whose goal is to promote excellence in science and art. Every year, the President of the State of Israel, on behalf of the foundation, awards the prestigious Wolf Prize - an international award given to scientists and artists from around the world, for achievements "for the advancement of science and art for the benefit of humanity". The prizes are awarded in the fields of science: medicine, agriculture, mathematics, chemistry, physics and in the arts: painting and sculpture, music and architecture. The winners are chosen by international judging committees, which are composed every year anew of professionals, who come from different continents and who are world-renowned in the fields of the various awards.
The Wolf Prize has a very prestigious international reputation, since the foundation of the foundation, 329 scientists and artists have won Wolf Prizes and over a third of the Wolf Prize winners have subsequently won the Nobel Prize, in the areas common to both prizes. The Wolf Prize is awarded for the 40th year by the "Wolf Foundation", founded in 1975 by the late Dr. Ricardo Wolf, inventor, diplomat and philanthropist, and his wife, Francesca Sobirna-Wolf, world champion in tennis in the 20s who contributed their capital to establish the fund. The rules for awarding the award are fixed in the Wolf Foundation Law, which was approved by the Knesset in 1975.
Reasons for winning:
Agriculture 2018
The judging committee of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture decided to award the prize toProf. Gene Robinson from the University of Illinois, for leading the genomic revolution in organismal biology and the biology of honey bee populations.
Prof. Gene Robinson Serves as head of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and as head of the Institute for Bee Research (since 1990). Robinson is a pioneer in the application of the field of genomics - the field of genetics that deals with the set of hereditary material (the genome) of living beings - to the study of social behavior. In addition, Robinson led the effort to sequence the genome (that is, determine the order of the nucleic acids, the building blocks of the genetic code) of the honey bee. During his career he published (alone or with colleagues) over 300 articles and trained 29 postdoctoral fellows and 23 students for a doctorate degree. He won, among other things, prestigious awards from the American Entomological Society, the International Society for Animal Behavior and the International Society for Behavioral Genetics.
Robinson led an international consortium in which more than 170 researchers from 13 countries participated in sequencing the honey bee genome. As part of examining the honey bee genome, Robinson led the team that discovered that honey bees have a fully functioning methylation system. A first discovery in insects that led to hundreds of studies examining the possibility of using insect epigenetics for pest control purposes.
Furthermore, Robinson used the honey bee to break the ground for genomic application for the benefit of social behavior research, and in doing so promoted the crucial species for agriculture to an important and prominent position in the field of neuroscience. From here Robinson eventually arrived at a reformulation of the problem of perennial crop cultivation in modern genomic terms. Gene Robinson made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the honey bee, an understanding that shaped the present and future of the bee world. In addition, his impressive discoveries also influenced other disciplines, including social behavioral sciences and mental disorders. Only a few scientists can claim to their credit the foundation of a comprehensive field of research - socio-genomics - that has aroused interest all over the world. Robinson has a dominant and unique influence on the biology of the honey bee, and his works are unmatched in the field of research on other animals of agricultural importance.
Mathematics 2018
The judging committee of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics decided to award the prize to two mathematicians: Prof. Alexander Baylinson וProf. Vladimir Drinfeld, both from the University of Chicago, for their groundbreaking work in algebraic geometry (a field that combines abstract algebra with geometry), mathematical physics and representation theory - a branch that helps in understanding complex algebraic structures.
Prof. Alexander Baylinson made a significant contribution to representation theory and algebraic geometry. Among his outstanding achievements are proofs of the Kashdan-Lustig and Jansen conjectures, the formulation of far-reaching conjectures (Beilinson conjectures) about motivic cohomology and special values of functions L, as well as his joint work with Vladimir Drinfeld on Langlands' geometric scheme, which led to impressive progress at the interface between geometry and mathematical physics: in theory The algebra of vertex operators, in conformal field theory and string theory.
Prof. Vladimir Drinfeld introduced fundamental concepts in arithmetic geometry, the theory of algebraic groups and their representations, whose influence on modern mathematics was enormous. Among his contributions in the field of arithmetic geometry are Drinfeld's module, Drinfeld's upper half-plane and Drinfeld's stoke. The theory of quantum bunches that he developed is of crucial importance in solving many problems in algebra and mathematical physics; Here a central role is reserved for the concept of Drinfeld's associator.
Drinfeld and Billinson together created a geometric model of an algebraic theory that plays a key role in both field theory and physical string theory, thereby further tightening the ties between modern abstract mathematics and physics. They jointly published their work in a book published in 2004 that describes important algebraic structures used in quantum field theory, which in turn is the theoretical basis for today's particle physics. This essay has since become the basic reference book on this complex subject.
