Among the winners of this year's Wolf Prize - physics professor Yosef Emery from the Weizmann Institute and architect Phyllis Lambert from Canada. The CEO of the fund: "Each and every one of the winners is a beacon of excellence. The fact that about 30% of the prizes will go to women is particularly gratifying"
At an event attended by the Minister of Education and chairman of the Wolf Foundation, MK Naftali Bennett, and Prof. Dan Shechtman, who is the chairman's MM and a Wolf Prize winner himself, the winners of the 2016 Wolf Prize were announced this evening (Wednesday). The five prizes, totaling 100 thousand dollars in each field (half a million dollars in total), will be divided this year between seven winners from three countries: Israel, the United States and Canada. The prize will be awarded to the winners in June at a state ceremony at the Mishkan Knesset in Jerusalem by the President of the State Mr. Reuven Rivlin.
Wolf Prize in Agriculture The prize will be awarded to Prof. Trudy McKay from the University of North Carolina in the USA for the pioneering research in the field of the genetic architecture of complex traits, and for the discovery of basic principles in quantitative genetics with broad implications for research and agricultural practice;
The Wolf Prize in Chemistry will be awarded this year to two winners: to Prof. Kirikos Nicolaou from Rice University in the USA for bringing organo-synthetic chemistry to areas that seemed unreachable in the past, for the link he created between the chemical structure of the molecule and its biological functions and for expanding the control and understanding of what chemistry has in common , biology and medicine.
The second winner is Prof. Stuart Schreiber from Harvard University USA for his pioneering work in understanding the chemical signals and gene arrangements in the living body that led to the discovery of new therapeutic substances and for the advancement of biological chemistry and the advancement of medicine with the help of unique small organic molecules;
The Wolf Prize in Physics will be awarded to Prof. Yosef Amri from the Weizmann Institute Israel for his pioneering research in the physics of mesoscopic and random systems.
The Wolf Prize in Medicine will also be divided into two pairs and will be given to Prof. Ronald Kahn from Harvard University, USA, for his pioneering contributions in characterizing the action of insulin and its disruption in diseases, and to Prof. Louis Cantley from Cornell University, USA, for the discovery of the phosphoinositide-3 Kinases and understanding their role in physiological conditions and diseases.
The Wolf Prize in the Arts will be given this year in the field of architecture and will be awarded to architect Phyllis Lambert from Canada, for her determined involvement in the realization of groundbreaking buildings, in the development of conservation and urban renewal programs and in the establishment of leading research institutions.
Dr. Liat Ben David, CEO of the Wolf Foundation, said: "The chosen awardees have a significant impact in the fields of scientific research and artistic endeavor, and they are endowed with extraordinary talent, each and every one of them is a beacon of excellence in their field." Ben David added and noted "the fact that about 30% of the winners of this year's award are women is particularly gratifying." Also last year, three women won the Wolf Prize.
The Wolf Prize has a very prestigious international reputation. In the fields of exact sciences, he is considered the second most important in the world after the Nobel Prize. In the field of arts, the award is considered the most important. More than a third of the Wolf Prize winners were later crowned as Nobel Prize winners in the field of exact sciences, which coincide with the two prizes (medicine, physics and chemistry).
