An American mathematician who won a prestigious Israeli prize donated the proceeds to Palestinian academia.
David Mumford, a professor at Brown University’s Applied Mathematics Division, was a co-winner Sunday of the Wolf Prize for his groundbreaking theoretical work in algebraic geometry.
Mumford announced Monday he would donate his $50,000 prize money to Bir-Zeit University in the West Bank and to Gisha, an Israeli lobby that works to help Palestinian students reach their places of study.
“Mathematics in Israel flourishes today on this high international plane. Its lifeblood is the free exchange of ideas with scholars visiting, teaching, learning from each other, traveling everywhere in the world,” Mumford said in a statement.
“But this is not so in occupied Palestine, where education struggles to continue and travel is greatly limited.”
Israel has weathered international criticism of its closures on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, saying they aim to prevent terrorist infiltrations.
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