Physics 2018
The judging committee of the Wolf Prize in Physics decided to award the prize to two physicists: Prof. Charles H. Bennett, a computer scientist from IBM, andProf. Gilles Bresser, a physicist and computer scientist from the University of Montreal in Canada, for developing and promoting the fields of quantum encryption and quantum teleportation.
Bennett and Bresser are considered the founders of quantum information theory, a rapidly developing field of science. Information theory is a mathematical theory whose foundations lie in probability theory, statistics and random processes. Its main purpose is to quantitatively characterize both the processing and transfer (or transmission) possibilities of information and their limitations. Information theory has many applications and is used, for example, to develop advanced encryption systems. Quantum physics allowed Bennett and Brasser, and their colleagues, to develop a new branch called "quantum information theory". This theory adopts quantum concepts for defining information and processing information, and enables - among other things - the development of encryption methods that are infinitely more sophisticated than those developed based on classical information theory.
Bennett and Brasser found a way to exploit the polarization property of light to develop a revolutionary quantum encryption method known as "quantum key exchange". As you know, light is an electromagnetic wave, meaning a disturbance, or change, in electric and magnetic fields that spread through space at the speed of light. Polarization is a property of light related to the direction of the electric field during wave propagation. This feature makes it possible, among other things, to create eyeglass lenses that transmit through them only a part of the sunlight polarized in a certain direction. The BB84 method of Bennett and Brasser is based on the transmission of photons (light particles) and the measurement of their polarization. They showed that the quantum behavior of photons (including the "collapse" phenomenon that occurs when their polarization is measured) can be used for secure encryption of information.
This discovery by Bennett and Brasser led to another important development in the field of quantum information theory based on the "entanglement" phenomenon mentioned above. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement - that is, the immediate mutual influence of quantum particles that may be very distant from each other - at first glance contradicts Einstein's special theory of relativity, which prohibits the transfer of information between two points in space at a speed that exceeds the speed of light. On closer inspection, it turns out that quantum entanglement does not contradict the theory of relativity, since this phenomenon cannot be used to transfer information between the two distant places where the particles are. Bennett and Brasser, and their colleagues, showed that entanglement can be used to transfer quantum states (qubits) between two systems at some distance from each other, using only a classical communication channel. This process is called "quantum teleportation". It involves the transfer of quantum information and does not violate the speed of light limit that refers to the speed of information transfer from one place to another, in other words, the integrated quantum state of the two particles changes immediately even if the distance between them is very large. This doctrine was developed by Bennett and Brasser (along with other colleagues) in 1990. Since then - 28 years later - the phenomenon of teleportation has been demonstrated in many experiments and at different distances, some exceeding 1000 kilometers. There is no doubt that in the future this discovery will have significant consequences for the field of secure communication.
Chemistry 2018
The judging committee of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry decided to award the prize to two chemists: Prof. Omar Yaghi from the University of California at Berkeley for pioneering work on reticular chemistry using organometallic networks (MOFs) and organocovalent networks (COFs) andProf. Makoto Fujita from the University of Tokyo for the principles of metal-directed self-assembly to form ultra-large pore complexes.
Prof. Omar Yaghi from the University of California, Berkeley, is actually the main developer of a new branch of supramolecular chemistry called "reticular" chemistry (reticular in Latin; reticulum in Latin is "small network"). Reticular chemistry makes it possible to connect molecules together into a kind of networks that form stable structures that are particularly porous, i.e. with a very high surface area that allows for the efficient transport of various materials that are "trapped" in the pores (for example, various gaseous fuels) as well as the effective capture (or storage) of elements and compounds such as carbon or water. The property of porosity is very important for practical needs, since it is the one that allows the storage of large amounts of gases in small volumes or their capture.
Using network chemistry, Yaghi developed two completely new types of compounds, called "metal-organic frameworks" (MOFs) and "covalent organic frameworks" (COFs). While supramolecular chemistry was initially reduced to relatively weak bonds - for example hydrogen bonds and van der Waals bonds - the great advantage of network chemistry is its success in creating supramolecular structures - frameworks - with very strong (covalent) bonds between the molecules, which give them unprecedented chemical and structural strength as one. Thanks to network chemistry, each such frame can be seen as a kind of "molecule": just as the molecule determines each of the atoms in a specific geometry and spatial arrangement, so the frame determines each of the molecules in a unique and well-defined geometry and spatial arrangement. In fact, due to the fact that these frameworks encompass relatively large volumes, their chemistry is much richer than that of the molecules that make them up, which makes it possible to give them their unique properties.
The main contribution of Makoto Fujita from Tokyo University of Supramolecular Chemistry is the development of a new method for creating supramolecular structures known as "metal-directed synthesis" or "metal-directed self-assembly". This innovative method enables the rapid and spontaneous assembly (under certain thermodynamic conditions) of supramolecular substances, and is much easier and more efficient than the cumbersome, tedious and very ineffective methods that were used before to synthesize substances of this type.
In the following years, this method was used to build increasingly complex molecules, nanostructures and materials. Fujita's group synthesized, for example, porous three-dimensional supramolecules (called "cages"), which can be used as molecular "containers" that store smaller molecules. This structure may give the trapped substances new chemical properties: for example, it can increase the solubility of drugs and therefore also their effectiveness.
A few years ago, Fujita and his colleagues were able to synthesize, using their method, a cage large enough to store protein molecules in its pores; This is of great practical importance, since many new drugs are based on proteins. In 2016, they managed to assemble a relatively large cage that is 8 nanometers wide (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter), and later that year they theoretically proved that with the help of the self-assembly method they had developed, 144 (!) such cages could be attached to one giant, stable cage. Another common use for materials synthesized by the self-assembly method is as catalysts that accelerate chemical reactions that, in their absence, occur very slowly.
Music 2018
The judging committee of the Wolf Prize in Music decided to award the prize to two artists: Sir Paul McCartney and conductor Adam Fisher.
Paul McCartney - one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time
With 60 gold records and over 100 million singles sold during his career, McCartney is undoubtedly the most commercially successful performer and composer of popular music. The Beetles' song Yesterday (1965) written by McCartney and sung by him accompanied by a string quartet - was played about six million times on radio and television in the USA, leaving his closest competitor far behind. And, with over 3000 cover versions, this is the song that tops the list of recordings ever made. In 2009, the US Library of Congress in Washington announced McCartney as the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Music.
McCartney is not just a rock musician, McCartney is considered a British institution, an icon like hot beer and cricket, he was part of the British identity.
His versatility forms the basis for an extraordinary creative arc, starting with heavy rock and ending with heartbreaking and unforgettable intimate melodies. His lyrics also span a wide range: from the innocent and charming to the poignant and discouraging. He touched the hearts of people all over the world, as one of the "Beetles" and later in other bands, including as a member of the band "Kenfaim". Like all great art, his melodies are temporary and temporary: today a third generation is already captured by his enviable imagination. It is likely that his songs, like those of Brahms, Faure, Debussy and Ravel, and similar to those of his modern predecessors (including Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin) will be sung and used as a source of pleasure as long as humans give their voice to the song.
Adam Fischer - one of the prominent conductors active today
Dynamism, entrepreneurship and diversity characterize the creative work of the world-renowned conductor Adam Fischer. He is the founder of two international music festivals that were his artistic home. Under his leadership, the Wagner Festival in Budapest acquired a reputation during its more than ten years of existence. In addition, in 1987, Fischer founded the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, thanks to which it became an important and well-known center for the performance of Haydn's music. At the same time, he founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic Orchestra, which focuses on playing the works of Joseph the composer.
As an artistic consultant to the Tonhalle concert hall in Dusseldorf, he initiated the awarding of a human rights award that is given every year as part of a special concert dedicated to human rights.
At the Vienna State Opera, which has had an artistic home since 1973, Adam Fischer conducted twenty-six different operas, including quite a few new productions. For his contribution, he was appointed an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera, an appointment received in 2017 in consultation with the Austrian Ministry of Culture .
Adam Fischer has been performing for over thirty years in all the leading opera houses in the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Covent Garden in London, Opera La Bastille in Paris, the Opera House in Zurich and La Scala in Milan. Fischer also often performs in concert halls; He regularly conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and others. In addition, he is a regular guest on the stages of the world's leading orchestras, including the Munich Philharmonic, the Bamberg Symphony, the Tunhalla Orchestra in Zurich, the Paris Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and more.
His support for human rights and his protest against the political developments in his native Hungary make him an artist of exemplary integrity - virtues that shape his performances as well as his moral position. The Wolf Foundation is proud to recognize Adam Fisher, a beloved musical leader all over the world whose ambitions serve as an inspiration to us all.
One response
Beautiful. The Wolf Prize in Physics dares and, like physics, harnesses physics to new and equally interesting fields.